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East End Bus Ride: 1965 by Elizabeth Bernays
My morning journey starts in Red Lion Square, Bloomsbury, close to the old house where I live in one of eight tiny bed-sitting rooms.


Stoned by Lawrence Morgan
India is paradoxical. One minute you’re in Paradise, the next minute you’re tumbling head-over-heels into the bowels of the Inferno.


We Like It Hot and Dangerous by Heather Gatley
In 1991, my husband and I took up posts at an international school in San Salvador. We brought with us our two children who were both then u


The Adoption Campaign by Lynnda Wardle
My mother was anxious to fulfill her wifely role and fall pregnant. I imagine her lying in bed, cold and frightened...


Arriving in Snipers' Alley by JP Sexton
As the war in Ukraine enters its fourth month, the author recalls his introduction nearly three decades ago to Europe's last war which...


Crossing to England by Amir Darwish
We’d stayed outside the refugee camp until the early hours of the morning. The camp was huge, with over a thousand refugees


Opal Miner Twenty-Niner by James Bloom
They roll into Coober Pedy around midnight, having disembarked from the Indian Pacific at Port Augusta early that afternoon.


The Virgin's Quest by Auriel Roe
Trying to lose one's maidenhead, when all about you are losing theirs, becomes more complicated than anticipated...


Coming Through with the Balloons by Kirsten Wasson
Suffocated by small town life, weary of the frozen tundra of Ithaca, New York winters, I took trips down to Manhattan as often as I...


Setting Up in Sydney by James Bloom
Living in a seedy youth hostel in Sydney Australia the 1980s, the author visits the labour exchange and finds work making soap and boxes.


Grimness at The Grand by Auriel Roe
Like my Grandma Manda before she married, I was to be a ‘maid of all work’: chambermaid, dish-washer, kitchen hand and laundress.


Little Hands by Deborah Nash Ott
I am running to my father’s side because he has called me.


One For Sorrow by Madeline McEwen
Britain, 1988: In a recession, landing a job, any job, is like winning the Lottery and that’s how I felt when the temping agency rang me....


Scorpions in Goa, A Dark Memory by Lawrence Morgan
“It’s a tropical paradise, yes, but you must never sleep on the floor there...”


Floodwater by Deborah Nash Ott
Just before the big flood of 1972 in Rochester, New York, in the wake of Hurricane Agnus, my father moved out of our house for good.


Walking the Dog by Tim Atkinson
I have named my pain and called it ‘dog’ —Friedrich Nietszche, The Gay Science


Self Worth through Hard Work at the Vicarage by Auriel Roe
I’d never been to Birmingham before and getting off the train at the dimly-lit subterranean station was not an auspicious start to summer.


Christmas, Elsewhere by Heather Gatley
It was 1963. A blizzard blew across the grass outside the married quarters where we lived in RAF St Athan.


Adventures in the B Movie Trade by Brian Trenchard-Smith
The source of the Actor’s anxiety arrives on the set, his partner in the scene, a male with dangling testicles each the size of grapefruit.


Homemade Halloween by Auriel Roe
We’d hollow out rock hard swedes with sharp knives. When we lit the stump of a candle inside them, the smell of singed swede was beguiling.
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