Podcast

  • Blooming Hell

    Envy consumed him. He lay motionless in bed, longing for sleep that refused to arrive. He had turned the spare bedroom into mission control, creating exquisite storyboards of garden designs, works of art in themselves. At work, he had received his final warning for being ‘on planet chuffing Titchmarsh’ and if he used the ‘chuffing…

  • Three for Two

    Always a family affair, today there were three generations behind the stall, including a woman in her late 20s. A toddler in a torn skirt tugged at her dad, telling him in her inaccurate and swoon-worthy vernacular about her grazed knee. Her relish for the bloody mess was more life-affirming than most things round here….

  • Near the Edge

    I bought a window box, painted it sage green like the style mags said.  Planted multi-coloured pansies and red geraniums.  You didn’t notice.  I added a windmill.  It whirled and twirled in the breeze.  Irritated the hell out of the neighbours.  I swapped it for a gnome.  Not ‘on trend’.  You still didn’t take any…

  • The Ladder

    Nothing much happens in our village, except now it has and I’ve made a fool of myself. I’ve broken my ankle and I can’t settle down to the way things were. We’re not a proper village exactly, no farmers, no village hall or school. Most of the people who live here are retired, the ones…

  • Heraklion

    On Crete, butcher stalls bled into gutters; rabbit carcasses grinned from hollow faces. I wondered how they skin such delicate ears and just who buys those rabbits; I never saw anyone carry one home. There was lamb too, and occasional chicken, but rabbits filled most of the stalls, multiplying cadavers like babies. I couldn’t see…

  • Saint Valentine’s Day

    “It’s the 12th of February,” I say to my mother. “I’m not stupid,” she tells me, “I know what you’re doing.” I have driven all the way from Montreal with gifts of diabetic chocolate warming in the backseat. It is a full three hours to my mother’s house in the country, past miles of dead…

  • CHOCCO’s Away

    They were an odd group, the delegates who attended the conference.  Old and awkward, with a puzzling assortment of aides.  They had travelled considerable distances to the isolated hotel, high up in the mountains. One gentleman insisted on stabling his six reindeer in the hotel garage while several had arrived on horseback, one on a…

  • Lucy Reborn

    I do not remember dying, yet I must have. I remember kissing Arthur and bidding our friend, the Doctor, to guard him and then all was darkness. I baulk at the memory now. Arthur was a pathetic human. I recall stupidly asking the Doctor to give me peace, but in this strange, half-life, I sense…

  • Heavyweight Dreams

    “The PureConnect 4 from Brooks is designed as a lightweight running shoe.” “Lightweight’s good,” I say. “It’s just… Do you have the model in any other colour than black?” She smiles and shakes her head. “We can give you neon laces though, if you want to brighten them up.” I wince. “I’ll try them anyway,”…

  • Checkout Girl

    I retreat down the nearest aisle, heartbeat thick with adrenaline. Pink and blue baby grows blur into one. I stalk you, the girl who should be managing the tills. You have your father’s nose, but the rest belongs to me. Customers gape at the waif with the patchy complexion, methadone-finished eyes. You are oblivious, examining…