Podcast

  • Mam and She Worries

    Mam worries ‘bout stuff. Smallest things sometimes. Like when Mrs Kinnear was having her baby and she was rushed to the daytime hospital and no-one had opened the curtains on Mrs Kinnear’s windows. ‘You keep curtains closed when someone’s dead, not when they’s more alive than they’s ever been b’fore.’ I was sent over to…

  • Kala Pani

    There was a smidge of Radha in my pocket, a smattering of her on the cruddy wooden deck. I drew the string together and put the cotton bag in my pocket. The kala pani, that’s what the people in my village call the sea. It wasn’t really black water though, despite all the slops of…

  • The Replacement

    One year ago, Anne received almost exactly what she wanted for Christmas. It was me. I first detected signs of unease in February. The sideways looks and locked doors. By March she was setting me to sleep mode when friends called by. Too much of my capacity is wasted on my emoto-core, she said, and…

  • Lost Boys

    It was just the two of them now. The rest had gone on to greater adventures. They sat side by side on a park bench, like the winter companions in the old Simon and Garfunkel song. Tootles leaned forward on his walking stick and squinted over at the statue of the boy with the panpipes….

  • Bitterness

    Tonight I found out my husband is having an affair. Tonight all the pieces I had never seen, attached. I’m conscious that I should feel something. Jealousy. Anger. But nothing seems to penetrate. Wait; there is certain sympathy for the ‘other woman’. The object of her desire is at present downstairs sipping on his second…

  • The Pool Man

    It’s not easy being the youngest. Izzy was always being left out or left behind. It wasn’t fair. She so wanted to be in. Especially with them. So when Jake and Joss had laughingly challenged everyone to the “hugest dare ever,” Izzy had been the first in the gang to leap up and accept. Now…

  • He Knocked so Softly

    Ada Mae stood at the kitchen sink looking out the window. She just couldn’t believe she’d been living in this house for almost seventy years. She glanced at the clock over the stove; the girls would be arriving in just a little over an hour. Girls, she chuckled.  Girls she’d gone to school with, girls…

  • Wild Gestures

    THE DEATH AND LIFE OF ROMANCE You fall in love with a voice, with a book, a beard, or lack of. You, who feel nothing, who is a wasteland in a woman’s body. You can’t let any of this show on your face, even when he gets into your dreams and sets them on fire,…

  • Digging a Hole for Douglas

    Almost dark, the air cold and damp. A lawn merges into a shrubbery with large patches of wet, bare, mossy earth. I place Douglas, stiff and still, on the ground. I look around; no dog-walkers, no noisy gangs of feral teenagers gathered round a bottle of tonic wine, no rough sleepers hunting for a dry…

  • Her, Next Door

    Rita’s wondering why her key won’t turn. She thinks it’s because she’s all fumble fingers in her hurry to get inside and turn the fire on.  She wants to put her feet up and tuck into those naughty pastries she’s brought back from work. The key won’t twist. If the damned lock has gone how much…