Last month, I eloped. My fiancé and I ducked off to Clarens where we got married in front of four witnesses, not counting the marriage officer and the B&B owner’s dog, a Border collie called Holly. The ceremony lasted 15 minutes and besides the photographs, the whole event took less than an hour. I’m glad…
Author: Sarah Britten
Why are accidental vaginas so funny and horrifying? Zaha Hadid found this out when designs for her football stadium for Qatar were unveiled. It looks like a vagina! the world hooted. A temple to a male-bonding ritual in a sexist society turns out to be a sly reference to the one thing we’re obsessed with,…
It’s your birthday today, I see. It’s astounding what that has triggered, because I thought I was fine. It had all happened long ago. And yet there are the flashbacks and there is the hurt again. As if yesterday was Sunday, not 19 years ago. Pleasepleaseplease let the earth open up so I can crawl…
I have an ex-husband jar. Did you know that? It’s not a rinsed out Black Cat Peanut Butter jar in which I somehow keep you in it like a Bonsai Kitten (although that would be interesting enough to trend on Twitter for a day). It’s more a metaphorical construct, the equivalent of a swear jar…
This week, I received a LinkedIn connection request from a familiar face. He’s older, yes, but he looks much the same. We met 15 years ago, at a friend’s party. We clicked instantly, as though we were best friends waiting to happen. There was never any sexual chemistry and never any question that we’d try…
This weekend, I celebrated my birthday alone in the bush. It wasn’t planned — for various reasons, the friends who were meant to spend it with me couldn’t — and so I ended up having a party with the local troop of vervet monkeys. I wouldn’t have been on my own if I’d had the…
In a bedroom in my grandmother’s house, the one I’ve used for the last three and a half years, hangs a pair of matching apples painted in lipstick. I’m glancing up at it as I write out the notes for this piece. Titled “Adam and Eve”, the paintings were a wedding present for a colleague….