How stupid do you have to be to fall down a well? Pretty stupid, I’m sure.
When I was eleven I did the very same thing when collecting water with my brother. Even after my mother, peeling and chopping a pile of potatoes over the sink, apron soaked with water and littered with small potato skins, warned us.
“Careful round that well,” she declared, eyes stuck to the potatoes. “You remember what happened with Dorothy’s poor wee lass.”
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“This is your first time, right?”
The knife slid from my already-sweaty palm onto the ground with a thud. Someone had seen!
She was perched on a branch above me, swinging her legs. Behind her, gossamer wings sparkled in the half-light.
My heart stopped. This was it. I’d gone mad with the stress of it all. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
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Fortuitously, the window was wide open when Greg hurled Alexa through it.
‘I’m so bloody sick of that voice that knows everything and patronises me and drives me completely round the bend. Good riddance. I hate you, Alexa.’
Poor Alexa. She had understood that things were not going too well, but this was beyond bad. Leaking and whining she fought her way, with the remains of her power, to a small grove which offered a bit of protection.
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Billy Thomas and his little gang were sitting around a table at the back of the rugby club sipping their shandies.
The steward was keeping a watchful eye, the club was busy after a local derby. Both teams were strutting their stuff to impress the girls. They in turn were pretending they weren’t interested while quietly sizing them up.
The gang looked on from afar. Finally Owen Parry piped up.
”Don’t know why they bother, bitches all of them.”
They nodded as they knew Owen had fallen heavily for a girl, showering her with gifts only for her to turn him down when he asked for a date.
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The land that surrounds me was, up until fairly recently, a lifeline to man’s very existence. There was a time when it was a valley of black waste, tall chimneys, steam powered locomotives and the pit head winding gear. Some men worked and some men died for a meagre pittance with which to feed their families. It was a place whose narrow seams crippled the people that produced the wealth for the owners. It was somewhere I used to work, not anymore. I kept telling myself that I’d never return to this hellhole. Since its closure, I find myself once again plodding over this once industrial landscape.
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I have reached the age where wraiths of the dearly departed,-siblings, parents, babies lost before birth, partners, friends,- slip unbidden into the monochrome days and restless nights. They dart and hide at vision’s edge, ever eluding the spotlight of full consciousness. Yet as the procedure progresses, notwithstanding this lack of clarity, they appear more substantial, more tangible, than the creature standing beside me on hind legs.
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I take a drag, the nicotine hit combined with the rush of seeing you again proving a heady concoction. My legs twitch with such an urgency to run that I fear they’ll carry me down the hill, unbidden, towards you. I force myself to remain seated, hidden from view.
You’re smoking now too, leaning against our tree, our connection as natural as thunder and lightning. I can’t believe you’re there. In the place we said we’d meet in twenty years’ time if things hadn’t worked out.
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My love for her echoes the unconditional love she has for me. She has watched me laugh and cry from the day I was born and made sure she raised me as a sensitive, loving person. There has always been respect for decisions I have made in life and she has corrected many mistakes I have made. Her guidance has made me a more rounded person. The commitment I have for her will always be there.
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They call me “Father”, for I am king of my own little world.
Why rule over these sheep? Isn’t it obvious? Better to be rich than poor, better to be adored then despised. I’ve robbed these fools blind, yet they still worship me.
And this job comes with so many perks.
I convinced a gullible girl to marry me, telling her: “An angel of the Lord proclaimed in a vision, that if you don’t become my wife, then Heaven will send a curse to kill you and your entire family!” and the weeping sixteen-year-old gave in, all because I was convincing enough.
That’s power I can never give up.
Continue readingRose settled into her nest, another busy night, sighing as she turned to the others.
Lily poked her head up: ‘Hard night Rose. You wouldn’t believe it. I had to rummage under the bed to find the tooth, all those dust bunnies’ bits of food. It was disgusting’.
Marigold piped up: ‘Last time that happened to me there was a mouse there, eyeing me up.’ Gasps from the girls.
Lily shuddered: ‘What did you do?’
‘Chucked a bit of biscuit at it, grabbed the tooth and scarpered.’
Hyacinth joined in. ‘I had a fright not long ago when a dog came sniffing around sucked me halfway up his nostril. Thankfully it tickled his nose, he snorted and blew me across the room,’
Continue readingI was on my way home at last, I’d been counting down the days to my return flight since I arrived. The ‘Call of the Wild’ was overexaggerated as far as I was concerned. I just could not wait for that blissful moment of sleeping in my own bed. As it turned out, Africa had different plans for me.
The airport tannoy crackled into life.
“The flight to Nairobi has been delayed.”
There was a groan from all the passengers.
“More information will follow.”
I looked down at my dust-encrusted attire, I really needed a shower; even I could smell how disgusting I was. I just hoped that we would be aboard the turbo prop soon.
“Today’s flight has been cancelled.”
