An interview from issue ten. Mia Hansen-Løve's teenage love affair ended over a decade ago. But first loves aren't easy to forget, and the film director inhabits the emotional present tense while remembering hers. She says, "It started at the age of fourteen and ended at eighteen. I desperately loved a boy. It is a part of my life, years later. I have not forgotten it at all. The experience was the most strong and defining of my life." Shadowing the . . .

As I opened the local paper and saw my engagement announced in heavy bold lettering, I realised things had gone too far. There, in a rose-bordered box surrounded by the obituaries of the passably famous, were the words ‘Forever Bound'. I gulped. It wasn't that I was experiencing pre-wedding jitters. In part, I was concerned because I had received the offending item on my birthday in an anonymous brown envelope. The main problem, however, was that as far as I knew . . .

Laura Veirs has butterfly wings and a guitar in her hands. Half-way through a song, she's interrupted by an excited child, killing the sound with a careless knock of the amp. "Watch out," she warns gently as a technician fixes the situation, "our equipment is made of lava." At her gig in the crowded basement of the Museum of Childhood, parents politely jostle to catch a glimpse of her, forgetting themselves and singing along madly. Their children are more concerned . . .

On rainy days he liked to sit on the bench in the bus shelter. He allowed us to sit next to him while we waited for the bus. When the bus came I expected him to board. But he didn't because he was, after all, a cat. Someone told us that his name was George and he was famous for three things: fighting the neighbourhood dogs and winning, savaging small children and begging at café tables. George was definitely Top Cat in the neighbourhood. The other strays gave . . .

When I was at university, I shared a flat with my best friend from school. The first thing we bought together, after porridge and lentils, was a goldfish. He was bright orange; cost £2.50 from the local pet shop and we called him Azzedine. I'd never kept fish before and they surprised me. They didn't bubble, their poo trailed behind in a long finger as they swum, and they had a better memory than the three seconds people supposed. We got into the habit of buying . . .

I blame the job. It was a boring job with long hours and little mental stimulation. I have to blame something. Otherwise how do I excuse my raging crush on a man who looked like a badger and wasn't particularly nice to me? It wasn't love at first sight. It wasn't love at all. A crush isn't love-it doesn't have anything to do with love. It wasn't a bolt out of the blue, it was a mounting fixation fuelled by boredom and romantic novels. The interminable number-checking . . .

It can be a daunting prospect, getting to know someone. Cousins and birthmarks and old relationships and the songs they like and the movies they hate and the places they like to go to think. It's exhausting. Then all of a sudden the relationship ends and it's like you've learnt a language to a country you're never going to visit again. What use do I have from knowing that one person's favourite colour, or what their childhood fears were, or how they like their tea? All . . .

At school I fancied the head boy. Harbouring a crush on him was a team sport: half my class shared the infatuation. "I really fancy you," I told him one day after lunch, all heart in mouth, hair in a ponytail and skin decorated not with make-up but with acne. "That's so nice of you," he said, and then after a pause added, "We don't even know each other." Despite his polite put-down, it felt good to be a spokesman for my heart. At university there were library crushes. . . .