Cherrypicked stories

Leave the money on the pillow - close the door before you go, it's freezing in this hell-hole and the meter's running low.

I asked Jonesy that night, what was it like, to know that you're dying. "It's great. He told me. Because every moment, from now on, will be cherished. Every laugh will be beautiful. Every kiss will be the sweetest. Every tear will be the hardest.

I remember when Carmel, my wife's pet pig, showed great ingenuity in digging a tunnel to break out of her pen. She had even found the house key that was hidden beneath the plant pot. I spotted her trying to snuffle past the bouncer at The Barony Pub. She'd ransacked our trot-in-wardrobe: got trussed up in an Ascot hat, two pairs of heels, smelling of Gaultier and swill.

The prologue to a book I started to write about 10 years ago but never got round to finishing. Sort of a comic fantasy thing involving the Horsemen Of The Apocalypse and a time machine.

'Do you think I am fat?' Clara's voice sounded anxious. 'Well of course you are. But it's normal, you are pregnant after all,' John replied. The table fell silent. Most of the women were looking at their plate or at Clara, awaiting for her reaction. Sarah turned towards her brother and raised her eyebrows.

Poem has been temporarily removed and will be re-posted in October 06

A mere dot on the state map, Dearing was more a religious cult with a sizable tract of cooperatively owned land than a community. Although it contained a bank, a general store, and a doctor's office, Dearing's population consisted of retired carnival freaks and their offspring for the most part. The good doctor, Rudolph Morton, had traveled with, practiced medicine on, the occupants of Dearing for many years, and had delivered most of the babies.

My Life Oy Vay 9 Ex girlfriend phoned me after we spent a couple of days shagging and drinking together, after which remorse and a hangover set in. I told her it will never work between us because we always end up getting rat-arsed and ill. And one of us will die prematurely. Can you do that? Die before your time? It's one of the great ontological riddles of our time. So she accepted that I was right and left. So she called two days later when I was rattling like a pair of maracas. She said "Goodbye Stephen I said "Oh yeh goodbye. I put the phone down. I thought that she was just coming to terms with the separation, then I thought is she going to jump out of the window? But the way I felt at that moment I really couldn't care.

She's bought a purple hat. But why??