Decades before the beginning of ‘Nostalgie’, Drew was with a woman named Delphine, whom he hasn’t seen since, but he keeps thinking about: “The time spent recollecting being with her adds up to more than the actual duration.” Throughout the story, titled after a song Drew released when he was young, ‘Nostalgie de la Boue’, the present is translucent, skin-thin; you can see the past, personal and collective, slide snake-like underneath it, threatening to break through. I read ‘Nostalgie’ on my laptop, one afternoon in Newnham Library, to the sound of other people typing.
First published in The Irish Times and available to read online here. Collected in Dance Move, The Singing Fly 2022
A Personal Anthology 