Posts by tag
alcohol
A Better Type of Buzz
Frank Sonderborg receives a phone call from an old work colleague who is currently in jail for robbing a string of post offices alongside a group of French thieves. Drink, drugs, and Euro-hijinks galore. Some buzz…
Cocktail Night
From friendship to growing up, Esther Hope Arthurson gives us a snippet on life on cocktail night.
Lara Croft of the Kabubble
Larger-than-life characters and daily life as a journalist in the surreal world of Kabul, Afghanistan.
Talking Soup Talks #2: Leah Mueller
Our editors sit down with writer and performer, Leah Mueller, to discuss her plethora of life experiences. Inspired by the likes of Don Marquis, Charles Bukowski and many more commentators of the underside of the American dream, Leah brings a great wealth of tales, from the crazy to the tragic. From working as a ‘sales clown’ in 1980s Chicago, to a short lived stint as a topless dancer in New Orleans, Leah’s writing takes in all aspects of American daily life, from the dead-end jobs to the humanity in mundanity.
Talking Soup Talks: #1 The University Experience
In a new series of interviews and reviews, the editorial team at Talking Soup kick off a new series of podcasts. In this pilot episode our digital editor, John Smith, takes a look at the issues surrounding students in a time of the Covid-19 pandemic. Should they stay or should they go? If you want to take part in the podcast, then please get in touch.
Land of Eternal Thirst
Bisbee, Arizona. Leah Mueller talks of family, loss and going back to what you have always known.
Broken Saturday Night
Wet, half-sober, tired and bored. The meaninglessness of Saturday night for a disillusioned thirty-something.
Her Last Hurrah
As his mother-in-law’s mental health deteriorates, Jim Ross finds himself faced with the difficult tasks of looking after a loved one with dementia.
Stupidly, I Knowingly Broke Quarantine in Spain and was Instantly Apprehended by Police
Robert Locke, a temporarily unemployed travel company representative, woefully disregards government quarantine regulations and takes to the streets in his adopted home of Malaga, only to be arrested almost immediately.
In Search of 53 German Student Girls
The dance that night was in a converted cinema. We sat in the front row seats and watched the natives giving it, like it was 1919. Country and western was big in the hinterlands back in the day. Sugary sweet songs of the poor emigrant Paddy in his bed-sit in London, pining for his golden haired girlfriend and his silver haired mother while he drank himself into a stupor.
How Black Was My Thumb?
I finish my £8.30 pint and head for where I used to live. Why? I’ve started writing now, I might as well go. It’s an ex-council block. East London thick brick. Rubicon cans on the stairwell, faulty lifts. A kid called Abdi that tries to sell you weed every time you see him, even though you tell him that you don’t smoke weed. It was him that I thought I saw walking past the pub. He’s got a dog. He told me that it is was rare for a Bengali to have a dog. I wonder if he’s still here?
Ice Cream, Whiskey, and Rain
My vacation condo’s washer/dryer combination is tiny and inefficient, so I launder my comforters ten miles away at the decrepit Maple Fuels Wash-a-Ton. The old-school machines don’t take credit cards, only quarters. It takes a lot of quarters to wash a pile of gamey comforters. Since my mortgage and HOA fees are high, I have to rent my place to overnighters through Air Bnb. The guests are often careless, spilling wine and body fluids willy-nilly on the bedclothes.
The Stabbing Factory
He slashed at me a few times – I can’t say for certain how close he got, but when you can feel the air move because of the swipe, the blade is too close – but mostly he stood in place making these hesitant jerking jabs. He kept saying, “Come on, I’ll stab you. Come on”, as if it were somehow my responsibility to move closer to him. Perhaps that’s the way things work, I don’t know, this was my first knife fight, and frankly it was a bit unfair, I didn’t have a knife.
Talking Soup book reviews ‘Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises’ Ernest Hemingway
So far, complex titles ranging from the heart wrenching narratives of Baldwin to the mind-expanding prose of LeGuin have been met with such turns of phrase as ‘it was alright’ or ‘it was good’. Now, given that the English language is prone to the kind of linguistic flare afforded to it by an unequalled vocabulary and system of expressions, I feel I could do more justice to these totemic works of literature than my long-suffering missus has hitherto been privy. Clear? Then on with the show.
The Hangover
I sit up in bed with my hand over my eyes. The shards of sunlight, shining through the open window and the scream of a scooter from the street below make me wince. Through my fingers the black and white poster of the singer Morrissey looks down on me with pity from the bedroom wall. I return the look with remorse and regret.
My Travels with Christianity
God doesn’t mind if we lie, as long as our lies glorify Him. Women need to be quiet in church and cede control of their minds and bodies to men, who always know best. God is sad when we say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas.
Searching for Thrills
It’s a typical Saturday night at the Java Jive. The bar is a Tacoma institution, a one-time home to two pet monkeys appropriately named Java and Jive. The monkeys are dead now, and so is your marriage. You’re singing karaoke because you’re trying to forget everything. You’re a lonely 41-year old single mom with two kids and a decaying house on the north end of town, and you know what it feels like to have your thrills vanish. So you’re singing your lungs out, and some guy bites your foot.
Do You Remember Friday?
Do you remember Fridays? The indescribable feeling of utter joy that signified that thankfully school was over for another two days. The misery of sitting in a classroom against your will was to be alleviated and replaced with the respite of resentment from parents who didn’t know what to do with you. Yes, Friday was a fine time. Friday represented hope a brief, fleeting window in which anything was possible and the misery of school, with its press-gang style education was exposed for what it was, finite.
Nobody’s Prerogative
No one ever plans to end up as a dancer on Bourbon Street. It’s an employment choice born of pure desperation. I worked at a unisex joint called Sweet Mama’s. After only two weeks on the job, I despised every minute of my interminable shifts. I lurched around the club in stilettos like an awkward stork, as songs like “Strokin’” and “My Prerogative” pounded in the background.
The Last Day of Term
Last week David pulled his pants down in the class and farted in another boy’s face. David farts all the time. He loves the smell and sound of his own farts as do the rest of the class, chortling away when he breaks wind for the tenth time in the hour. David is also a racist, making Chinese eyes or calling the Latin-Americans dirty monkeys. David is 13 years old. There’s not much of a positive spin you can put on that ergo the utter bollocks above.
Having sex in a swimming pool
Unprotected sex, booze, a swimming pool and and forthright businesswomen all face Laurence in a down-at-the-heel Mexican hotel.
Vegan food fair
One of the stringent facets of Mexican life surrounds the imbibing of the local tap water. I’m sure it’s bad for you or something, but on a base level it…
Tiki’s Surf Station
Laurence ends up in a surf town on the Pacific coast of Mexico where he quickly realises that he is not very cool. That, plus surfers are full of shit.
Mile End to Clydebank
In a heroic attempt to watch Scotland lose at football, Laurence visits an East-End boozer and encounters one of his Scottish compatriots.