“Well I like it.” “It’s awful. It doesn’t suit you.” “Well I like it and I’m going to buy it!” I was standing with my husband Gerald in the middle of the floor of the charity shop in the High Street, watching Gerald looking absurd, striding about wearing the bright scarlet jacket he was determined…
Writers’ Circle
“I hope you don’t mind me reading this one—I’m afraid it’s a little bit near the knuckle,” said the small middle-aged man with the beady eyes. “Good gracious no, no prudes here, Cedric, anything goes,” said Camilla Upton-Sleeve, beaming benignly at him behind her huge spectacles. Cedric was a newcomer to our writers’ circle, a…
Touch and Go
“Aye it can get a wee bit lonely up here, it can indeed.” “I like my own company. Besides I’ll be busy.” “So you will, laddie, so you will.” As Angus Macready and I looked up at the sheer majesty of the fine stone walls of Cregallan Castle a wind whipped up and I felt…
Born Lucky
Everyone hates me. I’m an inspector for Accountancy Solutions. I’m the guy who swoops into your place of work when your boss thinks someone’s nicking money or goods, and goes through the accounts to make sure things are in order. And if they’re not, it’s muggins here who points the finger at the likely culprit. I…
Good for Something
“Gotcha!” We were touching, chest-to-chest. I could smell his sweat. The whites of his eyes and the ebony black of his skin were an inch away from my face. And I was scared stiff. I knew beyond any doubt, that I was a few seconds away from death or serious injury. This was in 1962….
Black Shuck
Tales of a large black ghostly hound have been reported for centuries from all around the British Isles. However ‘Black Shuck’, also known as the ‘Spectre Hound’ or the ‘Hound of Hell’, the huge wild dog that portends disaster to anyone who sees it, is specific to parts of Norfolk and Suffolk, especially in coastal…
Winner Takes it All
“You’ve won a million pounds.” “Are you sure?”
Cut to the Quick
“I cut off my husband’s penis. But then of course you know that.” “But you’re sorry about it?”
Lucky Day
“May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind always be at your back…” “Thanks,” I told the woman who was sitting in the shop doorway, a cheap sleeping bag crushed up beneath her.
Down and Out
I stood in the queue with all the other down-and-outs, wondering whether the food tasted as awful as it looked. It was a pretty dispiriting scene: a large church hall, stinking of unwashed bodies and misery. We shuffled forwards slowly, coughing, burping and grunting to each other.