Max. Yoga teacher, steamed bun entrepreneur, renovator, dominatrix.
By Maxine Sharples ‘Animals have become diverse, weird and beautiful.’ Chris Packham ‘If birdwatchers are twitchers, I’m not entirely sure what this made us.’ Maxine from Coronation Street. It was one of those hot July days, the sort where old people are advised to stay indoors and poodles look to the kitchen floor in existential […]
Fine Yoga is not an appraisal of my yoga teaching over the last six years, but the name of my beloved retreat centre in Wuhan, China, where I am writing this from. The name makes me laugh because it refuses to oversell itself. Not Transcendental Lotus Awakening Yoga. Not You Will Journey into Higher Dimensions […]
A foreign observer pays £97 to Chinese property developers to watch a rocket named after a communist retreat.
A month before I leave China, I decide to write everything I love and hate about it. One thing a day. I thumb through my notebook and find an older instruction: Write everything you love and hate about Liverpool, one thing everyday. 1.Love: This notebook, gifted through a ditch dug under the fenceHate: Being surprised […]
Two years earlier, Hardman Street. Every night‘The Final Night’. Front row seat. Hot Water Comedy Club. Free entry poster.£10 entry. Jamie Hutchinson.Jonny Bongo.Tony Summit. Jonny arrives carryingReef.Goldschläger.Buckfast.Tequila Rose. The show is sponsoredby APK beer. They drink that too. A recipe for vomit. A yellow rubble bucket appears. I am asked to hold it. Now I […]
A description of a TOTO bath and my experience of bathing in a luxury hotel.