Here we are at Week 574.
I can’t believe that the first week in March is already now over.
Idiot gardeners are outside tiding up. They’re wasting their time. March is a sneaky bastard of a month. You think the weather will get better but it doesn’t. Rest assured we will be in for gales and snow. Twice I spun my car off the road and both times it was in March.
Continue reading “Week 574 – Satanic Third Month, I Never Mentioned S.O.B, And Impossible Travel Insurance.”
Gregor hesitated at the door of ‘Till Dawn Night-Club’. He took a deep breath and walked in. Two rather large gentleman walked over to him.
“Don’t think you should be here pal! We’re fucking shut.”
One stood in front of him and the other guy moved slightly to his side.
He took a deep breath, “I know. I’m not here for any trouble, I was just wanting to speak to JoJo.”
“Is he expecting you?”
Gregor looked round at the other man.
“No…”
‘Well fuck off then!!’
Continue reading “Godfather JoJo By Hugh Cron (Adult Content)”
“I hate this fucking job!” Rob, the disgruntled night security guard, muttered to himself as he did his rounds in the empty department store.
Continue reading “Seasonal Angst: High Drama in the Diorama by Bud Pharo”
Windy and me were digging the back garden of another new kid who’d just moved in to Horseshoe Walk. This time it was on the other side of the garages, opposite my house. I didn’t play with Windy normally because he hung around with the little kids, so I’d been a bit taken aback when he knocked on my door and asked me if I wanted a job. Sitting in our conservatory that day he’d also showed me how there were naked ladies hidden in magazine adverts if you looked at them the right way – Martini and Cinzano bottles were the best. We found pictures of Mrs Cropper in Mum’s Women’s Own too. Not naked, but modelling fancy dresses which was weird when you considered what a complete tip her house was. He told me his cat had come back as well after disappearing for twelve months, rattling their letterbox late one night to be let in just the same as she always had, although there was something strangely different about her now, he said, fixing me with his wide puffy eyes. Windy wheezed like an old tap on those rare occasions he played football with us, or handled a spade, but I began to think I’d underestimated him.
Continue reading “A Builder’s Tan by Mark Czanik”
She was beautiful. Shoulder-length, auburn hair. Almond-shaped, hazel eyes. Full, sensual mouth. And I imagined her skin was a warm, walnut-shell tan underneath that chic, skin-tight, iridescent, body suit—the latest haute couture fashion, designed to dazzle with a spectrum of metallic hues and shades that shimmered like the shell of a scarab beetle. She looked directly into my eyes with such confidence I felt I knew her. There was something familiar about that beautiful, captivating face.
Continue reading “CF58 by Héctor Hernández”
‘Lampedusa’ (2020), the second novel of the Canadian poet, Steven Price, is an imagined account of the last years of the Sicilian author, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1896-1957), as he struggled with illness and self-doubt to complete his only work of fiction, ‘The Leopard’ (1963). That book, ‘Il gattopardo’ in Italian, won the Strega Prize, Italy’s top literary award, and became an international best seller. It was made into a Hollywood film, directed by Visconti, in 1963 (re-released in 1983), starring Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon and Burt Lancaster. Apparently, Visconti wanted Laurence Olivier for the part, but the producers chose Lancaster.
Continue reading “Sunday Whatever: The Canadian Poet and the Sicilian Prince by Michael Bloor”
The hare has appeared, again. She is out and about.
She sits back on her long, folded hind legs showing her profile to the onlookers in the static caravan a few yards away.
Continue reading “The Anatomy of a Hare by Alex Faulkner”
The last time we stayed at Popo’s house, I was five years old, still in the cradle of memory when truth and story become mixed up in an inseparable mosaic. It’s hard to say what I remember and what has been spun to me as a family tale, more real than my own hazy recollection. Maybe if I had been older I would have more to tell. Or maybe it would be all the more clear how much of Popo’s life had slipped through the cracks of my young, distracted mind.
Continue reading “Fisheye by Jade Lacy”
‘Above the spume!’ Dr Gerasimos Evangelatos chants as he presses his disputed sandal to the pedal. Cephalus, his family’s latest ‘stray’—though what is a stray cat but an unmet friend?—gingerly stares from the front basket. ‘Above the foam of the sea!’
Continue reading “Nothing Else That I Would Ask by Antony Osgood”
What an induction day that was!
Unemployment had been high for years, and so the surprise arrival of Dutch company ‘Bananenbuigerij’ had been greeted with much enthusiasm in town. Like most of my friends, I’d sent in my application, and was one of those fortunate enough to be offered an interview.
Continue reading “Bananenbuigerij by Michael Smith”
literally stories 