We go to a pub quiz every Wednesday night, my wife Mel and me. We go with our friends Simon and Ginny. Ginny is Mel’s best friend. They’ve known each ...
So dear Paloma, I know my voice messages can ramble but I need to talk. About our daughter. Maybe you’ve noticed on your weekends – she’s blooming, right? It’s amazing: ...
Photo by April Spreeman.
When Andi picks up fares, she stays away from the university. When Andi talks to her passengers she never talks about art. She doesn’t talk about her ...
ADDER
I felt the bite in the region of Staple Oak Fell. Searing pain flooded the muscle of my left calf. Looking down, I could see the black-and-silver tail of the ...
Sitting in the Cricketers pub, I listened as Grandma asked me whether I typically experienced difficulties “passing stools.” She seemed disappointed when I told her, “No, I didn’t.” I was ...
Our topiarist is known for collecting broken umbrellas. Her house is full of blank-paged books. Pruning shears. Frames without pictures. Every fork is bent & she likes it that way. ...
When we set up the equality, inclusion and diversity programme, internally known as EID, pronounced /eɪd/, we thought a guy like Ted – let’s call him Ted – was perfect. ...
Part I
Denver had found himself too old rather suddenly. As if his body aged without him knowing.
It took him a while to notice. It wasn’t the gray hair; that had ...
The house I’ve lived in with my family for the past two years is spacious and newly renovated. The comforts are numerous, the company good. But in the spring of ...
It’s all I can do to hold on, much less keep my heels from hitting the spokes, sending us hurtling toward an inglorious end. Potholes lurk, land mines ready to ...
David Collard writes for print and online publications including the Times Literary Supplement, Literary Review, 3:AM Magazine, gorse, Exacting Clam and White Review. His book About a Girl: a Reader’s Guide to Eimear McBride’s A ...
Green is the color of the icing on my brother, Jeffy’s chocolate cake. It’s also the color of his entire face now after he let it drop into the middle ...
Be Kind, Rewind
I stare at the scuffed lino of the corridor, listening to the fading rustle of his jacket as he makes his way downstairs. When he pulls the main ...
Courtesy of the author.
Angela stood in the doorway. Black jeans, nice coat, expensive trainers. I thought she was one of the posh wives with a donation: a Waitrose carrier bag ...
Us? We are dry bread in the mouth, rough on the tongue. Our imperfect faces are hidden away behind soot-stained xanbirs of wooly cloth that used to be white as ...
Gahanna, OH. Photo by Paul Sableman.
“Every true story ends in death.”
Part I
This is not a true story, but some parts really ...
“Like lost children we live our unfinished adventures.” Guy Debord
...
The 21st of February is International Mother Language Day – the most celebrated day worldwide for languages. Grimly, this day also poses a strange paradox – a day that reminds ...
Living with loss.
About Melanie ...
for Daniel Hawker, a smith.
The smithy at Lea was a squat building made of stones piled on top of one another without much apparent care. Inside I saw a jumble ...
