Old Babes in the Wood

Aldous Huxley made short work of that idea in Brave New World. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? He was my schoolmaster at Eton; taught me French, not very well. Didn’t he write you a letter? When Nineteen Eighty-Four came out? (Coughs, laughs) Yes, he did. He said, “Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems d

“I want to still be me,” says Tig. “You still are you,” Nell says. “So far,” says Tig. Another pause. “We’ll get through it,” says Nell. “Yes, we will,” says Tig. They squeeze hands.

She’d had a gang of other perfumed, flinty-souled Hungarian mothers with whom she’d played card games and exchanged war stories about their respective escapes, plus grumblings about the thankless children they’d saved from the Communist salt mines. Lavender on the outside, meticulous about their coiffures and manicures and eye shadow, but pure adam

I’ve always remembered something you—something Winston Smith says in Nineteen Eighty-Four, when he begins writing his ill-fated journal on that beautiful cream-coloured paper. “For whom, it suddenly occurred to him to wonder, was he writing this diary? For the future, for the unborn … How could you communicate with the future? It was of its nature

The really successful products for ads then were cigarettes and booze; also anything to do with soap, because the war had been so grimy and filthy everyone wanted to scrub themselves blue afterwards.

But this is a sad ending. Since I can—since I am the only one left who can—let me dial time backwards so we can spend a happier moment together. The four of us: John and François, and Tig and me. Already we’re looking younger, as you can see.

So, when and where was this sordid liaison supposed to have taken place?” “In 1967, in Ottawa.” “Well then. More and more improbable. Nobody has affairs in Ottawa.” “Oh, they do,” said Csilla. “Civil servants have them all the time. They do it out of boredom.” “But nobody goes there from somewhere else to have them. Why would they even consider it?

He and an alcoholic pal checked into a drying-out clinic, but before their first day they climbed over the back wall and buried half a dozen bottles of Scotch on the grounds, in case of dire need. He told this as if it had been a caper, a prank, and we’d laughed dutifully; but as I’m revisiting this escapade now, I frame it otherwise. Clambering ov

My mother was in the kitchen, grinding something in her mortar. She often ground things in her mortar, though sometimes she used the Mixmaster. If I said, “What’s that?” she might say, “Garlic and parsley,” and I’d know she was in Joy of Cooking mode. But if she said, “Look the other way” or “What you don’t know won’t hurt you” or “I’ll tell you wh