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Hide and seek
1 One summer afternoon in the long school holidays five children wandered off to have adventures in the countryside. They were all nine-year-olds who lived in the semi-rural outer suburbs …
We’re living in mundane times
Gerry Barrington and Teddy Frobisher popped round for a (socially distanced) catch-up Great to see you! Come in! And you can take that grubby mask off Gerry, I’ve had my …
Anobaith
I despair. No person with a modicum of intelligence, conscience and decency can do anything other than despair in the rotten to the core UK controlled neck and crop by …
A teenager’s Christmas in Wales
Unedited entries from Five-Year Diary 1966SUNDAY DECEMBER 25thChristmas Day. Sunny & frosty. Sheaf knife from Auntie Hazel & Uncle Roy. Spirograph from Nanny & Poppa. Sports coat from Mum & …
Waiting for Pennsylvania
How many beans make five? Five. Correct. What weighs more, a ton of feathers or a ton of iron? They weigh the same. Correct. Constantinople is a long word. Spell …
They never went away
I feel like Heledd in Cynddylan’s hall, A roofless ruin amid a land ransacked, Or Taliesin seeing comrades fall As rampant Saxon brutes the corpses hacked, Or frightened Beuno by …
Risible
What can I get you, Archbishop? Tea? Coffee? A soft drink? Homemade turnip wine? Something stronger? Give me a large port. Umm…Rotterdam? How about a Bloody Mary? Be patient, Gerry …
Escape route
He waited until darkness fell. In comfortable walking boots, warm clothing and a waterproof hiking jacket with the hood up, he shut the front door as quietly as possible and …
The thing is…
A black cat came to the back door. A young cat, small and thin and nervous. Usually I shoo local cats away, to prevent them shitting in the herbaceous borders …
Reading, writing and rhetoric
I live the life I always wanted: the writer’s life. Somehow or other, I attained this life without resources, assistance, support, encouragement, inheritance, privilege, patronage, influential friends and nepotistic networks, …
