Posts by tag
youth
Our Year of Living Ridiculously
As lockdown leaves her student community stranded, Annalise Murray and her flatmates get creative with the help of TikTok and an abundance of television.
Cocktail Night
From friendship to growing up, Esther Hope Arthurson gives us a snippet on life on cocktail night.
Losing It: Four Cautionary Tales of Travel
In a series of ill goings-on across a life spent travelling the length and breadth of the world, Frank Sonderborg recounts a few cautionary travellers tales.
Dole Life: Part Two
The Jobcentre can be an ugly place. Steven Bradbury follows up his experience of trying to get on the dole in austerity Britain with the second instalment of ‘Dole Life’.
The Job Interview
Skint but with the mouth-watering prospect of working as a potwash in the local pub, famous for its aroma of old farts, Holly Watson reluctantly goes to a job interview.
Talking Soup Talks: #1 The University Experience
In a new series of interviews and reviews, the editorial team at Talking Soup kick off a new series of podcasts. In this pilot episode our digital editor, John Smith, takes a look at the issues surrounding students in a time of the Covid-19 pandemic. Should they stay or should they go? If you want to take part in the podcast, then please get in touch.
ANGER
‘To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time — and in one’s work. And part of the rage is this: It isn’t only what is happening to you. But it’s what’s happening all around you and all of the time in the face of the most extraordinary and criminal indifference, indifference of most white people in this country, and their ignorance’ – James Baldwin.
Broken Saturday Night
Wet, half-sober, tired and bored. The meaninglessness of Saturday night for a disillusioned thirty-something.
The Joys of Boys
In a new series on parenthood, Yvonne Hardman, 45-year-old mother of three teenage boys, gives us a stark but witty warning about what is in store for any potential parents.
Parent’s Day
As part of a new series on parenthood, Dee Caples takes a look at the huge perspective shift from childhood to adulthood, and debates what parts to keep and what to throw out when we raise our own children.
Finding Old Friends
In our adversarial society where politics seem to triumph over personal connections and even common sense, finding old friends seems almost anachronistic. Historical relationships provides the promise of glue that keeps us joined to our own lives. Connectivity offers hope in an uncertain world.
In Search of 53 German Student Girls
The dance that night was in a converted cinema. We sat in the front row seats and watched the natives giving it, like it was 1919. Country and western was big in the hinterlands back in the day. Sugary sweet songs of the poor emigrant Paddy in his bed-sit in London, pining for his golden haired girlfriend and his silver haired mother while he drank himself into a stupor.
How Black Was My Thumb?
I finish my £8.30 pint and head for where I used to live. Why? I’ve started writing now, I might as well go. It’s an ex-council block. East London thick brick. Rubicon cans on the stairwell, faulty lifts. A kid called Abdi that tries to sell you weed every time you see him, even though you tell him that you don’t smoke weed. It was him that I thought I saw walking past the pub. He’s got a dog. He told me that it is was rare for a Bengali to have a dog. I wonder if he’s still here?
Back to the Football #2 UE Sants vs Granollers EC
One of the joys of this level of football, a joy that detracts somewhat from the actual football itself, is the rapture of proximity. Whatever trials and tribulations the working week throws at you, however painful the boredom of retirement or the frustration of youth, all the rage that you carry can be readily directed at an arbitrary arbiter, or whoever is playing on the wing next to the only stand.
Burden
I have killed her in my head more times than I can count. I have attended her funeral. I have wept on her grave. I have cried alone in a room littered with pill bottles and years of filth because I wasn’t there to save her. Every unknown number from Connecticut is her final plea for forgiveness before she swallows the pills or slices the blade across pale blue-veined wrists. I am a bad son. I let her do this. It is all my fault.
The Last of the Porn Peddlers
In a time before wi-fi, Laurence Rivers looks back to his childhood and a particularly didactic incident of buying porn.
Millennial Writing Life
I’m a millennial, a writer and I have dyspraxia. My history of being socially isolated by my peers has made me stronger and wiser.
A Fire for Help
It had been years since our father left. Our mother held a secretary job during the day and was no match for Dominic and I working to extend our freedoms.
The Best Easter of My Life
Found on the shores of The West Midlands, Holly Watson tells the tale of a young girl’s experience growing in 90s Britain. This was an Easter to remember.
My Tattoo Dilemma
I want a tattoo, but I don’t want my tattoo to be from Topman, because I’ll see someone with that same tattoo on a Friday night in New Cross.
Did you wash these dishes?
Family life can be a real lottery sometimes. When bullying permeates home life who do you turn to?
Replacement
How do you cope with the death of a child? “Replacement” deals with the fallout from family tragedy.