Sponge

Passionless,
you soak passion from me
like a sponge.
Squeezed dry.

This black mood that inhabits you
inhibits you
and steals away your heart,
your joy of life,
your reason to be.
Leaving a pain-full body.
Spiritless.

Yet still you say your love is strong
and deeper than it ever was.
But today it seems too deep to feel.
And I wonder:
is affection born of habit enough?
Or will love desert us both in time,
slipping through the door
which fleeing passion left ajar?

And yet
your dutiful lips and fingertips
still awaken me.
My passion pours forth, surprising me,
and once again the sponge is heavy,
dripping tears of release
and despair.

Missing, Presumed Dead

The crazy guy wandered the streets of the city, looking in bins and doorways and gutters, muttering all the while: “Where is it, where is it?” Outwardly respectable, his craziness was defined by his daily search which became familiar to shopkeepers, taxi drivers, police officers and down and outs – anybody who routinely inhabited the city streets recognised the crazy guy as crazy.

He stopped passers by and asked them, politely, and in a cultured voice: “Could you help me please? I’m looking for something I’ve lost.” Newcomers were taken in by him and got themselves involved in a fruitless conversation.

“What is it you’ve lost?” they would ask.

“I don’t know,” he would answer. “I only know I have lost it and would like it back.”

The newcomers would scratch their heads and ask a few more questions, all of which would be answered by, “I don’t know but…”, before they would realise they were dealing with a crazy guy and scarper pretty quickly.

The chef at the Bon Appetit, a greasepit of a restaurant, would often chat with the crazy guy. He was an amateur psychologist and wanted to get into the crazy guy’s mind. He fancied he could cure him.

“Tell me, you crazy guy,” he said to the crazy guy one Tuesday afternoon as he watched him rooting through the waste food bins in the alleyway at the back of the greasepit, “tell me what you’re looking for, day in, day out!”

“I don’t know,” said the crazy guy. “I just don’t know. Can you help me find it?”

“Tell me more,” said the chef, wiping his greasy hands on his greasy apron. He was a kindly man, in truth.

“There’s something missing,” said the crazy man,
“there’s something not here that should be here.
I feel there’s a gap, a hole, an absence of something important,
Something that hasn’t a name,
Something I might once have had, have owned,
Have possessed,
But lost along the way.
I try to see it
But there is no substance, no swirl in the mist,
No shimmer in the light as at the ocean’s edge
Far away across a hot summer’s sands.
No distant rustle, like a mouse in the undergrowth,
Like the sigh of an old man on an island of one,
Like the beat of a butterfly’s wings in what’s left of
The rain forest.
No scent borne on a breeze across the sea, redolent of
Exotic lands, of exotic people, of spicy foods.
No touch of the gentlest down upon the cheek of
A fair maiden.
No taste of the cleanness of spring water, barely more than
No taste at all
And yet still perceptible.
Although I cannot name it.
And I cannot rest.
It will not let me be.
It is as necessary as air and water and food and sight and sound.
And I can’t find it.
Can you help me find it, please?”

The chef invited him into the kitchen and gave him coffee and a cigarette.

“I can’t help you, you crazy guy,” he said. “But I know what you mean.”

Could This Be Your Big Break?

Here are details of a novel writing competition - open only to residents of UK and Ireland, I'm afraid.


Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook has helped numerous successful authors and artists on the way to their big-break. Now it could do the same for you. In this, its centenary year, Writers' & Artists' Yearbook is offering 100 writers the opportunity to win an in-depth critique of their work by a leading literary consultancy and the three best entries will go on to be recommended to a top literary agent.

Enter the Writers' & Artists' Yearbook 2007 novel writing competition in conjunction with The Literary Consultancy and you could win:
A full critique by The Literary Consultancy worth £150
Three overall winners will have their work recommended to a top literary agent and be published on the A&C Black and Bloomsbury websites
Submit up to 10,000 words of your novel with a single page synopsis outlining subject matter, genre and plot.
The closing date is 31st January 2007 and the 100 winners will be announced on 10th April 2007.
Read full details, terms and conditions below.
Good luck!

