Tag Archives: but

Suicide? Don’t Blame Me, Pal

Posted on by under 2026, Oct 2026 - Hypocrisy

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.

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There Ought to be Clowns

Posted on by under 2026, Oct 2026 - Hypocrisy

Funny 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.

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Hypocrisy as a Virtue

Posted on by under 2026, Oct 2026 - Hypocrisy

Dr. 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.

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Hangman

Posted on by under 2026, Sept 2026 - Mistakes

‘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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Late Bloomers

Posted on by under 2026, July 2026 - Confession

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.

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Spartacus Influences Union Strategy

Posted on by under July 2026 - Confession

The 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.

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Dear Juniper

Posted on by under 2026, July 2026 - Confession

Juniper 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.

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A Cultural Climate

Posted on by under 2026, May 2026 - Climate

The dwarf realm of Barin-Ti had held strong for a thousand years but now it was dreadfully sick.

The native dwarves had resisted the attacks of the warriors of Am-Nor and An-Morn, defending themselves with axes and cannons, refusing to surrender.

Only now a more persistent and insidious threat had appeared. These new invaders method of conquest was importing huddled masses, coming to the dwarf kingdom in hopes of a better life.

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You’re the Villain in Someone Else’s Story

Posted on by under 2026, April 2026 - Vanity

09/04/2012

Mildred Addams is an eyesore! Did her mum marry a gorilla? She’s a girl from school, built with the size and dimensions of a stone boulder, so shave her head and plonk her outside a nightclub and you’ve got yourself a bouncer. I swear if I pull down her knickers I’ll see her willy.

Anyway, come lunchtime, whilst me and my girlfriends are hanging out by the picnic tables, she’ll be there, eating by herself, her miserable stink putting me right off my lunch. Delia tells me to ignore her but I’m going to give it to golem girl someday.

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 Creation

Posted on by under 2026, March 2026 - Art

            ‘Jed Newton. The hospital? Yes that’s right the wife’s on the list. We was told she’d be a proper good match in the right circumstances but… What? An opportunity has…? I’m not following you, mate. Listen now, she was informed the chances weren’t great due to the rarity of… What? A dying woman has what…? Are you saying Tracy can have her womb transplant?’

/

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Cutting Room Floor

Posted on by under 2026, January 2026 - The Movie

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.

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It’s a fake?

Posted on by under 2026, January 2026 - The Movie

Mrs Jane Hastings, aged fifty-three, felt nothing but childish envy for Ms. Julia Parkhurst. Ms. Parkhurst’s cardinal sin was being pretty. Very pretty actually. She was (to hell with delicacy) a bosomy, twenty-three-year-old, who’s bright smile and cheerful disposition made the acne encrusted boys of Roverbank Comprehensive grunt with longing.

Still professionalism had to be maintained, because today. something alarming had been brought to Hastings’ attention. And when she called Ms. Parkhurst into her office, (resenting how gracefully the young woman sat down) she coughed and said “Julia, we don’t pry into the staff’s personal lives, it’s just when a sex tape is leaked to the public, you may have to resign.”

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Soulless Wretch!

Posted on by under 2025, Nov 2025 - Traitors

Kevin Bentley is an evil, soulless wretch, and has caused me nothing but pain, misery and utter suicidal despair.

We were once (I thought) best friends. I remember the first day of school, a frightened Kevin stood all alone in the corner of the playground and only I cared enough to talk to him. Our first few years of friendship were great, we would hang out at each other’s homes, sit next to each other in class, share our toys and video games but alas then puberty arrived and although it was remorseless to me, (my nickname was pizza face) it transformed the runty Kevin into an adonis,  and that’s when his utter cruelty began.

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Pay Back Time

Posted on by under 2025, Nov 2025 - Traitors

Things 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.

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Celestial Life

Posted on by under 2025, October 2025 - The Good Life

“Stop calling it a cult, mum! And stop calling me Beverley, I’m Vasanthi now”. Vasanthi didn’t like the defensiveness she heard in her voice as it rose to a squeak.

“Oh darling, I wish you’d just come home. You’ve had your fun now. I do get it… I had my spiritual awakening in Tibet when I was your age…” Vasanthi rolled her eyes as her mother continually

“… and I adored that time, but I came to my senses and I came home. Manchester University rang to confirm they’d hold your place in Computer …. “

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Easy Money

Posted on by under 2025, September 2025 - Easy Way

My Dear Clatterworthy, inspiration – wouldn’t you agree? – is a stick of dynamite up the buttocks, a jug of icy water in the face, the unexpected rainbow, a yellow sun on a freezing winter’s day. Latterly its song has been reduced to a whisper but then, blow me down like a bark in a Gower gale, didn’t I hear that my fellow versifier, T.S. Eliot, had written a whole book of poems on the subject of – cats.

            Now there’s a tidy idea, thought I to myself: popularity, a seaful of sales, and no need to draw deeply from inspiration’s well. Easily done, you could say. And out there are surely more cat lovers, their caterwauling pets inhabiting smoothed and ironed bungalows or furry flats, than are readers of rhyme. Wouldn’t such folk drool over further pages on paws, or tales about tails in feline feminine rhymes?

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One last client

Posted on by under 2025, Sept 2025 - The Easy Way Out

You know what? she thought. Fuck it, one more time. But no more after this.

She threw her phone onto the bed after replying yes and hitting send, disgusted with herself, then turned to look in the full-length mirror by her dresser, sighing. She’d promised Thomas that the last time really had been it, that she wouldn’t do it anymore. They didn’t need to any more money, she didn’t need to put herself at risk…

But this was too incredible an opportunity to turn down.

The man was one of those obnoxiously wealthy politician types, fingers in loads of different pies, and apparently some unpleasant vices. He’d made his fortune—from what she could gather from her research, at least—in oil, property, and telecoms, then branched out into more shady practices; weapons dealing to proscribed terror organisations, specialist dark web sites trading in narcotics and other less salubrious goods, and there were hints of things even worse.

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