My word, Miss Perkins

Jenny Diski

  • Literary Secretaries/Secretarial Culture edited by Leah Price and Pamela Thurschwell
    Ashgate, 168 pp, £40.00, January 2005, ISBN 0 7546 3804 9

Just after the beginning of the first Gulf War I arrived at Toronto airport to take part in a literary festival. Along with a couple of dozen others (mostly dark-skinned or from Islamic countries) I was sent to wait in a queue for special questioning when I presented my passport. After about an hour I was taken to a cubicle by a short but perfectly square woman in uniform who lolled behind a desk and looked at me long and mean. I had been on a seven-hour flight and no one had mentioned before I got to Heathrow that Air Canada was all non-smoking. I was not cheerful.

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