Trafika Europe 9/10 - UK in Europe

Not Near London

drawing table and serving tea, but so what? It’s like at uni: the Centre for Comparative Arts Practice and Documentation was just Malcolm Harmer’s memory stick. What’s important is that Jasper knows everyone who matters, all the hippest, hottest crowd, some of them filthy rich. In with the buzz, he calls it. Jasper isn’t rich: just the opposite. Geraldine and Terence give him nothing, these days, apart from the odd restaurant meal when they come up to London and an annual subscription to the RA. They’ve learnt their lesson: being his main drugs backer was not cool. So Jasper’s Peckham flat is, like, grim. Draughts that disturb your hair, sills soft as sponge, carpet like there’s been a murder on it. The landlord a spoilt-boy

gambler from Karachi who does not give one shit and charges the fucking earth. ‘Maybe we should move to Hastings,’ they keep suggesting to each other. ‘Or Margate. If Brooklyn’s not available.’ Meanwhile, she is still temping, serving in a vodka bar three nights a week in Clapham, taking whatever else, being exploited, getting her bum pinched by the manager. She doesn’t care: life experience. Filling up the CV. Transitional period. She’s added four London gallery internships aka slave labour. Now she’s done with all that. It’s knackering just to think about. Really what she wants right at this minute is to roll up in a duvet burrito with a cup of tea and a biccie. The train decides it’s a

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