Cherrypicked stories

The last three ingredients bought - now, along with pants, peeled back like the Tear Here strip on Babybels, and wear- ily scattered in the dark.

We are lost satellites. Orbiting cul de sacs. No stars here. Black holes. We are bad maths. Dylexic algebra. Not adding up. Lost love letters. We are broken radios. We are scratched records.

When badgers the size of Fiat Pandas plod from their sets to ravage the Parish like mutant bandits - when lazy Sundays are ruined by killer moles...

...there are some babies now that will grow up never knowing a time before The Rapture.

This is a true story. Earlier this week I was walking down the street when I saw that an old lady's little pampered corgi had got loose and was scampering about on the pavement. She started clutching her face and wailing 'Beauty! Oh my Beauty!' She didn't do anything like walk down to retrieve the dog or ask someone else to help. Naturally, a crowd gathered, and the dog started walking away from them, out into the road. This sent the old lady into hysterics, which attracted more people, which drove the dog farther into the road, which made her even more hysterical, etc, etc. The dog seemed fine and quite happy, and wasn't ever in any danger, as all the cars were slowing down, but the old lady seemed intent on milking it for as much drama as possible. Anyway, I wrote a poem about it.

Emily won't eat her dinner. She has a knife in her left hand and she's moving the food around the plate in a circle. It's pale and cold she says. It's cod and mash; I'm eating mine. I always eat my food ' that's why I'm nine stone 7 and Emily is five stone 2. My hips are round but hers stick out like spikes. If the nurses force her to eat, she pretends to throw up and they remove her from the dining room not to upset the other patients.

6) Write haiku using the five-seven-five method. Who needs a season?

'Hair today, hair tomorrow.' Turning to face the sad old man, Rudolph put the brush down and buttoned his pleated, silk shirt. Bathing in shallow pools of light, his svelte, muscular figure failed to hide a hideous mask. Cleaved lips clung lustily to an oily, slick of features, anchored only by monstrous, varicose-stretched nostrils. Smeared into a smile, his lips moved, 'But you, my formerly fat friend. You will be gone. Unless you can pay what you owe by sun-break tomorrow, the factory is mine.'

The Gaylord's been closed for years, it turns out , but never mind ...