tales from my travels
2019 sees a brand new album: the songs I wrote in Hamburg on my beautiful Yamaha Clavinova. Thanks to my neighbours in Eppendorf for not knocking on the door when I was playing quietly during the Abendruhe.
Frohes neues Jahr!
Ein frohes neues Jahr to you…and now that I’m back in the UK, I’ve put together an album of my favourite-ever songs to kick off 2019:
In a departure from the usual, I thought I would list all the books I’ve read this year. I choose books mainly based on recommendations from friends, followed by recommendations from reviews in the papers and on the radio, and then from suggestions on my Kindle. This year, however, I wanted to include in my reading some classics that I had never looked at properly before. Here’s the list, in reverse order. I’ve marked the ones that surpassed my expectations with *, and any that I thought were overrated with !
Thanks for tweeting about this, Allegra Huston!
At this time of year, Europe always turns a shade darker. I’m reminded of a quote from the Hungarian writer Antal Szerb, whose Journey by Moonlight I have just finished: “In London November isn’t a month, it’s a state of mind.”
I mentioned back in February that one of my flash fiction stories from last year had been selected for publication in an anthology, but then didn’t give any more details: it’s the story below, which has always been one of my favourites.
Viele Grüße from Germany! After a summer of travelling around Santiago de Compostela, Porto, Lucca, and Oxford, I’m now working in the beautiful northern port of Hamburg, and here is my latest collection of songs:
Hot off the digital press, here’s a link to my (very short) story, Date with a Sociopath, which has now been published in Narrative magazine.
[I’m travelling around so much that, this year, the blog is going to take a summer holiday too. Meanwhile, here’s a short story written and set in Liège twenty years ago, before the euro, before smartphones, before Two Days One Night, and well before the more recent news headlines about that city.]
“Ça va?” asks Pascale as we bump over yet another pothole on the way up a mountain to her parents’ house for Sunday lunch. Actually, a mountain might be too poetic a name for it. It might be a slag heap. There are so many of them, decaying slowly on the outskirts of the city. At first glance they look like volcanic cones full of exotic promise and then close up, all you see is the disappointing reality of industrial decay. I met Pascale last week in an old attic, which has been the local chapel since the council ran out of funds to heat the church. I squeezed in among dozens of Catholic refugees, kneeling on the bare boards. Pascale took pity on me because she thought I was a refugee too, at first. I threw my clothes in the bin the next day. But she was actually closer than she realized.
“Now you can meet some real Belgians,” she says encouragingly to me. “It must be quite hard being British abroad and not being a typically British… What do you call it? A lager loot.”
[I recently discovered that one of last year’s stories had been shortlisted for the Writers Online 750-word short story competition, so – quite happily – I’m reposting it here!]
We feel sorry for Justine because she has a – I’ll keep my voice down – boyfriend.
Mimi and I have long been Free, but Justine’s still shackled to a man. She’s tied. She’s tangled up. She is – in other words – Trapped.
“She’s late,” says Mimi. “What’s her big news, anyway? Has she seen the light?”
“About time!” I say. I was Trapped once. Last year, I spent several weeks entangled with a green-eyed guy called Sam. He kissed me up against the fridge, but left trails of laundry everywhere. When I found his dirty socks in the sink, I saw sense.
[I was very pleasantly surprised to read – in the Galician rain – that my latest microfiction story had been longlisted for the Irish Fish Flash Fiction prize. So here it is:]
The third seat – the window seat – was empty. So was the aisle one. Violet toyed with her book in the middle. A chill was slicing in.
There were a few last-minuters loping down: a red-faced guy with a belly, and a sun-kissed young man. Violet looked straight ahead.
The red-faced guy shuffled into the row opposite with a grunt and a trace of onions.
“Ah,” said the sun-kissed young man, stopping short, and Violet’s heart took a breath. He looked round with a frown. “I thought there were three of us?”
No way, thought Violet, suppressing a grin. There’s no way he’s on this project too.
“I guess they’re running late!” she said, and offered her hand, but he was busy stowing his case.
“Well,” he said, to no-one, “I guess they’re running late!” and he folded his limbs into the aisle seat.
“Violet,” said Violet, after a second.
“Robert,” he said, with a yawn, and started rifling through the magazines. The pilot crackled an announcement. Violet looked sideways, at the shape of his nose, the sweep of his hair.
She opened her book, and closed it again.
“So,” she began, “Is this your first posting abroad?”
“What?” said Robert, and then there was a flurry and a voice, a female voice, calling, “Sorry! Typical me!”
Robert was already on his feet. The red-faced guy was gawping.
“So sorry!” said a young woman. “I’m always late!”
“We’d have held them up,” said Robert, grinning, and she smiled back: “Wouldn’t be a first!”
Violet curled up tight and let their third colleague slide past into the window seat.
“So,” called Robert, leaning over Violet’s lap, and she contorted forward, and then back. “Is this your first posting abroad?”
The chill was beginning to prickle. The flight was thirteen hours.
© Joanna Rubery 2018
“We’re going to miss it!” squealed Mohammed, face pressed up against the window.
“I’m going as fast as I can!” said Abraham, scrabbling round for dark glasses. “Ready?” he added at the door, and heaved it open. The chill was deathly.
Mohammed tore ahead. “I’m going to watch the whole thing!” he cried. “Eyes wide open!”
“Don’t look at the sun, Mo,” called Abraham.
“Eyes wide open!” yelled Mohammed, bouncing over a rock.
He’s obsessed, thought Abraham, as he crested the hill and looked out. This morning, his brother’s first words had been, “The truth is out there!” followed by a long and rather awkward stare.
The cliff dropped away below them, sliding sheer into the desert. Up above, the sky was silvering.
Mohammed had clambered up onto a boulder. He waved a high-pitched: “This is it!” and the two of them watched the disc edge into the dazzle. The whole world seemed to pale and fade. Their shadows lengthened, and there was nothing, for a while, but an unearthly silence.
Then Mohammed said, “We used to live up there, you know.”
“Here we go,” murmured Abraham.
“There’s evidence!” said Mohammed, “There’s loads of stuff that makes no sense!”
“Including you,” said Abraham. His mike crackled.
“Where do you think we came from?” said his brother, sweeping round his arm. “This desert?” His suit creaked. “This dry rock?”
Abraham focused on the ball of brilliant blue, suspended against white light.
“You and your conspiracy theories, Mo,” he said.
© Joanna Rubery 2017