Our manuscript assessment service provides developing writers with first-class critical feedback and can help increase chances of publication within the United Kingdom. http://www.literaryconsultancy.co.uk/



Terms and conditions
1. No purchase necessary.
2. The competition is open to residents of the UK and Ireland, to all ages and nationalities. Entries must be in English.
3. All entries must be original unpublished prose of 10,000 words or less, with a single page synopsis of the proposed novel. Longer entries will not be judged.
4. Writers may submit one entry only.
5. It is a requirement of the competition organisers that all entrants be registered on www.acblack.com. Winners will be notified at the e-mail address or telephone number stated in their registration data. To register now, click here
6. Entries must be submitted printed out in 12pt, double spaced, on one side of A4, preferably in loose sheets, with each page numbered, and posted to:
WAYB07 writing competition
A&C Black
38 Soho Square
London
W1D 3HB
We cannot accept work on disk.
7. The closing date for entries is 31 January 2007. Entries will not be accepted after this date.
8. A list of the winning entrants will be announced on www.acblack.com on 10th April 2007. The 100 critiques will be sent out by 15th June. The work of the three overall winners will be published on the A&C Black and Bloomsbury websites after they are announced on 13th July and will be forwarded to a top literary agent with The Literary Consultancy’s report and recommendation. The agent will undertake to respond individually although in the way and manner they best see fit and with the strict understanding this may not lead to a book deal.
9. By submitting an entry all entrants thereby grant The Bloomsbury Publishing Group the right to publish their entry on www.acblack.com, www.bloomsbury.com and in any publicity material in the event of their entry winning the competition.
10. The Bloomsbury Publishing Group cannot accept responsibility for entries which are not received or which are received after the closing date for any reason. Please do not send the only copy of your manuscript.
11. Winners agree to participate in publicity events in connection with the competition.
12. The Bloomsbury Publishing Group and the winners may enter into agreements which will grant The Bloomsbury Publishing Group the publishing, broadcasting, serial and electronic rights in the winning entries.
13. The Bloomsbury Publishing Group reserves the right to change the rules of this competition without notice.
14. The decision of the competition judges will be final and no correspondence will be entered into.
15. Employees of The Bloomsbury Publishing Group and The Literary Consultancy, and members of their immediate family, are excluded from participating in the competition.

Full details on http://www.writersandartists.co.uk/

Festival City

I was in Edinburgh the other day for an authors meeting and took the opportunity to take a look at the famous Edinburgh Fringe Festival – which proudly proclaims itself ‘the biggest arts festival in the world’. Despite having lived in Scotland for 12 years, and in the UK for a lot longer, this was the first time I had ever been in Edinburgh during the festival period, despite having promised myself for many years I would visit.

There was certainly a buzz going on – from the plethora of foreign accents (and I include English in that) and the massive queue for the ladies’ loos at Waverley Station, it seemed that half the world and his/her dog, child and pushchair was there. Part of the Royal Mile was blocked off from the traffic that plagues the city centre, to provide an arena for a multitude of street performers to do their stuff, and an even larger multitude of somewhat desperate young people thrusting flyers under my nose, to persuade me and all the other passersby to visit their show in preference to the 1800-plus other shows they could choose to go to instead.

The atmosphere was frenetic: music, shouting, messing about and general hilarity – some of it somewhat forced, I have to say - was going on amidst a crowd of largely bemused visitors.

Well, who wouldn’t be bemused with all this to choose from:

Fringe 2006 features 28,014 performances of 1,867 shows in 261 venues. An estimated 16,990 performers will be on Edinburgh’s Fringe stages.

It would take you 5 years, 11 months and 16 days to see every performance back-to-back.

Where on earth do you start?

The fringe is just one of several festivals that take over Edinburgh during August: accordingly I made my way to the Edinburgh International Book Festival – another ‘biggest in the world’ – the good burghers of Edinburgh do not do anything by halves. It makes its home for two and a bit weeks in Charlotte Square Gardens.

It struck me as a far more laid-back, relaxed sort of event. The genteel square is ringed by polite white tents with polite queues outside of people waiting politely to be invited in for a talk or a reading or a debate or a writing workshop. Nobody here touting for my business – book readers are evidently well enough organised to book their tickets in advance – if I’d wanted to attend any of the events, I would have had to take my place in the polite queue for ‘returned tickets’ and take my chances on what was available.

This festival is a tiddler compared with the fringe, although this year there are over 600 authors from over 35 countries taking part. Doubtless these statistics will continue to grow every year, just as has happened with the Fringe since it started way back in 1947.

