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...he was Stanley Lemont, just moved, eight years old and (he said this with an uncharacteristic snarl which Miss Neelam did not like) NO JOKES ABOUT LEMONT...

Little lengths of loopy liquorice Wrapped tightly around her finger

She must be fucking deaf, I think. I've been yelling for the past ten minutes and she hasn't turned around.

...October is a terrible month. The can-do attitude fails miserably, your boss is in an even crappier mood than the weather (which has decided to howl in protest to the end of summer and blow up any skirts or dresses you might wish to wear) and it's getting colder. It's unexpectedly cold, and you don't really see it coming until you're stuck in bed with a migraine, tea, and tissues positioned in an orbit around you...

Wouldn't it be good, if you could mend a broken heart.. actually superglu it together, and laser out the scars. Wouldn't it be good, if you could rub out your hurt. Get a tippex bottle and really blot out each bit, until you couldn't see it or feel it.

(unfinished)

Inspired by a British report into sexuality commissioned in the last 1940s, which finally proved too shocking to publish.

I think it has taken this long for the seriousness of all this to dawn on me. People often comment that I look younger than I am and I do. There is something about my smooth skin and slouching pose and delicate hands that flutter like moths, that does not betray my nearly three decades. But inside I am older, the smoke of half my life churning through blood vessels, choking vitality and coating my thoughts with dusty shadows. I can't hide my inside from the outside for very much longer, so I will have to repair it. Clean it out, air it, give it a new coat of paint, flesh out the half-life to give it substance that other people can see.

Well... I have not been able to write anything. see.