The message came in while Dai was still scraping the frost off the van.
Hi, it’s Jack Portmant. We met at Lord Tonminter’s last night, and I thought we had a real spark. I’m off to a conference in Geneva for the weekend. Do you fancy coming along? X
Dai hadn’t been at Lord Tonminter’s last night. He was at Screwfix, then he went to the Dog and Butcher for a swifty.
Continue readingHOMEWORK for deadline Thursday 10pm, 26.11.26.
TASK: ‘Crossed Wires’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘Crossed Wires’. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.
Homework to be in by 10 pm at the latest, Thursday 26th November 2026. (This time deadline will be helpful to both Martyn and Pat).
Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 29.11.26, Waterstones Bookshop, top floor [via stairs or lift], Oxford Street. Finish about 3.00pm.
Let’s be clear: I did nothing wrong. Barbara had a history of bad depression. Very trying, but I was ever there for her. I couldn’t pull her through but I stayed at her side. You can only get out of the dark tunnel by yourself, girl, I told her. But I’m outside it, ready to offer you my strong arms when you make it into the light. And get this: it was years ago when I left her. Can we be clear about that? It seems she carried on dwelling in gloom. Just listen now: don’t blame me!
‘Your face is unreadable,’ she said, ‘but I see trustfulness.’ Trust was an issue with her. Difficulties with her father. A rat, a philanderer. She claimed I broke that trust when I moved out. What can I say? I am not a philanderer.
Continue readingFunny how you hold onto ideas, simmering away for years until they suddenly burst into flowers of insight.
With Eva it was clowns. For her 9th birthday she was taken to a circus and hated it . She found the fleet of clowns particularly distasteful and the reason for this seemed to be that clowns simply could not be trusted; they were not what they seemed with exaggeratedly painted, upturned mouths for smiles or huge tear drops to stand in for emotions. It wasn’t fear – it was distrust, a feeling that Eva thought about occasionally and eventually would associate with words such as dishonesty, gas lighting, fakery or deception.
Clowns in stories or art rarely argued for a more sympathetic appraisal. They were villains or emotional grifters. On a trip to Southend pier, Eva witnessed a slot machine which, if fed a coin, started a clown figure into rolling about with faked laughter until the money ran out. Some laughed, but Eva sensed malevolence and moved away.
Continue readingAngela gasped, inhaling the large sip of white wine she’d just taken. She’d been on some dates, but this was already up there amongst the weirdest.
Once she’d recovered from her coughing fit, she picked up her wine glass again and tilted her head at Lucas across the table. Dammit though, he was handsome even in this unflattering light.
Continue readingDr. John Forbes sighed as he lay down a well ruffled newspaper upon his armrest. Once again, another southern preacher had been brought low, for as a famed proclaimer of family values and tee totalism this gentleman had been caught with a mistress and a mountain of cocaine.
“Hypocrisy” Dr. Forbes pondered, “is seen as a wretched sin. But is it in a sense a virtue?”
He spoke to his audience of fellow professors lounging around in the staff room, well rested on good tea. If his lectures weren’t listened to, they were at least a comfortable background noise.
Continue readingThe Hypos drifted through CTA25OR624’s asteroid belt. Their queen, Chrissie, liked this star, but she was feeling a tad bored. Waiting for the break of day, as it were.
Her favourite event, the consummation, was still ages away. This was when their host star would bloat into a red giant, and pour energy into every Hypo within range. Then they’d feast, pack up, and swan off to the next system like a gang of interstellar freeloaders.
Continue readingHOMEWORK for deadline Thursday 10pm, 08.10.26.
TASK: ‘Hypocrisy’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘Hypocrisy’. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.
Homework to be in by 10 pm at the latest, Thursday 8th October 2026. (This time deadline will be helpful to both Martyn and Pat).
Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 11.10.26, Waterstones Bookshop, top floor [via stairs or lift], Oxford Street. Finish about 3.00pm.
Send all homework to Pat O’Connor.
Contact us via the contact page.
Missy was all about stuff. Looking for stuff, gathering stuff, organising stuff and dreaming of ways to procure more of it.
If anyone was having a clear out, she was onto it. “I’ll take that”, being her catchphrase. A broken lampshade left on the street – “I’ll take that”. A friend giving away an art easel with sticky oil paints – “I’ll take that”, despite having no intentions of ever painting. Leftovers at a potluck dinner “Ok if I take that?” while simultaneously whipping the half-eaten cherry pie into a Jiffy bag.
Although she sulked about her nickname Miss Take but could hardly argue with it.
Continue reading‘Sometimes I wish I was someone else.’
Bob, having finally got Edna to talk about herself, hesitated then asked: ‘Do you feel…?’
‘Unwanted?’
They were in a pub in Peckham, both sipping warm beer, the nineteen-fifties three days from ending.
