When I was in a filing cabinet for a month after an abundant but anxiety-inducing stint in London, a friend sent me an Instagram message encouraging me to apply for a job at the media company she was working for. She had dangled the dream – getting paid to travel write - like grapes over Tantalus, so, waist-high in weathered email records and newspaper clippings, I reached for them.
Read MoreYears ago I read an article* in which speculative fiction authors selected the modern cities that they most identified with urban science fiction: Venice - built on canals and susceptible, with time, to an Atlantean fate; Dubai - a luxury oasis of skyscrapers in an unforgiving desert; New York - seedy and wakeful, the flytrap of the dreamer.
Read MoreLast Monday the city was blanketed by an ominous amber sky – apparently, remnants of Ophelia blowing in - Saharan dust and Iberian fire. The preceding days had been uncharacteristically warm for October – bright and summery - with things like reading on the lawn and running in the park.
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