Slipping between browsers at Borough market, she pretended an interest in literature, in homeware and clothes, in vinyl. Her hand dipped foreign pockets. Some coins, receipts, some lint. Some nothing. She was counting again the coins in the underpass, handing lint alms out with receipts to the breeze, when - Aight, Letitia. You lookin cold, … Continue reading And When I Sleep, Luella. [ix]
Medication teeth, rotund in dungarees, grey dreads adorned with beads (and other Keith Richard knickknacks), Jessica shows a greeting hand. Bangles singing. In and out of the lobster and bronze crowd to The Standard. Dialects bubbling, a foam of voice. The gulls loom and retreat and shadow the pale sand, the bodies. Beyond this, the … Continue reading The Colour of The Crabmeat.
Crazy Jeannie and Pleasant Terry finally got married again. Fair play to them. But, somewhere, somehow, along the way, in exchanging names twice, they confused each other’s nicknames, so that he, at last, found her, pleasant, and she, him, eventually, crazy. The actual details of how, or why, this confusion occurred are obscure. That’s … Continue reading Unexpected Butterfly.
She retreated an inch within and the piss porcelain and wet paper towels and the shit littered tiles and her size seven boot, printing damp jam to the door of the lavatory where she found herself, all seemed suddenly quite salubrious. But she wouldn't take a piss in there. Breathed out, rubbed her arms, rubbed … Continue reading And When I Sleep, Luella. [v]
It started to rain, so I dripped into The Eight Kings. The usual liquid-lunchers, afternoon boozers, the work-shy, the free. The knock-off merchants, too, and the old. The two-for-one crowd with the pushy pushchair. I could hear Snoyle laughing it up with the bookie boys behind me. They were playing a game of cards. Far too … Continue reading The Definitive Slide.
Each minute thumbed hours' rumour and into the numbered dark she tumbled. The tin boy rubbed his tin ribs until he tired of this, then he rose. He gave her the sleepy eyed fingers, as cast off, as discard, as hex. He wore penned pentagrams on his palm, shook his head on her and went. … Continue reading And When I Sleep, Luella. [iv]