I picked up a copy of the Book Festival programme and scoured it for events I might have attended if I’d bought my ticket early enough – but rather than feeling peeved I’d missed the opportunity, I found myself thinking, with one event after the other, each designed to publicise a particular book, that sounds really interesting, I must read the book…

Because I have to admit I have a difficulty with books as performance. The Fringe is all about performance – theatre, comedy, song and dance: every word, every action, every note of it, designed to be acted out in front of an audience. The sort of multi-media interactivity that has been around for eons, long before the computer chip was a twinkle in a mad professor’s eye.

But books? By their very nature, a solitary, individual pursuit, surely? Written by solitary, individual writers to be read by solitary, individual readers. The outpourings of the writers’ thoughts on pages – paper or electronic. Do they really translate well to performance? Are authors the best people to listen to? They’ve spent months or years putting down those words in those books in the best way they can – surely we’re better buying their books and reading them, than hearing them being interviewed by another writer about what’s in them?

But maybe I’ve got it wrong – next year I’ll try to get organised early enough to buy some tickets and take my place politely in the queue…

For more info on all the Festivals go to http://www.edinburgh-festivals.com/

A Shaggy Dog Story

The old man sat on the porch, rocking gently on his chair, stroking behind the ears of his old, grey muzzled dog who rested his head on his master’s knee, sighing with contentment. His grandson sat at the old man’s feet, listening to tales from way back when. His grandpa sure could tell some fine tales.

“See, Johnny, nature’s a funny thing.”

“Yessir,” agreed Johnny.

“Just when you think you understand her, she ups and surprises the hell out of you.”

“Yessir,” said Johnny, knowing his place.

The old man paused and sucked on his pipe even though it had gone out at least 30 minutes before. The pause lasted a while, the sort of length that Johnny knew was the build-up to another of his grandpa’s tales. He was just getting it all sorted in his head first. The old man’s eyes crinkled with mischief as he rehearsed the punch line.

“This here dog, this here fleabag of a smelly old hound, hasn’t always been rheumaticky and part deaf and blind as a bat wearing dark glasses in a dark room in the night time when there’s no moon and no street lights outside.”

“Yessir,” said Johnny, smiling at the rat arsed old mongrel.

“Yessir? Nossir, deeee-finitely not sir! This here dog was once the best hunting dog a man could ever wish for. There was nothing he couldn’t flush out, nothing he couldn’t catch, nothing he couldn’t point to… yessir, the best hunting dog a man could have. And all the men folk in the town were jealous of me and my mutt. They couldn’t abide to hear about how good he was. None of their dogs could get within a lick of him.”

The old dog looked at his master, in appreciation of the lies being told on his behalf.

“But even he got his comeuppance one day. Just when he thought he was Superdog, he met his match, yessirree Bob he did!”

The old man paused and looked at his grandson, daring him to spoil the tale with a sceptical look or too broad a smile or too quick a response. Johnny, skilled in the art of listening, counted to 20.

“Tell me, Grandpa. How did he meet his match?”

The rules of the game being satisfied, the old man settled back, his eyes assuming a far away look. The dog stared at him in anticipation of more praise.

“Oh, lemme see now. Must’ve been almost 12 years ago when me and the mutt here was out in the old woods back of Jenny Lund’s place. We’d been out for a couple of hours and got ourselves some rabbits but the mutt here wasn’t satisfied. He was a twitching and a sniffing and a staring and a low growling, knowing there was something in them woods that needed hunting. ‘Come, boy, come,’ I kept saying to him but he just took no notice, which sure was unusual cause he was an obedient dog normal times. But, no, he wouldn’t come to me, no matter how I shouted to him. Just insisted on going north, deeper into the woods, and looking for me to follow. And it was getting terrible dark, but it made no difference to him. He had a noseful of some critter and that was that. He had to hunt some more.”

Johnny felt himself in the woods that night, along with his grandpa and his hound. He could feel the night closing in, hear the branches stirring in the winds, smell the dankness and, almost, a foetid smell of an elusive quarry.

“So, what could I do? I followed him, that’s what. Deep into the woods, further’n I’d even been before so’s I lost all sense of direction, twisting and turning along animal tracks, stumbling over old tree stumps, splashing through pools. I tell you, Johnny, it’s the kind of night that makes a man think of spooks. I kept my gun ready, that’s for sure.”

