Cherrypicked stories

I came back, didn't I? And I drank in a cafe that got stuck in your throat

Of roman candles summer new year's and Guatamelan shirts For R.

Flurries She is talking about the weather up there in the Deep North, laughing as she watches neighbours chasing their bins in the icy wind. Casually she tells me she can see snow "flurries.

They should not have been so surprised to hear a clank or two and feel a loosening from the crematorium's basement. He sunk through the floor like an old Wurlitzer, is how she phrased it over a glass of Punt E Mes.

I enjoyed driving to Heathrow

Stick Figures For Pippa Small burst of water, then the quick bob, as if an otter steadying itself against the current. Then we'd rush over the mist-wet wood to the other side

My inlaws are waiting for us beneath the Gothic porch with mouths unfurling pennants of vapour. Dennis, ex-Squadron Leader, wears a grandiose moustache, tweeds, the pipe he carries a constant reminder of campaign rooms filled with pin-laden maps and old shag, the Battle of Britain, his finest hour. Diana, in plaid skirt and cashmere, kisses me on both cheeks, the consequence of a year at finishing school in Switzerland. Diana is the daughter of a Scottish baronet; Dennis is proud of his wife's pedigree, her imported ways. That good blood had pushed her up an inch more than Miriam could manage, sharpened her hipbones, deepened the blue in her eyes. I have often imagined seducing Diana, a key part of the fantasy being that she is a willing participant. I could bugger Dennis, kill my progeny, turn the humdrum into Oedipal drama.

This story is dedicated to my friend Yohannes, an asylum seeker who was deported to Ethiopia on Tuesday 16th January 2007, while this story was being written. Details of this story are based on real accounts of Yohannes and others like him. It is called closed country and the country it refers to is never mentioned, in the style of many missionary news reports which never mention the name of the country or the name of the Christians as this would endanger them.

The basic principle of Soliciting is this ' you call up whatever you can boss around. Lickspittle imps angling for promotion, Painsmiths, semi-sentient stuff like organs, tentacles, noxious mists, animals sometimes, Dwynes, Styxpigs, Wolfcopters¦ anything small, anything starved of attention and desperate for an innings in a coat of meat. There are bigger fish, of course ' 'personalities', if you will ' but it takes a certain force of character to keep them under control, and for the most part I prefer my insides to stay true to type, thanking you kindly. And then you find yourself in a pinch, and you wheel out the four-word affirmation that's dad to a trail of snapped necks and surprisingly grievous puncture wounds ' I can handle it.