Category: Uncategorized
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The Christmas Hospital Pick-Up
Arriving your sphincter tightens, being where mother died and her abuser lives on. But then there is the cancer. Helping your sibling with her father’s hospital regime, whilst often wishing him dead instead of her, conflicts your innards, tying you in knots. The semi with magnolia and incongruous diamond-leaded windows looks the same and yet…
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Lockdown Madness
Lockdown the third, was into its twelfth week. The cold, dark days of winter presenting a different challenge than the novelty of the first ‘stay at home’ curfew the previous spring. I had a message from the mother of my children. Our youngest son was in crisis. His psychotic, cannabis induced, episodes of eight years…
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Boxes
Ernst closed the inner door, leaving the front door slightly ajar for air, as was his habit. He placed a foot each side of the long rolled up carpet that lay the whole length of the room and walked almost its length before making two right-handed ninety degree turns to arrive back by the windows.…
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Brexit – Exit
It was one of Grant’s mates who invited me along to the meeting. Suzie and I were mildly ‘Brexity’ but not that bothered really. We had voted for it in the referendum. Without really talking that much about it, I think that we had both got so fed up with politics and all politicians, that…
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The Hoarder
Ernst was increasingly becoming a social isolate. He had lived in his large three-bedroom maisonette for nearly quarter of a century. Gradually the people he knew were dying. Most notably Ian who had died earlier in the year. Whilst he and Ernst had never been lovers, they had been first friends, and later companions, for…
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Scent Marking
The first time I spoke to my neighbour was in the first lockdown of the Covid years. I’d been out with Nigel. Seagulls’ screeching ricocheted off the ridge of every roof as I turned off the seafront into the narrow pedestrian streets that wound back into the old town. They were constant, but bloody loud…
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Summer Dream
Warmth is a strong emotion. The layers of belonging, the physical, emotional and basic sensory heat enfolding me. The joyful sense of completeness and achievement stretching out with a long finish, a note held by an orchestra where the strings take up that haunting long finishing note, gently rising, one from another, or perhaps a…
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Fiat Punto Rides Again
“Ooh… hello, is this the bus for Oliver’s Battery?” “That’s right darlin’. Single or return?” The lady smiled, fishing for the pass in her bulging handbag. “That’s fine. ‘old tight luv”, nodding, eyes flicking from rear camera to wing mirror. The orange blink of indicator smearing across the wet road, he slid open the droplet-beaded…
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Dear Mum
Dear Mum, The Beast from the East has returned to mark the 3rd anniversary of your departure. The bitter easterly wind scours the valley beyond my window. The view of St Catherine’s is one that you would have loved. My eyes sting with the rawness of the freezing dry Siberian air, even staring through the…
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A sense of place
A sense of place and belonging is a powerful emotion. An affinity for a location, the built environment, the vegetation, the air, the view, the very soil under one’s feet spawns nationalistic extremism; but it can simply be an affectionate connection. A guardianship. Gratitude for and enhanced, untarnished memories of a place, given up freely,…
Winchester Words 