HOMEWORK for deadline Thursday 10pm, 19.02.26.
TASK: ‘The Gift’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘The Gift’. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.
Homework to be in by 10 pm at the latest, Thursday 19th February 2026. (This time deadline will be helpful to both Martyn and Pat).
Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 22.02.26, Waterstones Bookshop, top floor [via stairs or lift], Oxford Street. Finish about 3.00pm.
Please send homework to Pat O’Connor, or message us via the contact page
Remember the Saturday morning queue, standing outside the local flea pit waiting for it to open? I used to get there early so I could get a seat somewhere about 8 rows back and in the middle of the stalls. It was magic, and I’d watch just about anything – twice if I could get away with it. The Pathe news was a bit of a struggle but even that, and the adverts, had their moments. I can’t say I was drawn to the acting side, but the mystery in the making of films really thrilled me. Just wonderful.
The projectionist running films from his high box looked like a good place to ask questions, so one Saturday I knocked very gently on the box door and found a kind looking man.
Continue readingHOMEWORK for deadline Thursday 10pm, 22.01.26.
TASK: ‘The Movie’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘The Movie’. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.
Homework to be in by 10 pm at the latest, Thursday 22nd January 2026. (This time deadline will be helpful to both Martyn and Pat).
Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 25.01.26, Waterstones Bookshop, top floor [via stairs or lift], Oxford Street. Finish about 3.00pm.
Send all homework to Pat
Use the Contact Us page to get Pat’s email
‘Twas the night before Christmas. You could tell this from the furiously furtive wrapping activities and mince pie production-lines and excited children pretending to be well behaved whilst sneakily stealing chocolate baubles from the tree. Whilst I’ve never uttered ‘bah, humbug’ out loud, Scrooge’s words do reflect my feelings about being comprehensively ripped off by myth-making so flexible and so divorced from its origins that even Tommy Yaxley Robinson Lennon can seek to exploit it with some level of impunity.
Continue readingThings can soon go downhill. One minute the town was a pleasant seaside resort, then it turned rapidly into an environmental catastrophe. There were rats of course, and seagulls ready to exploit the new chaos – much better organized than the people, as it turned out.
It needs to be said that this was never a local matter. Far from it, it was a global problem, but that penny took a while to drop. Meanwhile the locals took a critical view of the situation, allocating blame with a distinct lack of evidence for causes or remedies.
The refuse services did excellent work trying to keep up with clearing the constantly replenished rubbish amassing on the beaches and spilling onto roads. It wasn’t their fault the landfill sites were overwhelmed and foul smelling garbage had to be disgorged on available green spaces and parks. But blame was allotted and curses duly exchanged.
The sea as an agent of revenge was considered.
Continue readingHOMEWORK for deadline Thursday 10 pm, 20.11.25.
TASK: ‘Traitor(s)’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘Traitor(s)’, singular or plural. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.
Homework to be in by 10 pm at the latest, Thursday, 20th November 2025. (This time deadline will be helpful to both Martyn and Pat).
Meeting at 1.30 pm, Sunday 23.11.25, Waterstones Bookshop, top floor [via stairs or lift], Oxford Street. Finish about 3.00 pm.
To submit, if you do not have Pat’s email address, please leave a message using the contact page, and we will send details.
Although my journalist’s style guide has a whole section on avoiding clichés, I’m excited to share with you my awesome journey towards local newspaper stardom.
Earlier in the week prospects had seemed to be shifting downwards. An editorial encounter, at which I had intended to pitch an investigative project about vaping in schools, brought this well and truly home.
The drift of this went:
‘.…local rags can’t carry reporters with airy, ill thought out ideas…..where’s the research? ..by election coming up….get out on the streets and ask people how they think life can improve …if anyone mention vapes, that’s a bonus for you. ’
Continue readingHOMEWORK for deadline Thursday 10pm, 23.10.25.
TASK: ‘The Good Life’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘The Good Life’. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.
Homework to be in by 10 pm at the latest, Thursday 23rd October 2025. (This time deadline will be helpful to both Martyn and Pat).
Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 26.10.25, Waterstones Bookshop, top floor [via stairs or lift], Oxford Street. Finish about 3.00pm.
HOMEWORK for deadline Thursday 10pm, 02.10.25.
TASK: ‘Taking the Easy Way Out’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘Taking the Easy Way Out’. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.
Homework to be in by 10 pm at the latest, Thursday 2nd October 2025. (This time deadline will be helpful to both Martyn and Pat).
Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 05.10.25, Waterstones Bookshop, top floor [via stairs or lift], Oxford Street. Finish about 3.00pm.
Send all homework to Pat
HOMEWORK for deadline Thursday 10pm, 21.08.25.
TASK: ‘Persuasion’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘Persuasion’. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.
Homework to be in by 10 pm at the latest, Thursday 21st August 2025. (This time deadline will be helpful to both Martyn and Pat).
Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 24.08.25, Waterstones Bookshop, top floor [via stairs or lift], Oxford Street. Finish about 3.00pm.
