best words, best order is an occasional feature of 100 Stories, celebrating brief excerpts of exceptional writing read aloud by their authors. Subscribe at bottom to receive 100 Stories in your inbox.
The Nomination
“Jill” is the semi-anonymous writer—and illustrator—of Life Litter, a wide-ranging collection of essays on travel, people, marriage, nature, children, battles to save pubs, and what she might call “litter.” Hardly litter.
I discovered her work reading about her experience getting high in Williamsburg, an essay (travelogue?) that came with its own Venn diagram, not to mention a Substack Featured Publication medallion. After that, I was off and running.
She has a fierce intellect, suffers no fools, holds herself and others to high standards, and fights for what she believes in. She also happens to be very, very funny. Quite the mix.
Jill has a book on the way, and I suppose we’ll get her last name then, but if you can’t wait, consider these essays to tide you over. I’ve taken complete liberties with the essay titles: On Getting High, On Penis Terrariums, On Adultery, On Pubs and Enshitiffication, On Mortality.”
– Adam
Ode to Oxford
A friend once teased me that wherever I lived I thought it the best place in the world.
We worked together and I often banged on at him about the amazing places I had lived in London. Wapping, with its potted histories of pirates, riverside hangings and sunken jetties. Rotherhithe’s foreshore, peppered with ancient beads, coins and clay pipes. West Norwood too, where I wanted to know everything about the hidden River Effra, the old Great North Woods and the brooding cemetery on my doorstep.
Writers mythologise our internal narratives: that’s what we do. We mythologise wherever we happen to be and whomever we happen to be there with.
I know I’ve done this everywhere. I also know I was wrong about everywhere but Oxford.
Marvellous as all those places were, nowhere tops Oxford.
It’s a funny thing: there’s a long tradition of having to pretend to be bored and unimpressed with the majesty of Oxford when you’re a student. Being awestruck is for the tourists, not for those who hurry unseeing to the library. We must keep shtum, not talk about how amazing it is to eat at high table or how endless are the corridors of journals in the Bodleian. For heaven’s sake, be cool. Take it in your stride.
Well, I’m not cool and never have been. I think Oxford is magic and I’m happy to share it. We’re not in the Middle Ages; I’m not some elite monk trying to keep literacy all to myself.
To Oxford: the city of books.
— Jill, Life Litter
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