Trafika Europe 9/10 - UK in Europe

Adam Thorpe

train again and aims for Stevenage at a respectable lick. She does not want to be here. London is coming. It’s actually moving towards her. She is out of the fenland slub now. Repeat after me: she is young, she is happy, she is Suzie Fowler BA for Bloody Awesome, but the great art career can wait, even her MFA can wait. She is not a random person, she is not Miss Lincolnshire, but she is, like, Miss Universal Peace. Time is on her side, bar catastrophe, bar something like a train crash. And (as Malcolm Harmer would have put it) you can’t build your life around the threat of a train crash. Or an earthquake, because she is definitely going to take a year off and travel the world with a rucksack, this time.

‘The Arts Festival might be interested,’ her mum said over Christmas. ‘What, in my fire buckets? I thought you were upset.’ ‘Send them a photo. Or a photo of one of your photos. You’ve done so many. You never know. Local girl.’ The Arts Fest? That would defo be a train crash. Bunch of Tories nodding off in the Mozart concert. No phones in the air, waving. But she’ll do what Mum said cos otherwise she’ll get mardy and it’ll come up every time. The girl just in front has attracted Jasper’s attention. Shouting into her mobile. ‘Hey,’ the girl yells, half- laughing, ‘he was literally in tears, right? In floods of tears. Sitting in the corner

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