Continue readingThey say curiosity killed the cat, well my curiosity is well and truly dead. Here I am standing in a multi storey car park looking at a patch of wall with an orange stain on. The whole place stinks of human waste, petrol fumes and damp .What brought me here you may well ask.
Having lived a comfortable life with my grandparents, I quickly learned not to ask about my real parents. All they ever said that was they were dead to them. Years passed and, as with all things, the grandparents passed away. Now I was the owner of the house and with sufficient money to keep me in comfort, I set about making the place my own.
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We’re ‘familiar strangers’, you and me. Each morning, we board the 6.28 to Paddington at Swansea train station but never interact. Have you noticed me?
Familiar strangers don’t speak. If you wanted to double-check what the announcement just said, you’d ask that guy over there, who’s not a regular.
The reverse is true out of context. Say I saw you in a bar, you’d be more likely to talk to me than you would a perfect stranger.
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Jackie sighed as she heard the tap-tap of high heels approaching her office door. Forewarned by Lisa in accounts, she waited as her door swung open. Leoinie crashed through sobbing, “They all hate me. I’ve never been anything but generous to them; now they call me names and snigger behind my back.”
Passing the tissues, Jackie told her to sit. “Why do you think this is happening again, Leoinie? You had the same problem in two different offices. I thought you had made friends with Dawn and were happy there?”
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It’s hard to savour every moment when everyone is fussing so much. Honestly, did half the ward of nurses really need to come? They buzz around me like polyester flies.
My daughter adjusts the deckchair, almost tipping me over in the process, asking me again and again if I’m ok.
‘The tide’s coming in, Mum, so you can’t stay here long. Are you sure you don’t want me to sit with you?’
I sigh. ‘I’m fine. You can leave me now.’
‘We’ll just be over there, ok?’
I nod, too tired to reply.
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I worked hard in school but had few friends. When my classmates were out playing, I was busy working on my school projects or revising. My only friends were the librarians who would guide me to the books needed to help me in my revision. They taught me to use the computers and how to research for my projects.
My parents supported me in my attempts to do well in school, but through no fault of their own, both being badly disabled, there was no money to finance extras. My uniform came from the schools’ seconds’ shop. Because of this I was the outsider. Sometimes I lay in bed dreaming that one day I would be able to afford the expensive shoes and matching bags that Margaret Ford, one of the most popular girls in my class, sported. Along with her highlighted hair and manicured nails, she had everything, beauty, brains and personality.
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Memories of the past ebb and flow around me like a fast-running stream. Here and there, I pick out snatches of melody, laughter or tears, heartache or guilt. Occasionally, small groups clump together in eddies, circling round, threatening to drag me into the whirlpool of emotion of a particular moment; a birth, a death, singing with joy until my voice is hoarse. I linger at each of these, but the need for closure presses me onward.
This is my personal Hall of Ancestors and, as I walk its length, portraits on the wall show each reincarnation; the twenty-first century social media star, the patent office clerk, the eighteenth-century Swiss craftsman. Here, a rural Italian mother garnishes a steaming pasta dish, and there a mediaeval herbalist offers a concoction of their own devising that claims to be a panacea for any illness from a sore throat to parasitic infections.
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My heart races against the clock. As 17:59 becomes 18:00, it looks like the word ‘Boo.’ Mum says a swear-word and I jump. My swimming lesson starts now but we haven’t even parked the car.
On the radio, the newsreader says an asteroid will narrowly miss Earth tonight. I picture myself riding it, flames shooting behind me, and diving into the pool just in time.
Mum stops the car so suddenly that I jolt forward. ‘Jump out here, Thomas!’
My bag is wedged in the space in front of my seat. I tug while another clock inside my head counts down until Mum explodes. Beside me, she inflates like a balloon. Three, two, one…
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“This is all of the candidates?” I heard him ask his advisors, sotto voce.
His gaze swept me dismissively, no more interested than had I been a speck of lint on his finely tailored collar. I took no offence; clients who have underestimated and tried to double cross me in the past have regretted it, albeit very briefly.
“This is most irregular.” An acolyte was addressing me directly now.
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The orange-acned teenager read part of the letter to me: ‘Fit to go back to work.’
Fit? Twelve months of depression after being passed over for the headship at Ysgol Milton Friedman. That went to a kid with a face on him like a lamb sucking on its mother’s teat. Not to the school’s deputy head, with proven management skills garnered from thirty years teaching. ‘The successful candidate has more energy,’ I was told. Meaning obvious: Phillips, you’re too old at fifty-four.
Shortly after came melancholy and lethargy. The GP prescribed anti-depressants. She was a kid too, fresh out of doctors’ college.
It got worse. My wife, Sandra, left. Told me my moodiness would try the patience of an angel, plus she’d met a nice, younger man. That word was like a knife in my heart. Soon after, an overdose of paracetamol. They pumped out my stomach and I’m in the bin, sectioned. Four blurred weeks.
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