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SO DID I EVER TELL YOU ABOUT THE WEIRDEST FUCKING DAY OF MY ENTIRE LIFE..?

It was a summer night about two years ago. I was at a party when I got a phone call from Michael Freeman, the editor of Mongrel, asking if I could possibly be in Dublin airport by 4am. The details were vague and I’d probably had a bit to drink. But the gist of it seemed to be that one of our writers had been forced to drop out of a story at the last moment and that they needed me to go in his place. The story had something to do with dolls, that was as much as I know. Fast forward one taxi ride, a flight to London, change in Heathrow, connection to Newcastle and a train journey to Tynemouth train station… and photographer Linda Brownlee and I were in the company of a woman gabbing away ninety to the dozen in an impenetrable Geordie accent. I’d had less than two hours sleep at this point. And the conversation kept getting stranger and stranger. You can read the rest of the story by following the link here.

I fiddled with the chronology a bit in the finished article. We actually spent the entire first day with Rosie, before travelling down to Sunderland the next morning. The Sunderland segment would have been an anticlimactic way to end, so I stuck it in midway through, as light-ish relief. Perhaps the most incredible aspect in all of this is that I actually dialled down the more disturbing elements in this article. The real story was just too extreme to publish.

There was one moment, in particular, that really stands out for me that’s not in the article. We were up in that claustrophobic attic, with a creaky wooden ladder our only means of exit. Rosie told us something that was just profoundly shocking to me. I heard it and understood what she meant. But Linda didn’t.

Linda asked Rosie to repeat it. It was horrific. I knew what Rosie was about to say. I knew what Linda was about to hear. There was nothing I could do. The expression on Linda’s face when she finally understod was something I won’t quickly forget. Any of you who know me can ask me about this in private if you like. I may or may not feel like talking about it. To be honest, even if I am in a mood to talk about it, you’ll probably regret asking…

Read the full article here.

See more of Linda’s work here.