You Are Here

by David Nicholls

Marnie

taverna

driftwood

pin down,

vexed

strained

s...

erratic

For her fortieth

play ever smaller venues.

friendship like a thank-you letter she kept meaning to write until too much time had passed

Real life was rarely a driftwood fire or a drunken game of Twister, and it was part of growing up to let go of those fantasies of perpetual skinny-dipping and deep talks.

nobody took the lost friends’ places, and now she had revised her vision of the future to one of self...

strike another eardrum

There you are,

bantered

But solitary conversation was like playing yourself at Scrabble, it was hard to be surprised or challenged.

present but as anonymous as someone clapping in a stadium crowd.

times when she had nothing to contemplate but the same circling anxieties and regrets, times when she was forced to acknowledge the truth.

I, Marnie Walsh, aged thirty-eight, of Herne Hill, London, am lonely.

secl...

generous within her means.

There is who we want to be, she thought, and there is who we are. As we get older the former gives way to the latter, and maybe this is who I am now, someone better off by themselves.

knack.

prodigy,

calamity

caute...

get carried away.

daunting,

Sometimes, she thought, it’s easier to remain lonely than present the lonely person to the world,

She would have to go outside.

‘The trick is to change the way you think about time.

You’ve got to adjust the scale, think in terms of millennia.

all in m...

gouged

scouring

boul...

gn...

glacial erosion,

abrasion and plucking!

N...

corries or cwms

corrie, cwm, cirque 지리 산중턱의 동굴

Mrs Fraser

Chrissy?

Ordovician period.

지질학 오르도비스기(~紀)

daft.

pop ’em in.

The point is to remember this process doesn’t stop just because humans are here. It’s happening now and it’ll happen when the last human is long gone. Mighty forces beneath your feet.

Nothing permanent, everythin...

Sarah Sa...