Cherrypicked stories

Pot-bellied in the dark My mouth, dry as a chalk wall, soft as dogskin. Four o'clock And the rain still tapping on the window, Still patting on the...

christmas poem

Anna meets a Big Issue seller

A Gothic Fantasy

Thick fur heat opalescant, opaque if stroked would spark echoes of electricity. Above tight and quiet the big top's skin is near and heavy. Soft...

Jason REALLY isn't looking forward to his first day at a new school.

What does the word love mean? For words are only a sound we make and patterns we scribble on paper. How can so much emotion be set free in one small...

summer black tar river sticky dust path pebble verge and me in old torn jeans acrid stench of road corn blistered sweat crawling down my face

where does it start? well, the corner shop possibly the entrance was like a large bay window semicircle of white framed glass with a door in the centre inside, on the left were the fruit and veg the sweets on the right in perfect rows like patient children at their Sunday church service at the back of the shop an L shaped counter bacon slicer in front (horror machine that makes a sound all of it's own) register on the right (old dark wood, probably now buried somewhere in a second rate antiques shop) I remember a very fussy woman buying bits and pieces I, a small child behind the counter with my grandmother, said, "that will be sixpence please" Grandmother murmured "it's on account" I looked confused "sixpence?" the fussy woman ignored me a stupid child that didn't understand some people don't need money But, I don't remember it well the days of bacon slicer and "on account" the days of overall storeroom boxed up sweets and rows and rows of black covered Mars bars Kellogg's Variety pack and heavy metal scales plain crisps with separate blue salt packet big jars of sherbet lemons, aniseed balls, mint imperials and little orange cough sweets whose name I forget all dispensed in triangular paper bags But, I don't remember it well I remember my grandfather shaving every morning in the huge kitchen sink and being sick every morning, being sick my grandmother would dance in front of the stove in her big grandma underwear while we giggled and laughed and my grandfather was sick in the sink I never really though about it until he died, cancer of the bowel long gone now anyway, I think that's where it starts I'm just not sure where it ends