Thoughts

The sad people, everywhere.
Even their frowns trudge. Their grief flailing like untied shoelaces.
Every morning they fill up the train with their tears, flowing into stations before tributaries flow on to offices; lit by lights as artificial as my
sympathy for them.

Fiction WIP

It’s hard to put into words, how I’m feeling right now.

Maybe you’ve felt the same? Maybe not, I can’t say. Only you can compare your vantage point with mine.

I know I feel trapped. Snared like an animal. There is fear. There is panic. There is wondering how to get out of the situation I find myself in – and fast – without causing myself more pain. There is the recognition that I’ve caused this and that the fault lies with me. Not all of it, but a healthy dose; a significant proportion, which I’d estimate to be 90%. That’s my best guess.

It’s causing me to withdraw from the world, but also from those closest to me. Which isn’t good. Certainly not for me, although I justify my position by telling myself it’s good for them.

You’ve seen ‘Falling Down’, right? The Michael Douglas movie? Everyone has their breaking point. And I think I’m about to find mine.

A Few Lines

It's cold down here, behind the concrete spiral staircase
clinging like a leech to the bridge, with its drains permanently
blocked and its patina of grime
only London can produce. It's cold
down here.

A Bit Part - WIP

So, got me some writing done recently, for the Tales of the Alphabet. Nothing much, just a couple of hundred words I'm happy with and about six hundred I'm not. Thought it might be time for a preview. So, here it is. Just a tiny bit.

It was a cold night, the clouds low and a whipping wind keeping the streets clear of people. Just the odd car, here and there, traversing the city. It had rained earlier in the evening, great torrents of water that had caught people by surprise and sent them scurrying like rats to shelter under awnings and in doorways.

The kids, who, until dusk slung its shroud over the neighbourhood, had been playing on the dilapidated, broken sofa that sits outside Clarence Jeffries’ bungalow, ran out into the downpour. Shane said he could hear their parents calling them, voices strained against the drum of the rain on car roofs. I couldn’t, and said so. He got a huff up, as he often does, and retired to the bedroom. I heard the TV switch on, muffled male voices announcing sport time; the gentle thud of his sneakers as they fell from his feet to the wooden floor.

I took a pull from my Marlboro Red, slurped back the smoke.

Over at Tales From The Alphabet

Just posted this, a further snippet from the longer story.


Small Hands

Small hands, big thighs. That’s what he liked.
‘He’ being Stuart.
The lovable rogue, but only in his mother’s eyes and father’s pub-talk. Hated by most others. An imbecile, according to the graffiti scrawled crazily across the bus shelter up by Maud’s card shop. The gents’ toilets in the Hay & Scythe tell of other names that are not repeatable. Not out loud, in public. I have that on good authority, not having frequented them.
Stuart. A simple man with simple tastes. He likes to strike out, to hit; to offer a beating or two. Especially after a pint of Hamerton’s Ale. Definitely after several pints. Mostly to women. Almost exclusively, as it happens.
Certain types, though. Just those with small hands and big thighs.
Not that it’s an excuse I would offer up.

Read more here.

Tales From The Alphabet

I have a new project. One that is for the writers out there. Is that you?

It's called Tales From The Alphabet. And you can get involved.

I've started things off with the letter 'P' in a new short called Perfect Circles. It's an extract of a longer story I've been working on.

Perfect circles.Alfie could draw them at will. He used it as a parlour trick in pubs, aged 14, winning shots of whisky that he’d share with me and Bird.He could draw the different coin denominations. Perfect, every time.The look on the punters’ faces when they laid down a coin: like they’d been at the Somme.

That was how we passed the days, back then. Before our relationships petered out, became lost in the labyrinth of life. Or maybe purposefully gotten rid of; left at the side of the memory road as we screeched away in a car, the smell of burning rubber assaulting the nostrils.Yep, mostly abandoned.

In those days, we were carefree. Astounding drinkers was enough – or at least the reward of whisky was. Or so I thought. Our history through the eyes of hindsight is not quite as cosy.Then again, whose history is?

Anyway, this new project is not about me, it's about you.