The baby is nearly thirty months, not truly a baby any more. He can climb stairs, pedal his tricycle, put words together in groups, although only his mother is very good at understanding him. He pronounces words using only half of his mouth, making the sounds fluffy and intimate. Only if you spend a lot of time with him will you understand his way of speaking. His mother likes this. It’s nice for her that they have this almost secret communication. She’s the one who explains the world to him. She knows that soon he’ll get better at speaking, and soon enough he’ll be at pre-school, and he’ll have other people to explain, and he’ll need her less and he won’t want her so much and this soft time they’re sharing will change into something else.
fiction
January: Two people
Two people, at not quite their first meeting but coming together out of boredom and as a result of the deliberate steeping of their own hearts in salt, in a squat-style nightclub in East London at the beginning of Spring, will medicate each other’s wounds only partially successfully and, kiss.
December: Christmas Ghost Story
The car shakes us as it travels over gravel. I watch the bushes at the side of the road. My head is against the glass of the window. The seatbelt is at my neck. The bushes have spiky leaves in yellow, light green, dark green. We pass a set of bushes with fuzzy red berries, long spindles of branches. ‘What are they?’ I turn to ask Martha. She doesn’t look away from the road.
‘Just bushes,’ she says.
The house at the end of the drive rises. Its white columns are like the bones of another house, a house that has long ago withered into this one. It’s a sun bleached carcass of a house. Martha’d said that she’d found it last minute. That the reviews were good. That the pictures were good. We’d spend a few days here then head up to meet the others at the mountain lodge. My ex was going to be there, at the lodge. Christmas isn’t the right time to break this to her, we both think that, so we’re stealing a few extra days stolen before we have to be just friends.
‘Spooky house,’ I say.
Martha shrugs as she pulls our bags from the boot. ‘You think everything in the countryside is spooky.’
‘Bring me to a city,’ I say, ‘I’ll be happy.’
‘New York next year then,’ she says, slapping my arse. ‘Here, help me with the keys.’
November: Hero Type I (born to it)
I knew her mother. A woman who didn’t like other people much. You wouldn’t ask her to take in a parcel for you, to watch your kids while you popped out, for any kind of favour. I didn’t know she even had a boyfriend but she must’ve. One day she was ‘showing’ and took to wearing smocks. I asked her about the dad, a few times I asked. She said he was away, said he wasn’t into commitment, said he wasn’t interested. To be honest I think she was just saying things off the top of her head, getting rid of me kind of thing. Anyway the bairn, when she got here, was right bonny but a wild thing.
October: Autumn story 2014
I usually write about autumn in October but this year, even though autumn is finally here, in the difference in the air itself, in the wetness of the air, in the russet twilight, I won’t write about it. Things are changing. I can’t spend my life looking back. Always staring into myself like Narcissus into a lake, although actively listening for Echo, re-working things that float around in my own head, taking twigs of experience and twisting them into some kind of wicker metaphor for something that could be universal. I should write a story about what is going to happen, or what is happening right now in this moment, unravelling at the speed of an eye over text. That’s what I should write. Even using ‘should’ begins to play into the past tense, but maybe doubt is the mood of the present tense, maybe ‘am’ has embiggened its role in our tensual state. No, I think I’m wrong. ‘Should’ is the moment before the present. But what can you say about the present? I am writing this. I am writing this to you. You are reading this. You are thinking, what will happen at the end of this sentence? Or maybe I am thinking that and in thinking that I reach the end of the sentence. Become the moment between the present and the future. Where are some characters to accompany us together riding this to the end, we’re both here, but is there anyone else?
September: Remember (guest post)
I’m still working on my dissertation and creative project story fans (as of writing only 2000 words and lots of edits to go). Next month normal service resumes but until then please enjoy this guest post by the very talented Sue Oke. She blogs over at susanmayoke.com. Pop over and say hello!
North to South
It’s the voice I hear first, a baritone with the unmistakable soft edges of a Yoruba accent. We turn at the same time, tentative smiles of recognition blossoming as our eyes meet. And then he’s grinning, wrapping me in bear hug, his enthusiasm temporarily infectious.
‘How are you? How are the children?’
I grab a breath, the rote , ‘We’re fine,’ slips out of my mouth.
He barrels on, ‘And what of Oga?’
Oga… chief… boss… master… he’s using a title to refer to the man who, twenty years ago, used to be my husband.
July: Review
In July, August and September I have to write a lot to finish my course. Instead of writing new things for my blog I’m going to tart up some old things. Here, from November 2011 is one of the first re-tellings I tried out. Let me know what you think.
November: 14 Down, Mythical Maze (9)
After Theseus leaves
What kind of madness can you call it that led Ariadne to this island? She tries to remember, but her memories wisp away when she attempts to catch their threads.
April: Night Bus
There’s a night bus couple sitting behind you. A man and a woman, at least judging by their voices, both archetypes of man tone and woman tone.
You can’t help but hear their conversation. They’re not keeping their voices down. What they’re saying doesn’t interest you until the man’s voice says, ‘Why are you always like this?’
Continue reading
March: ghost story attempt
She showed up in a taxi. The sort that trawl the train station picking up tourists and children making brief prodigal returns. She took from the taxi a re-purposed cardboard box. Its four flaps were folded closed rather than taped shut. Her only other luggage was a hard plastic case on wheels.
She introduced herself to the receptionist as Shona Omara. The receptionist, who was also the proprietress Mrs Headle, told her how to find her room.
Shona pulled her case up three flights of carpeted stairs to the third floor. Along the walls of the staircase Shona noticed scuff marks, presumably made by other guests dragging their own luggage. She made a second trip to the lobby to collect the cardboard box.
Continue reading
February: The Grand Tour
In this story a young man, older than a boy but not so mature that he would be expected to have as many regrets as he in fact carries around with him, leaves his home town, Hull, for an odyssey he himself cannot see the end of but in which the reader or listener of the story thinks they can predict where his story will take him.
