Tag Archives: my

Dick Bullet – Private Dick

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

I got a call from this broad come August. Can’t complain because I can’t choose my clients. Said she got a case of the usual, good for nuthin’ hubby making excuses on where he kept going at night.

I’m Dick Bullet, private eye, got a cheating wife/husband and/or business partner then I’m the sap who sits outside of their house for days, hoping to snap up the incriminating evidence.

This Mrs Mallory may have been a goddess of the silver screen forty years ago, but Old Father Time is a mean old man and chips away at anybody’s good looks. Where she was once stunning with eyes sharp enough to pierce diamonds and legs slender than a snake, practically death and sex wrapped in one tight glove, now she was like a dried raisin, those dark eyes had gone greyer than a rain cloud, her hair was whiter than the north pole and her skin sagged worse than a mattress left out in a forest.

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Vox Pop

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

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. ’

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MY PERFECT LIFE?

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

Prison counsellor Richard Wilson peered through thick lens glasses at prisoner Wilf Watts, a small scrawny old man with a full head of silver hair, his eyes appearing open and honest. Wilf had been sentenced to four years for offences that lead to him being a local hero within the prison. Leaning forward Richard  asked,  ‘Would you like to explain the circumstances that led to you being here, Wilf?’

Wilf settled back in the armchair, thinking for a moment: ”It’s like this, you see my wife died last year. Wonderful women she was, my Margey. We were married for over forty years, she did everything for me. Sold our home as I couldn’t live there without her, bought myself one of those mobile homes and travelled all over. It is what she wanted. Found it a bit lonely to be honest.  Then some bugger stole it, I lost everything and had a hard time getting even a little bedsit. The police were useless, didn’t do a thing, the insurance company gave me the runaround.

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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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When the phone rang

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

Colin ‘Corky’ Yates lived alone; alone enough for a ten-year-old boy. Since his mother’s death two years earlier, dinner was prepared by the housekeeper, and he spent his evenings doing homework, listening to the radio, and waiting for his father.

Corky didn’t mind. He just missed his mum.

One evening, while doing his homework with the radio on, he paused as the announcer signed off, “If you have a problem, get in touch with Doctor Parkham, on …”

He jotted the number down.

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There is no infinity.

Posted on by under 2025, July 2025 - The Mirror

The dead body after being held up to the mirror did indeed have a reflection, an infinite number of them as a matter of fact. The police were amused by the two-mirror illusion. The frantic scrabblings by the bedside were dismissed as the ravings of madness.

The cause of death was determined to be that of a heart attack brought on by stress. That’s how the story ended.

*

The infinite mirror trick is a lie. You know how it goes, you stand between two mirrors facing each other and you’re greeted by an infinite line of yous, disappearing into the horizon, but in truth mirrors don’t reflect 100 percent of light, so each repeated reflection is a little dimmer than before. So if you strain your eyes long enough, you can see your reflections disappear into blackness.

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Wannabe

Posted on by under 2025, July 2025 - The Mirror

That old ad is doing the rounds on social media again. It has always haunted me, but after the day I’ve had at work, I’m regretting my life choices more than ever. I indulge myself by dialling the number.

“Is it too late?” I’ll say. I sigh when a recorded message tells me that my call cannot be connected. 

            I know exactly where I was on Friday 4th March 1994. It was mum’s fortieth birthday, so I had trudged into town after sixth-form college to browse the shops for a gift.

            The mirror had caught my eye immediately amongst all the other bric-a-brac, emitting a soft golden glow under the lights. It had been relegated to the back of a shelf behind five dusty dolls, which I ceremoniously brushed aside.

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Blink

Posted on by under 2025, July 2025 - The Mirror

“Did you see that?”

The man before me was a horror. It’s pale face was twisted in anguish like a Halloween mask held to the fire. It scratched at it’s scalp, at the visible, glistening wounds that ran like muddy rivulets between tuffs of matted hair. It’s eyes, milky and dull, were set deep into it’s skull. It’s jaw hung slack. Teeth haphazardly stacked like a tombstone lying abandoned upon a vandalised grave. A monster. Always watching. I hated it.

What was it’s intentions?

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The Messenger

Posted on by under 2025, June 2025 - Sacrifice

The robin is perched on the railing of the balcony outside. I can tell without even looking out there. I’d know its song anywhere, though I wouldn’t have expected to see one here, at this time of year, and in this idyllic holiday cottage where I’m staying. I smile to myself and finish making my morning coffee. I picked up these coffee beans in the local market yesterday, and their chocolate-rich aroma fills my nostrils as I stir in the milk, the spoon jangling pleasingly against the china cup.

A robin used to arrive in our garden every year on the anniversary of Grandma’s death when I was a child. Mum would ask me to help write a newsletter for the bird to take to her, wherever she was, updating her on all that we had been up to that year. I used to love sticking in photos and drawing pictures of all the activities we had done and all the holidays we had been on.

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I’ll Sacrifice Sid

Posted on by under 2025, June 2025 - Sacrifice

            ‘Morning, my lovely, I’m campaigning on behalf of the Resettlement party. You’ve heard of us? But of course. Who hasn’t? We’re setting the pace, aren’t we? We’re on all the front pages. Can Resettlement rely on your vote?’

            ‘Well I don’t rightly… I mean who are you going to…?’

