by Hilaire
Don was wonderfully straightforward, I was discovering. When I’d asked if he’d film me, he’d simply said: “Sure, why not?” No incredulity, no awkward questions. Unlike – but I shut down that thought. In truth, I didn’t care whether there was any film in his camera. I wanted a witness, that was all, and someone to haul me out if I unexpectedly got into difficulties, as the local press would have it. [read more…]
by Howard Colyer
Goalkeeper’s fumble,
Bywater can’t hold the ball,
then the rest follows.
by Gary Budden
The fourth and final image is simpler, easier to interpret. It gives Andrew more hope than the previous pictures. A solitary young girl clutching a balloon with the spriggan’s face its decoration stands smiling with genuine joy. In the background, the Olympic Park is consumed by hungry flames as tattooed looters ransack a shopping centre. [read more…]
Number 53 by Howard Colyer
Help me. You can! wrote the young man in the mist on the window as the bus headed south along the Old Kent Road. [read more…]
Dog by Howard Colyer
No kidding, mate, this has been in my family for 5,000 years, said one tramp to another while pointing at a small dog. [read more…]
by Howard Colyer
But Thomas Kowal was neither lunatic nor dirty. But the news of his lonely life on the Lee High Road had the power to unhinge my parents. And I went to the funeral. There were just the three of us – and one was dead. And the priest was glad to see me. [read more…]
On the Pentonville Road by Howard Colyer
After three years of trying, my colleague, Malcolm Taylor, managed to throw a scrunched-up piece of paper into a bin five yards from his desk. [read more…]
by Henry Wilson
We set out after lunch, hurrying along the quiet dusty back streets of West Hampstead to the Overground station on West End Lane, just in time to squeeze onto a Stratford train. Body heat radiates through summer dresses, T-shirts, skirts and shorts in the sun-drenched carriage. A sense of expectancy and excitement rises out of the chatter and laughter; a hundred disparate journeys blend into one. [read more…]
by Howard Colyer
Eleanore feared that she would be buried alive, she feared that she would be stuck in some chamber underground or under the sea; mines and submarines troubled her, though she had entered them only in her imagination: but she had a vivid imagination. I’m cursed with a vivid imagination, she would say, and look at the ground in despair. And she would imagine things, and almost all of them bad. [read more…]