‘The next decade’s going to be better,’ Bob said. ‘Attitudes are going to change.’
Continue readingIt was in all the papers. And everyone felt they knew old Vic because he was always in town with his little dog and his collecting cup. He liked a chat with anyone who was passing and you could often see him walking unsteadily from pitch to pitch. People sometimes bought him a Starbucks coffee or a Greggs sausage roll rather than put money in his pot (there was a bit of a moral dilemma around giving money in case it got spent on booze, drugs or fags. My view has long been that if drugs booze or fags are just what you need, then so be it ).
Continue readingAlright I’ll tell you the score. My old man said I was a mistake, said marrying my mam was a mistake, said his whole bloody life since he first met her was a goddam major mistake.
My mam, knocked up at nineteen, possessed a good catholic heart and insisted on keeping the baby (moi) whilst her old man metaphorically whipped out his shotgun, demanding that my dad do the right thing.
Despite his pleas for adoption (if abortion was out of the question) dad decided to stick it out. At least until I was six years old, before saying: “Fuck this” and vamoosed. Yeah, picture me still with my baby teeth, being told that dad isn’t coming back. He’s not dead or sick, he just isn’t around anymore.
Continue reading‘C?’ he says.
C is for Claire. That’s her name. The other woman.
‘Nope.’ The gallows and most of the stick man are already finished. I draw a wiggly line for his mouth to indicate fear and trepidation. ‘One more mistake and you’re dead.’
I try to deliver the line pointedly, with ominous eye-contact, but Steve’s attention is drawn to the other side of the waiting room, where the only other person, ‘Tim Barrett,’ is being called in to see the dentist. Tim Barrett puts down the out-of-date issue of Marie Claire magazine that he has been pretending to read – precisely the reason we have resorted to pen-and-paper games – and follows the assistant into one of the clinics. A muffled greeting and a waft of disinfectant mixed with dust escape the room before the door clicks shut. There are only two dentists in this surgery, so this means Steve is next. He thinks I can’t tell, but I know his hands are sweating because he’s wiping them on his jeans.
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Photo by Michelle Gregor on Unsplash
They grew us a new body. It was ready the morning we married. It wasn’t hers, and it wasn’t mine. This was the fairest way, they said, so no one would be favoured. Our old bodies went to the furnace by evening. I signed the merge as the last act of a solitary person and woke with hands and a heart belonging to both of us.
For nine days, I was happy.
Continue readingHOMEWORK for deadline Thursday 10pm, 03.09.26.
TASK: ‘Mistakes’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘Mistakes’. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.
Homework to be in by 10 pm at the latest, Thursday 3rd September 2026. (This time deadline will be helpful to both Martyn and Pat).
Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 06.09.26, Waterstones Bookshop, top floor [via stairs or lift], Oxford Street. Finish about 3.00pm.
Use the contact page to find out where to send your stories.
Noah was still taking a deep, pollen-filled breath beneath the wisteria when Carrie opened the door. He hadn’t yet manifested his Cat-Shelter-Worker persona, let alone pressed the doorbell.
He’d always thought the photos of Carrie in those speculative articles were filtered, but here she was, not a line on her sixty-year-old face. Her sharp blue eyes narrowed as she regarded him.
Continue readingThe pub door opened and a large figure, like a swollen keg of ale, rolled into the premises. Another equally rotund chap was at his heels. The first one, Huw ‘Jars’ Scanlan, spilt himself into the largest chair in the bar, the second, Hugh ‘Janus’ O’ Keefe, purchased two pints of stout. He carried them across to the table with the reverence of a court servant carrying an embroidered cushion for a monarch. The cream crowns atop the beer maintained unruffled dignity during their journey.
Continue readingThe management plan was never going to work, obviously. An NVQ in business studies simply didn’t cover these aspects of workforce management. By the end of the day the situation had descended into a plan for saving managerial face and finally releasing everyone to their homes and local pubs. The union managed to extract a promise of overtime at quadruple rates in return for waiving any right to begin legal action alleging unlawful, enforced detention in a workplace.
Continue readingJuniper loved the walk from the cottage to the battered blue post box at the end of her lane. Her steps took on a lightness as she padded barefoot, swaying with baby Violet tucked on her hip, high on the savoury aroma of wild garlic. Pale yellow primroses, cowslips and bluebells caught the bucolic spring sunshine. This corner of Dorset would always be home. Her mother and grandmother had grown up here. It was here that Juniper could better remember her mother Astrid – the arc of her nose, the daffodil chains they had made, the scent of milky rice pudding straight from the Aga.
Continue reading“Forgive me Father,” the boy’s voice whispered in the dark, “for I have sinned.”
“And what,” asked the kindly voice of Father McDonald “have you done?”
“I’ve murdered someone.”
A brief silence.
“I see, my child.”
“I poisoned Father McPhearson.”
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