Writing | Photography | Proofreading
“The hardest part is going through the black gate,” I told Brownson. “After that it gets easier.” I don’t know why I was reminiscing about my schooldays, when I was a man in my seventies who was resting in bed just prior to my imminent life-threatening surgery. For some reason I was harking back to…
“Oh dear!” I struck a pose, hand on hips. “I hope it’s not going to go on being a bad vein day!” As I touched my carefully coiffed hair to accentuate the point of the joke, I realised that my camp humour didn’t always go down well with nervous patients. However, this fellow seemed agreeable…
“You can get out of my shop, you’re not welcome here! Go on, sling your hook!” “But I only want—” “Out!” And as often happened nowadays, I had to leave the shop and buy my groceries somewhere else. My life as an actor wasn’t always plain sailing, but since I’d taken on the role of…
“Excuse me, but were you Kicks Ballantyne, the film star?” “I guess I still am.” “Sorry, that sounded ridiculous, didn’t it?” The young woman stared into my face, apparently confused. “Oh my goodness it really is you, isn’t it? But, I’m sorry, I almost didn’t recognise you because you’re so old now. See, I remember…
“If you give me a free hand to do anything I want, I guarantee that your sales will go through the roof.” The boss of the department store regarded me sceptically. “But, Mr Grabber, you know nothing about ladies’ fashions.” “No, but I do know about selling things. I can help you, Mr Humphries, I…
Every photographer hates to think about ‘the one the got away’, the best picture you’ll ever capture in your life that you’ve missed, the spectacular image that has gone for good. A bit like the musician who can never recapture the sound that he once played on the keyboard, never to be recalled, they call…
“You utter, utter, bastard!” I threw the wine in my glass all over my boyfriend’s face, then watched it drip off his handsome features, onto the sparkling silver cutlery and then bleed into the pure white tablecloth. His face above the impeccable designer-label jacket was a picture of astonishment, and out of the corner of…
I ran in front of the speeding truck and held my hand up in the ‘halt traffic’ gesture, closing my eyes in abject terror. The screech of air brakes nearly deafened me. But a split-second later the quivering metal engine was rumbling a few feet from my nose, the world a seething aroma of burnt…
My lottery ticket had the winning numbers! I looked up the website on my phone and discovered that although it wasn’t a major win, it was worth about twenty grand, pretty much a fortune to me. “What are you messing about at, Simon?” yelled my horrible boss Marian from the customer’s shop area, bringing…
“Do you think it’s possible to see into the future?” asked Giles, his hand trembling as he downed one of the four glasses of whisky on the bar in front of him. “How on earth should I know?” I told him as I walked past, wishing I had not chosen to come into the pub…