            ‘If you’re born here, you’re OK. You’re in, you’re one of us.’

            ‘And if you’re not…?’

            ‘You’re looking at a package to help you return from whence you came. A tidy sum.’

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Family Sacrifices

Posted on by under 2025, June 2025 - Sacrifice

My stepfather, Sid, often talked about his sacrifices. He said it was about the three of us, carefully including Myles. But it wasn’t. It was about Eleanor and me. We were his entry passes to our mother’s orbit. She came as a package: long legs, blonde hair, and two kids, which was ideal for an insurance salesman. It gave him a ready-made family, including a trophy wife and two kids—the perfect image. But he resented us.

We rented a two-bedroom terrace, where the mice skittered across the pans when someone turned on the kitchen light, and a broken window remained unaddressed for the entire time we lived there. Five doors down was a house where men visited at irregular hours. I had an idea of what went on behind those shuttered windows, and I’m pretty sure Sid did too.

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It’s My Party

Posted on by under 2025, May 2025 - The Party

I can tell you this, it was the worst thing ever. One minute I’m whole and healthy and the next I’m draped over the pavement with a spine in two bits and no movement in my lower half. RTA they call it, huh, more like EOL, or end of life as it was.

Long story short, it could have been much worse – my top half works pretty well, but nothing from the waist down. It’s stunning what medics can do to put Humpty Dumpty together again. Family rallied round and helped where the wheelchair couldn’t go. I moved in with my parents (for a while) so they could share the work of looking after me. Carers cared, and a PA arranges things that need arranging: meals fetched, clothes washed, library books changed, shoes laced, soft voices, no rows (I miss the rows).

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Which Way?

Posted on by under 2025, May 2025 - The Party

Walking out of the town hall Aldo turned to me: ”Nan, isn’t Alan Parson wonderful. He can get this country back to the way it should be.”

Looking at him, I sighed. He had the look of the converted, his eyes shining at the thought of a wealthy life for all, poor boy. I should really keep my thoughts to myself but that man was dangerous, all his talk fantasy to lure the youngsters in. 

”My Mam told me about a guy who broadcast during the war; his name was Lord Jaw Jaw . The broadcasts sound very similar to that man, only he was trying to get us to surrender promising he would make us all a wonderful life under Titler. ”

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Gina’s List

Posted on by under 2025, April 2025 - The List

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.”

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There’s a hole in my bucket

Posted on by under 2025, April 2025 - The List

This was a row that had simmered for years but hadn’t yet been defused. It was an underground river of molten lava that threatened to erupt but, apart from the odd burps of hot magma, remained sluggishly subterranean and unacknowledged.

The accelerant was the  proposed retirement, in five years’ time, of Joan and Hywel. Each had busy and fulfilling jobs – which had masked their need to discuss points of incompatibility and irritation. However, they were both keen to leave the worlds of work for the worlds of…..well this was the main problem.

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I Have Never Forgotten

Posted on by under 2025, April 2025 - The List

For Uzma, joining her local Creative Writing Circle was the challenge she felt ready for, a therapy of sorts. When she wrote, secrets flowed from her pen, bypassing her brain and heart into prose on the page. They told of the secrets she kept, the secrets she revealed and the secrets she told herself.

It was as if this week’s writing prompt was beckoning her to confront all her secrets at once. Let’s do this, she thought…

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No-Fly List

Posted on by under 2025, April 2025 - The List

NY December 2026.

There is an awkward moment on my arrival when an ICE agent insists on me unpacking my case. He tells me there is similar name to mine on their no-fly list.

I realise I can’t remember my PIN, so I put my hand in my suit pocket to get my phone, and he reaches for his sidearm.

“Phone,” I say, a weak grin on my face, withdrawing it slowly with two fingers. I can smell the heat of my sweat rising and try to suppress a tremble in my hand, but only succeed in dropping the phone.

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Portrait of a Man on Fire

Posted on by under 2025, March 2025 - Heat

On the 29th of May, I was sent off to Joseph Dahl’s townhouse. He was often seen strolling around Caden Street or by the lake in Muriel Park, wishing everyone a good hullo, usually while dressed in a grey suit tailored from JR Parking’s and wearing a straw hat. A habit which made him the menace of a few penny counters and good Samaritans, but the local policemen regarded him as more an itch than any serious threat.

“Some people,” he said as he gripped my hand in his leathery paw, “can’t understand the spiritual life, they’ll chant their vows come Sunday but rarely put those promises into practice.”

“How about it?” asked his not wife, not girlfriend, Susannah, who at that moment lazed upon the sofa. “Do you swear by Christ or by Odin?”

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Love Letter

Posted on by under 2025, March 2025 - Heat

The walk to his home filled me with anxiety.

The cold air bit at my red-hot cheeks and my boots clipped along the uneven pavement. Perhaps these were signs. Omens of what was to come. If they were, I did not heed them.

I continued to tramp briskly toward my destination and in the distance, I saw him standing outside his door awaiting my arrival.

This wasn’t the way I wanted to do this. I had wanted to drop the letter in and run away, leaving him to reel in its indulgent vulnerability alone. However, pushed by the needs of others I’d been made to forewarn him, or at least alert him to my impending presence, and now I must face him in a less romantic fashion.

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