Tag Archives: there

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. ’

Continue reading →

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?

Continue reading →

Open To Persuasion

Posted on by under 2025, August 2025 - Persuasion

Carefully opening her eyes, Holly had a head full of bees. The noise bounding around, clanging, forced her bolt upright. It wasn’t a dream, she was in a cell!!

The smell of urine caused her to gag. There was a toilet in the corner, the sight of which made her retch even harder. Slowly her memory returned in flashes .

Shawna again, why did she always go along with her wild ideas? It had been the same when they were in college .

The trip to the woods ended in a bog, then to add insult to injury a branch swung back and a black eye for Holly, with Shauna laughing her head off. A night on a pub crawl, Holly woke up in a bush on the prom, no sign of  Shauna. Apparently she thought Holly looked so peaceful, she left her there. Getting caught trying to sneak into a posh nightclub, ejected by the scruff of their necks. The list was endless but this was the last straw. No more!

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

That Blinking List 

Posted on by under 2025, April 2025 - The List

As Howard opened the washing machine and pulled out his clothes, his heart sank; everything was blue. His favourite white shirt was now tie-dyed, his jumper had shrunk small enough to fit Albie, his grandson.

Margy had only been gone three days and he was failing miserably. He really had tried to follow her list. Some of the things seemed a bit extreme like polishing all the surfaces every day. Why when there was only him there?

Margy, at sixty eight, had got herself a last minute free holiday with Faye, whose husband had a chest infection. It was Margy’s first holiday without him.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

The hunted

Posted on by under 2025, February 2025 - Rescue

“Hello?”

Beams of light sliced the darkness, and she shrank into the corner, shivering. Hopefully they’d not see her, move on, and she could get back to eking out her existence on whatever she could forage at night time, and the small creatures that fell into the crude traps she lay near the entrance to the cold, dark, cave system.

Maybe, she thought, as footsteps echoed, getting louder and closer, that was what’d drawn them into the depths, that she’d been careless and left signs, indicators of her existence. Whatever had got them here, they weren’t leaving.

Continue reading →

Blackpool Rocks

Posted on by under 2025, February 2025 - Rescue

            The president’s plane took off from Paris. He was going home. Before reaching the Atlantic, there was a huge explosion of lightning in the sky like Armageddon. It struck the plane, a wing caught fire, smoke was billowing everywhere.

            ‘Parachute! Parachute!’ the captain shouted. ‘Prepare the president for emergency exit.’

Two of the crew bundled him out of the toilet where he’d been tweeting.

‘Hey, what about my pants?’

‘Strap this on!’ one guy shouted.

‘Open exit door!’ said the second.

‘Release!’

The president, falling to earth, trouserless, looked up at the plane wreathed in fire. Next thing he knew his parachute was snagged on top of a metal tower, the heavens still electrically charged with tongues of lightning.

Continue reading →

Not exactly Danse Macabre

Posted on by under 2025, February 2025 - Rescue

A rather puny skeleton squeezed himself out of the cupboard and moved silently around a bedroom. It was a boring job, representing some rather meagre misdeeds needing to be tucked away, but at least he wasn’t locked up and could rove around a bit. He knew of some more burly colleagues whose cupboards were permanently locked, chained and protected by serious legal teams standing in protective readiness. What horrors they were representing was kept firmly under wraps.

The real downside of being a low status skeleton (and who knew, maybe it was the same, or even worse, for the stars of the skeleton-in-cupboard world) was that there was very little to do. He had to make his own entertainment.

Continue reading →

Reel Life

Posted on by under 2025, January 2025 - Returning

“NO. Not back there! Can’t do it. Don’t give me that 30/180 degrees clash shit. It’s my weekend with the kids. Surely Pika can do it?” Jon, voice rising, was fearful he had overdone it. Following the marriage breakdown he needed the money. But how he had hated that farmyard location,- the greyness, the endless rain, the sucking of his every welly step in the mud.

“Not there yet. Still learning.” Cinematographer Alastair and editor Mel joined forces anticipating his objection. They did not share his unease. AI was their bread and butter and Pika one of the most respected programmes.

Continue reading →

In the rain

Posted on by under 2025, January 2025 - Returning

She told him it was over.

Sure, she loved him, but she just wasn’t in love with him if that began to make sense.

He looked down at his lap and blinked a little to hide the welling tears. Then rising without a word, he marched upstairs.

She knew he didn’t want her to follow, and she lingered there in his living room, knowing this was a heartless way to end the relationship but God, was there ever a right way? She plucked his housekey from her keychain and wondered if he’d return the key to her flat.

