He made ratatouille – he liked it, liked saying it, ratatouille, it sounded matter of fact, you want veg, here’s your veg, a plate flung down like that first time he’d had it, Paris in the nineties, the second of two hot meals in seven days, a trip with a half-daft girl who didn’t leave the […] Read More →
I see him again. In the supermarket. Little pork pie man. Always that two-tone hat. But it’s not The Selecter or The Specials leaching out the phones. I hear rawwwk. Whitesnake, I’m sure. First time I saw him was outside a pub at 2 in the afternoon. Part of a drunken circle that’s holding back […] Read More →
1986. Ahm Maradona. King of the two-a-side village derbies. Ah hear the crowd in my head. You should see the way ah dance through the defence, past daft Gassy, so wiry you could tie a string from his lugs to his toes and fire arrows at the seagulls (hair trigger mental too – hit his […] Read More →
I don’t want to get up. I need to pee but it’s too cold. The issue is pressing but a decision is not yet a necessity. The question is how long have I been here? If I know I can estimate how long I have left to decide, when time becomes of the essence you […] Read More →
In the car. Trying to get off the slip road. The drivers see me, don’t let me out. They’re drinking from portable mugs, home-barista coffee. I raise my toddler’s pink sippy cup, mouth asshole as they pass. Someone will be on the phone to the cops, on their way to remove the deviant with the […] Read More →
Only on these days. Sky like a lowering lid. A step out the door and the immediate, physical need to step right back in again. But you can’t. These things are not permitted. You must engage, brother. So it’s only on these days, though maybe they’re happening all the time. What are those things you […] Read More →
Rainin. Not even a streak aw white or flash aw blue, just flat grey sky, mist risin up through the gorge to meet it. Always with the rain in this place. Ever the grey. Though havin never been here how would ah know? It’s Creepy Dan’s fault. Again the claim that his mother flung herself […] Read More →
He’s at a party he doesn’t want to be at. At Christmas, there’s only so many excuses you can roll out. A huge house by the sea, took him an hour along the coast road to find it. In the moment between tipping his head back to down another drink and lowering it again a […] Read More →
Neil Gunn. James Robertson’s impressive Neil Gunn Memorial Lecture takes me back. To Highland River, The Atom of Delight, The Well at the World’s End… When I think of Gunn I always think of Zen. It came to meet him in the Highlands. An interconnected wholeness. No self. You’d expect it more atop a Japanese […] Read More →