Stories
In a world where words sometimes fail to capture the depth of emotion, stories speak louder.
Stories
Here is the heart of the site — my stories. Some are newly written, others are older works given a fresh coat of paint. They range from quiet, contemplative tales to more energetic flights of imagination, all exploring the Big Bang Questions that have fascinated me since childhood: Where am I? What am I? Why am I?
VIOLET DENNING
Nowadays Violet Denning only flew business class. Such privilege had arrived on the back of promotion. For the last three years she had flourished in a high-powered job as the CEO of Thames Meadows, one of London’s premier hotels and conference centres.
BELUGA
On discovering that Beluga had shot himself dead I felt huge relief. The astonishing news might have escaped me if it had not been for a friend who lived in Beluga’s neck of the woods where the suicide made a splash.
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
THE MAN WHO DIED TWICE
When his widow asked me to do a reading at Henry Doyle’s funeral, something appropriate to the occasion, I initially hesitated. I wanted to know why me. “Because he liked and respected you,” she replied. “And you knew him better than anyone else in those final months.” Being a proud Welshman I chose a Dylan Thomas poem, the one that made most sense in those unique circumstances. Nobody who I had treated with a terminal illness had ever raged against the dying of the light quite as diligently as Henry, or indeed – given the way things are turning out – quite so ineffectually.
INTRODUCTION TO A DOCTOR’S DILEMMA
THE APOSTATE
My name is Maureen Sharples and I have been a member of All Souls Church for nineteen years since I took up a post at a local primary school. At the prompting of our vicar, Reverend Douglas Merryweather, I have undertaken to write an account of the tragic event that took place at our church on August 20th 2023. It is to be deposited in the church archive so that present and future generations may be properly acquainted with the facts as they transpired and draw their own conclusions about the causes. During these subsequent months gossip and speculation, much of it superstitious in nature, have been rife and our church committee are now adamant that the truth is not distorted into a myth which continually casts a shadow over our faith community.
THE YIPS
The mind is a secret place. We love, we resent, we fear, we wonder, we imitate (oh, how disingenuously we do that!) we change, we conform and usually with little awareness why these states are occupying us. It is as if the world our mental faculties survey swarms with violent mannerisms and tics and it is purely a matter of chance which ones will innocently pass us by and which will cling and chronically infect us.
THE LIFT
“Surely you can handle it?” snorted Sal. “What would be gained by me coming in?”
“Well, you’re the boss,” replied Jez apologetically. “The buck stops with you. In the event of a – erm? – tragedy, I mean.”
Sal bit her tongue. She felt furious. This was the first Saturday she had taken off work in two months and now her deputy had rung up because of what he had described
A Little Bit Of Mexico
It had begun as careless small talk at the office Christmas party. “No, I’ve never been, Jade, but I know several people who have,” confided Alice Little, the new editorial director of features as she did her festive rounds. Her brief was to be less eurocentric and more globally ambitious in Hipster magazine’s perspective. “Mexico is a land of extremes, the gateway to Latin America,” she enthused, “the gullet that vomits up poverty stricken immigrants into the USA – desert, mountains, amazing biodiversity and of course those drug barons who have been in the news again lately.”
A DOG’S LIFE
There is nothing special about me which is almost certainly why I became a teacher. It’s not a bad job if you avoid inner city schools. A leafy suburb, an affluent market town or a rural village usually provide safe environments, by which I mean classes full of tame students. At training college I had a cynically wise tutor. “I have just two tips,” he advised when the time came for me to apply for jobs. “Don’t ever get too close to your students and never pretend to yourself that you’ve got a social conscience.”
A LIFE OF BLISS
As they lowered her coffin into the hole on that windswept autumnal morning I realised in a sudden bewildered spasm of grief that I now existed wholly alone, an automaton condemned by fate to wander aimlessly and survive in whatever mindless mechanical way I could devise for the duration of my life.