The Aitken Alexander Isolation Series: The Bathroom by Lou Stoppard
The Bathroom I never thought I liked to be alone. When I was a baby, only recently able to sit upright, a Christmas parade marched through my town one Friday evening. My mother heard it from the bathroom upstairs, which was tiled in salmon, and where she was about to bathe me and my sister, […]
The Aitken Alexander Isolation Series: Grief in the Time of Covid by Liz Jensen
Raphaël Coleman (aka Iggy Fox) with his mother, Liz Jensen, at Extinction Rebellion’s uprising in Trafalgar Square in October 2019. GRIEF IN THE TIME OF COVID What wisdom can you reach for when the unimaginable happens? On 6th February my apparently healthy 25-year old son Raphaël collapsed and died. Every week, all over […]
The Aitken Alexander Isolation Series: A Sea of Bodies by Jessica Andrews
A Sea of Bodies I am living in a village built onto a rock hanging over the sea, just outside of Barcelona. I have spent most of my adult years moving from place to place, collapsing my life on a whim and then building it up again. I have often lain awake in […]
The Aitken Alexander Isolation Series: You’ve Been Invited by Julianne Pachico
You’ve Been Invited Once you receive your invitation, it’s important to reply right away. Your invitation will be tied in an elegant red ribbon, with a black ink pawprint working as a seal. Feel free to write your response below the invitation’s elegant cursive phrasing (a simple ‘OH MY GOD YES PLEASE I WANT […]
Une Petite Grippe: A COVID-19 Dispatch from Mauritius
My mother said her meds made her fat. She’d only take them when she thought she was about to die, unable to breathe, constricted as if her ribs had grown and interlocked across her chest. Only then would she reach for her inhaler. “When it’s my time, it’s my time” she’d say, until I had […]
Daisy Waugh’s In The Crypt with a Candlestick featured on The Daily Mail’s A Book and a Bottle
In the first of an unputdownable new series, our columnist invites Imogen Edward-Jones and Santa Montefiore into her living room to dissect Daisy Waugh’s delightfully wicked new book, In The Crypt with a Candlestick. Click here to watch the video on The Daily Mail website.
The Aitken Alexander Isolation Series: The Cough by Oyinkan Braithwaite
The Cough There is no knock. My sister waltzes into my room carrying a tray with a jar and spoons, like a nurse in a ward. She has no respect for my self-isolation. She informs me that she has just come from my brother and sister’s room and now it is my turn. The […]
The Aitken Alexander Isolation Series: a new poem by Andrew McMillan
* for how many years had you carried it before you felt it how long had it sat growing as you grew built of your own skin tumour parasite and ticking ticking until you looked who was it showed you? who gave you the key? your not-self sick-self the long […]
The Aitken Alexander Isolation Series: Fruiting Bodies by Olivia Sudjic
Fruiting Bodies She’d never paid attention to drug stories. Not that she knew many people who told them, certainly not these days. But in the eighties she’d known a few of what her mother called ‘druggy types’ (the kind her mother was convinced had AIDS) and she’d zoned out when they spoke of […]
The Aitken Alexander Isolation Series: You Got the Fear by Dom Joly
You Got the Fear These are strange times. Lockdown means looking back to what was and what sometimes we dread might never be again. Dealing with it all- the anxiety, the paranoia, it’s the great unknown that is the kicker. How to deal with the fear? It’s interesting that Trump has started calling […]