The old man leaned forward and took another suck at his unlit pipe. His eyes gleamed as he recalled the night in the woods, just him and his hound and…

“All of sudden, the mutt stops,” he said. “He stops and sinks down on his belly, hackles raised, tail down, growling, low. A belly growl it was, as deep as I’ve ever heard him growl before or since.”

The old dog raised his eyebrows and pricked up his ears. The story was getting to the exciting bit. He could tell. His tail swept the floor gently at his master’s feet. Swish, swish!

“I hears a snuffling and breaking of twigs just off to my right,” he continued, picking up the pace of the story. “And I eased the safety catch off’n the rifle. I crouched down, looking where the mutt was looking, and then I seen him!”

“Who’d you see, Grandpa? Who’d you see?”

The old man cleared his throat and spat expertly a distance of six feet over the porch rail, much to the admiration of his grandson who could only ever manage three.

“I saw eyes,” the old man said in a querulous voice. “Eyes! Shiny, luminous eyes! Unearthly, it was. Unnatural. Great big shiny eyes staring straight at me. Fair made my shirt run up and down my back, I’m telling you. And the mutt here started whining. He’d seen nothing like it before and he started a shivering and a whining and a trembling and a slinking…”

Then old dog lifted his head off his master’s knee for the first time and gave him a look of stark disapproval. His tail stopped swishing. He wasn’t pleased with the way the tale was going.

“Gee, Grandpa, what was it?”

“I wasn’t waiting to ask, Johnny. I let it have both barrels – bang bang! Just like that. Well the thing, whatever it was, just toppled over and the mutt started barking and howling and my hair stood on end and the pair of us were pretty useless, let me tell you. It took us both ten minutes or so to settle down, cause, you know why?

“Why, Grandpa?”

“Because those eyes just carried on shining even though the thing was down on its side and wasn’t gonna move no more.”

“What was it, Grandpa? What was it?”

“I’m getting to that, Johnny. Just let me get my breath back, me and my old dog.”

The dog gave his master an old-fashioned look.

“So, me and the mutt crept up on the thing, slow and gentle and cautious, as cautious could be. Both of us were more than a mite jumpy, let me tell you.”

“And? And?”

“Well, when we got up to it, it was the weirdest thing. All it was was a deer, lying on its side, dead to the world. My both shots had got it clean through the heart. But, the damndest thing, it had two torchlights tied to its head and switched on. Tied to its head with rope so they faced forward and shone ahead of the deer. That’s what we’d seen, me and the mutt.”

“What!!!” said Johnny, mouth open.

“And just then, off to the left, I heard a hooting and a hollering and laughing and a crashing and a snapping from upwards of half a dozen men running away through the woods. And they was calling my name as they ran off, and laughing fit to bust.”

“I don’t understand, Grandpa.”

“No, Johnny, neither did I at the time, but when I’d sat there a few minutes and looked at that poor dead animal, I come to realise it was just some damn fool’s bright eyed deer of a joke.”

Unbound Press - A Progress Report

I am pleased to announce, although rather tardily, that the Unbound Press Journal is alive and kicking and progress has actually been made, thanks to Amy's unstinting efforts and consummate skills.

I've gotta say that the original idea of producing a literary journal has proven to be not a simple task at all. None of the three of us appreciated just what a demanding process we would be getting involved in. The production of the hard copy alone has been beset by problems and difficulties, but we keep having to bear in mind that we had no experience when we (ie Amy) came up with the idea in the first place and that the collective learning curve has been so steep as to be vertical. Ouch!

Anyway, we have now proof-read the final draft of the journal and the next stage will be to send it off to a friendly printer in Alabama for a very precise quote (which we only know will be more expensive than we first envisaged). But we are getting somewhere and I can assure all those who haven't yet succumbed to boredom about the whole business that we are 'nearly there'. Oh yes we are.

And, it behoves me at this particular time to acknowledge Amy's massive contribution to this first publishing effort. Only the Sensible One and I will know just how much time and effort (and skill) she has put into the journal. I think you will all be impressed with the finished article. Please bear with us a little while longer :o)

Le Mirage

It was difficult for Nicholas to separate fact from fantasy much of the time. He had the propensity, which is so evident in politicians and children, that made him believe a thing to be so simply by saying it. He’d been like that all of his life, his mother said. It made life awkward, she said.

