Tag Archives: they

Knit One, Purl One

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

She lays out the wool in evenly spaced bundles and polishes each button until it reflects her asphalt-grey iris. It’s a careful equation. Knit one, purl one. Soft wool yielding to hard needles. One tiny cardigan for the baby unit, one good deed to balance a bad one.

A wholesome baking smell fills the room as she clicks the needles in a steady rhythm. This is Margaret’s favourite time of day, the sun just beginning to filter through the curtains. This is when hope shines brightest, when the rest of the world is still asleep and her to-do list is already half-done. Reverend James will collect the cakes later, his soothing voice an antidote to the harsh one in her head. ‘Saint’ will drown out ‘Sinner’ for a few hours. ‘Thank you’ will banish ‘How could you?’ at least until darkness falls.

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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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A Good Life

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

He stands on the corner of East Bank Way and Fabian Way, in the long winter shadow of Swansea Dockers Sports and Social Club, his tragic, asymmetrical body a cautionary tale of what might be.

The traffic is slow. It’s the usual blockage: cars, vans, buses and trucks, turning into Quay Parade, ignoring the yellow cross-hatched box that says to new drivers, “Do not enter unless your exit is clear”, but in the hurried world of nine o’clock deadlines, a warning to be ignored, along with the cheery horns of the oncoming traffic.

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The Blag

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

Brandon never wanted to be there, but Josh assured him the old man was loaded. The moment the lock clicked open, his eyes narrowed and he whispered, “This is a mistake.”

Josh shushed him with a grin. “Bloody virgin.”

He had experience, but it was served with a level of incompetence that made barristers choke. The large thumb marked “Time served at HM Pleasure” on the scales of his chaotic life bore solid testimony to that.

“Piece of cake. Easy compared to a real blag,” he concluded.

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So Much Fun

Posted on by under 2025, August 2025 - Persuasion

As Rupa chugged the remnants of her Singha beer she caught sight of her inner arm tattoo and involuntarily winced with regret. The faded unicorn, a hazy reminder of a debauched weekend in Budapest with her bestie Ruby, who had the tattoo mirrored on her inner thigh.

“Who wears it best?!” they would often exclaim in unison. Rupa could never admit that she loathed it, seeing the unicorn as an emblem of her vulnerability, rather than a symbol of friendship. Rupa’s mother called Ruby ‘a bad influence’, whereas Rupa thought Ruby was ‘so much fun’. Collectively they were referred to by various monikers – the Ru Sisters, Ru Squared, Ru to the power of two or the more pedestrian Double Trouble.

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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!

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BILLY DON’T BE A HERO

Posted on by under 2025, July 2025 - The Mirror

Sitting half way up the Witches Hat, Billy Thomas was trying to comfort the young couple. They had tried to climb down the Hat, but had become stuck after a slip on the shale had left the young lady with a badly gashed leg.

Billy and his friends were on their Boxing Day trek and had been walking along gossamer trails, the hoar frost thick on the ground. A weak sun hung sulkily in the sky.  He was always thankful  to escape the aftermath of family Christmas Day.

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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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A Wibble Visitation

Posted on by under 2025, June 2025 - Sacrifice

It was an international group of UFO watchers that first sighted the visitors to Earth. Scepticism had surrounded their beliefs about life beyond planet Earth, but when the knowledge of unfamiliar life forms became widespread several countries put their national guard on shoot-to-kill alert.

Some of the UFO scanners expressed pleasure at their discovery. From Greenland :

‘We saw a group of eight visitors who seemed to have blown to Earth. No vehicle visible. These little guys are about the size of a child’s space hopper – round, with skin like a very old mouse, sort of patchy grey hairs. Hands seem to work like a chameleon’s. Don’t know what world they came from or how they travel.’

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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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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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Are We on the List?

Posted on by under 2025, April 2025 - The List

            The Beynons woke to find a wall around their house. Hearing workmen behind the wall, Fred bellowed: ‘What’s occurring?’

            ‘National plan,’ came a muffled voice.

            ‘Keeping others out or us in?’ Dora shouted. Her mind was quicker than her husband’s.

            ‘I’m just doing what I’m told.’

            ‘How do I get to work?’ Fred yelled. ‘How does Alice get to school?’

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ONLY SO MUCH HEAT

Posted on by under 2025, March 2025 - Heat

Bud pulled Jack to one side outside the cell. ”They want us to turn up the heat on the boy.”

” You telling me they actually believe that kid has an inside track on ‘THE CHOSEN ONE’?  He’s paranoid, mad as a box of hares, everyone knows.”

” Ssh, walls have ears. I know people have disappeared for saying less aloud.”

Jack snorted, ”OK, let’s get on with it, suppose we are the moral police.”

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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.

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Ironbell to the rescue.

Posted on by under 2025, February 2025 - Rescue

He swept into the room as if he owned it; every head turning as he strode across the parquet flooring, his heels clicking. Even Queen Elowen Lumina looked up from the sheaf of demands she was studying.

“This is,” she started to say, ‘this is a meeting of the Royal Council to which only members and invited guests can attend.’

But then he pulled back his hood, and recognition spread across her face. “Oh, Inspector Ironbell, I hadn’t expected to see you.”

“Ma’am,” Inspector Camden Ironbell kneeled at her side and took her hand. “I believe you have a problem.”

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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.

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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.

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The ballerina

Posted on by under 2024, Oct 2024 - Defeat

The blade glints in the light that breaks through the shutters.

Dust motes lazily dance in the illumination, like galaxies spiralling away from The Big Bang, sending her mind to thoughts of fractal patterns, never-ending repetitions of mathematical formulae that are mesmerising in their complexity and beauty.

She can see everything now, the enhanced vision they gave her at sixteen just one of the many upgrades that apparently make her better, faster, stronger. She’s supposed to be more than human but, somehow, feels lesser, as if this isn’t meant to be.

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