writing
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Are you there, Uncle? Can you hear me? It’s late. There’s someone on the phone. An unexpected caller. They say they’re approaching the house, and they may not be alone. http://www.inshortpublishing.com/shop1/uncategorized/interrupter/
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I’m waiting for the tram, at the junction. Waiting where the streets cross, and the lights change, and the cars stop and go in regular patterns, repeating over and over. Passengers stare and I stare back, like we’re sizing each other up. My tram’s late, so I have to keep waiting. And all the time…
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‘None of this is real,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you know that? Did nobody ever tell you?’ ‘They told me other things,’ I said. ‘Stories and rules. But not that. These trees, and the sky: they’re real, aren’t they?’ ‘None of it. All of it doesn’t exist. It’s a confection; as real as a puff of…
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There was that time in Bournemouth. One of the summer holidays of guaranteed sunshine. I was about six years old and one afternoon I had my portrait done by a woman near to the beach. It was done in pastels, I think. It must have been pastels because they smudged, and if you rubbed a…
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When he’s nostalgic, it’s pale blue, like seaside houses. Distant seagulls in morning harbours, old-fashioned cream cakes, and the damp wood of rickety beach-huts. Relaxation is liquid green, like late-summer afternoons. He hears the lazy buzz of insects in the settled heat, and tastes the sweet anticipation of the evening to come. When he’s anxious,…
Barry Lee Thompson 