I am a multitude of things.
One.
I am mulling over that couple breaking up in Café Nero. The flash of his white, crumpled tissue pressed to his face caught my eye, like a painted red flag in some black and white film. His shoulders shook. I never actually saw her face. She sat with her back [...]

Some people hug easier than others.
Other people lose sleep over how to hug. The ‘will they, won’t they, how hard do I squeeze‘ huggers, the ‘arms around shoulders neck or waist?‘ huggers. The difficult huggers, they exude an air of discomfort from afar. Their niggles start from ten paces away, you can see it on [...]

Write about people, someone says. I trawl in my mind through the people I might want to write about. The familiar gets predictable. The predictable gets boring. I need new flourishes. I need mysterious people with kittens in bags, mysterious people with bags under eyes telling tales of great, mysterious sadness, mysterious people sitting shivering [...]

This is dangerous, he says, licking his lips. A perfect drop of crimson red falls from them and lands heavily on the table top. Like someone just jumped from the top floor of a high-rise tower block, it breaks off into pieces, hop skip and jumps across the chalked out squares which is the [...]

He peered at me with his small, permanently bemused eyes. Several inches of brown, knee-high socks peeped out between brown leather shoes, and brown, sadly misfitting trousers. I reminded myself of the time he wore his tie over his jumper.
He said to my slumped figure, Get some R. and R.
I looked at him blankly. [...]

My first day of freedom begins with a drip of ice-cold water from the leaky attic window. This is number one on the list of things to sort before Thursday. It’s not so bad a way to begin a day, especially it being not at the beginning of the day at all, really, but past [...]

Being a bit short of my own words today, I have borrowed a few from Susanna Clarke. I am in love with her writing. I don’t want it to ever end. Luckily it looks as if it might do just that. Jonathan Strange… is twenty-five doorstops fat.
… Mr Honeyfoot’s post-chaise travelled through a world that [...]

Where did my energy go? I’m popping those probiotics my mother bought me a while ago with a frequency which puts to shame even those many teenage popper-and-ProPlus-takers. These anti-antibiotics, they promise such wonderful things! All good things come at a price, however; with every swallow I’m involuntarily reminded that each must cost around 20 [...]

It exists, however adamantly you try to argue against.
Between the unlit match and the untouched cigarette, lying horizontal at opposite sides of the bed with their heads resting on respective pillows. Pristine pale pink sheets pulled up to chins.
A spark.
The flip of a cigarette case and ten minutes later, sheets crumpled around the two. To [...]

On a train again, only this time no saying hello or goodbye, but shopping with my sister. I’m sitting with my back facing the front of the train. I hate moving backwards like this, but it’s the only seat in the carriage and my feet refuse to take me past the elbows and suitcases and [...]