Submit your work to Pat via email. Or contact us via the contact page.
Phil didn’t mean to become a murderer. Not at first.
It all happened because he read on social media that humans, on average, live about 4500 weeks.
Being a number geek, Phil calculated that the first 900 weeks are spent learning how to walk, talk, pass exams, and unclip bra straps. The last 1500 comprise an increasingly strident existential shriek translating into “How the fuck did that happen?”
Of the remainder, about 100 is spent in utter confusion, comatose, or madness, leaving 2000 weeks, or more to the point, weekends, of life to live as you want.
In short, life comes down to eleven years of weekend fun sandwiched between unremitting drudgery. For most people, anyway.
Continue readingHoneysuckle Kumar wanted More. More of what, she was not quite sure. Perhaps more space to figure it all out.
Theoretically Honey (as she was known as to friends and family) had Enough and should have Nothing to Complain About. A high earning husband, a software developer who took his role of provider seriously. Twins, Hari and Jasmin, who recently took up places at good universities. The mortgage on their detached three bedroom house in a middle class (albeit boring) area was paid off.
Continue readingHOMEWORK for deadline Thursday 10pm, 22.05.25.
TASK: ‘The Party’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘The Party’. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.
Homework to be in by 10pm at the latest, Thursday 22nd May 2025. (This time deadline will be helpful to both Martyn and Pat).
Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 25.05.25, Waterstones Bookshop,1st floor, Oxford Street. Finish about 3.00pm.
The policeman, I forget his name already – Masters? Marsden? – reclines in his seat and regards me with a gaze that is probably intended to be intimidating but can only be described as ‘cute.’ It’s true what they say about the police looking younger as you age.
“Tell me about your conversation with Gina Montrose on Monday,” he says. “You were overheard talking about Marco Conti.”
Continue readingAs the poor got poorer, local councils were inspired to think about the optics of people dying alone in unheated homes during the chilly winters. Small grants enabled local organisations with free space to keep their heating on and invite local people to come in and warm up, sometimes offering soup and sandwiches as part of their welcome to the heat hub.
People certainly benefitted from the warmth, and they also met other people. For some this went no further than the chat and the bingo. For others it presented opportunities to establish some common ground: to build solidarity.
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The thing about Iffy is that he’s all about conspiracy theories. Not proper conspiracies like you see on the socials, these are more personal tales of his regrets and ‘if only’ flights of fancy. That’s where his nickname comes from ‘if only I’d done this or that or the other’.
Take last Thursday as an example. A few mates met up in the pub and were mentioning the imminent implosion of the marriage of two of our friends. Off goes Iffy:
‘If only I’d asked Gwenda to marry me before she met Bob. We could have been happy. Maybe we’d have moved to the country. It’s my fault they’re not happy’.
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An unexpectedly early inheritance: poor Aunt Hettie shouldn’t have died so early, and Janine hadn’t considered the implications. However, hearts wear out, and as a result, Janine now owned a largish suburban house and just enough income to enable early retirement from a dull, mid-rank civil service post. Janine stepped out of her job and (at last) from an unsatisfactory marriage, kicking them both aside like dirty clothing. Free!
The house had a lovely garden backing on to a small copse. There was ample time in Janine’s rethought life to take on beekeeping, two hives of bees soon making good use of the garden.
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I love a conspiracy theory, don’t you? Say what you like about them, mine is the best. It’s about…well let me take you to our inaugural meeting to hear believers and the yet-to -be convinced shouting the odds…
Newbie 1: You’re saying Earth is a penal colony used by several peaceful and well run planets to deport their undesirables? Well that makes complete sense to me. I’m in. Who do we have to kill?
Newbie 2: Where did you get the information? Q Anon are very clear about their origins.
Continue readingHow I came to be in McLaine’s commune on the shore of Puerto de la Valencia is a story for another time, because today, of all days, is about tomorrow.
McLaine was busying himself with his fishing nets in the courtyard at the back of the pre-civil war building housing his community, his wives, Consuela and Pamela were arguing in a mixture of rapid-fire Spanish and Surrey English about the best way to gut hake, and the writers, me included, were sitting on the garden wall watching the TV we rented for the occasion. We’d positioned it there because no room in the house was big enough to hold more than two of us and one of those would have to be standing.
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The interesting thing about crossroads, well to me anyway, is that they take many forms. The physical, the metaphorical, the emotional. Sometimes you don’t even realise you’re at one until it is too late.
The defining characteristic of all of them though is choice, the temptation to stray from your originally chosen path to explore pastures new.
We found our own personal crossroads in a previously unexplored area of the galaxy called The Midnight Quadrant, no charts to guide us, seeking our fortune. The sensor probes we’d sent out had returned nothing but dust for weeks, and we were just about to leave when the onboard AI threw a visual up on the holographic screen and proudly announced that there was an anomaly worth investigating. His enthusiasm was somewhat wearing and, not for the first time, I wished he’d chosen a female-presenting form and voice. I hated the 1930’s suit, hat, and guitar.
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