Continue reading →

Point of no return

Posted on by under 2025, January 2025 - Returning

There was never any question of a reconciliation.  There hadn’t been a dramatic rift, just a dwindling, eroding sense of partnership. What remained was an exchange of items and after that, their disentanglement : all that had been done was to be finally undone in this ritual handover.

The separation had been efficiently accomplished. The flat was on the market  and new living arrangements were in place. Guy and Freya showed no animosity, indeed they intended to remain on friendly terms.

Continue reading →

Je ne regrette rien

Posted on by under 2024, Dec 2024 - Regret

It was a hollow victory, Hugo thought as he tucked into his last meal. Now that the initial excitement of escaping the care home and boarding a plane to Switzerland had worn off, the stark finality of death began to sink in. 

After all his dear friend Ron had done to help him – booking the Dignitas appointment, fetching his passport, lying to the staff and Hugo’s family, and driving him to the airport – he felt bad even thinking like this.

Continue reading →

Cake 1 Witch-hunt 0

Posted on by under 2024, Nov 2024 - Witch Hunt

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.

Continue reading →

Moments of Importance

Posted on by under 2024, Sept 2024 - Precious

The ochre light of the sun hugs your face through the windscreen as you smile in a way that gives the warmth of the day competition. Scenery of greens and blues and mountains and sheep fly past behind your head out the driver’s window, and it’s as though the music takes over. I hear nothing you say but I can count the lines around your mouth and the glints in your eyes. Then like that – it’s over; I can recall nothing you said or did but this image in my mind where your face convinced me magic exists in this world.

Continue reading →

Address to Fellow Magistrates Upon My Retirement.

Posted on by under 2024, July 2024 - For Sale

Friends. Looking back on my years as a magistrate, I can offer the following insight into human nature: honesty boxes are a gateway drug to a life of petty crime. The whole concept of the honesty box is an oxymoron;  a temptation to the weak. They create the conditions for dishonesty.

In a wonderful, imaginary world, humanity  would show basic decency and charitable intentions towards fellow citizens; we could all be trusted. Magistrates would rarely be required. And, in truth, many do strive towards this ideal. But  life is full of people taking more than their fair share of sweeties out of the communal jar.

Continue reading →

OOOPS. I  DID IT AGAIN

Posted on by under 2024, July 2024 - For Sale
Wife with a squirrel problem

Avril Morgan, a slender woman with a handsome face, opened her front door in anticipation of her little totem pole. She was greeted by a man dragging a large coffin-shaped tree trunk up the garden path  Her jaw fell, it was supposed to be six inches, not six foot

Huffing and puffing the red-faced driver arrived, delivery sheet in hand, thrusting it in her face.

“There must be some kind of mistake,” Avril’s voice quavered.

No mistake and I’m not taking it back; sign here. “

After she signed on the dotted line, the driver made a quick exit.

What the heck do I do with it now. Adrian is going to go mad.

Continue reading →

Dai Desert Rat

Posted on by under 2024, May 2024 - Escape

Billy Thomas was excited. His parents were going to a posh dinner in Swansea, this meant he was going to sleep in his grandparents’ house. A rare treat, they went there every Sunday for tea but rarely did he stay. 

Carrying his bag of clothes he set off, his mam’s warning ringing in his ears to behave. Nan was waiting at the door and ushered him in, hugging him. She smelt of lavender and she was tiny – Billy was almost as tall as her – and she reminded him of a small bird. 

Grandad was ensconced in his armchair; he had a ruddy complexion thickset with hands like shovels. ”Alright our Billy.”

Continue reading →

Escape Clause

Posted on by under 2024, May 2024 - Escape
Man and daughter stand before a vault deep in the bowels of the Earth

Tobermory held his daughter’s hand as they walked along the corridor, their footsteps echoing from the stone walls. He sensed her looking up and gave her a little squeeze.

“Don’t worry, daddy,” Eleanor said, “I’ll be okay.”

“I know, Pumpkin,” he said, displaying a sad smile. “We’ll all be okay.”

“Did you bring Flibut?”

Tobermory pulled the stuffed, one-eared camel from his bag. “Yes, he’s here.”

“Because I couldn’t go without Flibut.”

He looked down at her earnest features, a pixie face in a halo of red curls. Just five years old, he thought, how could there be a god?

He could have scooped her up right there and bounded back down the corridor. But he knew the guards would pick him off before they got out. And a stranger would make the long walk with her.

Continue reading →
error: Content is protected !!