There was the time his flights of fancy would make his parents laugh. As a little boy, he would take imaginary friends on family walks. Thomas the Tank Engine and Cheeky Little Percy were his favourites. He’d pull the imaginary steam engines along with imaginary string, taking care at kerbs and manhole covers to negotiate a clear path for them. Everybody thought he was sweet and they admired the engines, encouraging his imagination. His parents beamed.

When he was 12, his thoughts were devoted to football. He spent all of his spare time wearing the kit of Macclesfield Town, the local professional team, and kicking a football around in his back garden. He was useless. Couldn’t even make the school team, and yet he would regularly tell his pals at school that the Macclesfield FC scout wanted him to go for trials when he was 15.

At 18 he impressed the girls at the local Palais de Dance with tales of how he was a helicopter pilot. In the pubs, he was a lightweight amateur boxer destined to turn pro in the next couple of years.

He got a job in the Personnel Department of the area’s main hospital. Whenever he was out of the office, wandering the corridors, he assumed the identity of a junior doctor in his own mind and sometimes for the benefit of the occasional patient he happened to bump into.

His imaginings were, on the whole, harmless. He put no patient’s life at risk, nor did he take any young Macclesfield lass for a trip in a helicopter. But his wife was doomed to permanent disappointment from the moment she said, “I do.” His pretences sloughed off within the first few months of marriage and she could no longer look forward to the promise of fame and fortune alongside the rising star of the north west business community. His inventions, his concepts, his business plans melted away under domestic scrutiny.

But he was personable and fun to be with, if only on account of not knowing when it was that the wheat or the chaff was on offer. People had to keep on their toes dealing with him.

So everybody was shocked to discover one morning that he had upped and left Macclesfield. He had bought himself a small yacht from a brokerage in Conway, North Wales and was sailing it down to the English South Coast all alone. He had never sailed before and never mentioned anything about boats. He just left a note that said: “Better drowned than duffers. If not duffers, won’t drown.”

He’s living in France now. La Rochelle, I think. He still has his boat which he sailed in British waters for a number of years before setting off for points south. I hear he has a small apartment there and a French girlfriend. He speaks fluent French and has taken a lease on a small waterfront café from which he hopes to cater to the British Yotties selling bacon sandwiches and the like. He tells people he is on the run from Manchester gangsters after winning a substantial sum of money at a casino by cheating. This makes him laugh because he remembers the old days when he used to tell lies all the time.

I know all this because I was his best friend at school and I have just got a letter from him this morning. It’s the first time I’ve heard from him in years. Last I heard, he’d been sectioned under the Mental Health Act. Anyway, I’m pleased to hear he has got his life back on track. I’m glad he’s successful and happy in La Rochelle.

Yeah, right!

“I don’t believe them.”

“Here we go again. What don’t you believe? And who don’t you believe? What’s the problem this time?”

“June and that fellah of hers… wotisname…Chris Something-Or-Other.”

“Chris Turner.”

“Yes, him.”

“What about them?”

“I don’t believe them, that’s what.”

“Are you going to tell me what it is you don’t believe? If not, stop bugging me.”

“I’m not bugging you, I’m just thinking out loud.”

“Well, either get on with your thinking out loud or keep it to yourself. I’m trying to do something here.”

“What’re you doing?”

“I’m trying to write something, for God’s sake!”

“Keep your hair on. I was only saying.”

“Well don’t.”

“Hmmph, no need to get like that about it. I was only saying I didn’t believe June and Chris, that’s all. No need to get your knickers in a twist.”

“OK, I’ll stop writing… there! Now, are you going to tell me or what?”

“It’s nothing really. It doesn’t matter.”

“Aaaaaaaaggghhhhhh!”

“Alright, alright… I was just thinking that when they said they couldn’t help it, I don’t believe that’s true.”

“Couldn’t help what?”

“You know…”

“No I bloody well don’t!”

“How they met and ran off together.”

“Oh, that! Is that it?”

“Do you believe them?”

“I’ve no idea. I haven’t given it the same amount of thought you have, clearly. It’s none of my business. It only concerns those two… and their significant others, of course. I try to keep my nose out of other people’s business, unlike some I could name.”

“Meaning?”

“Nothing! Carry on.”

“Well, I reckon anyone can help it, running off together that is. It’s a choice they make isn’t it?”

“Obviously, but it’s a story as old as the hills and I don’t suppose it’ll matter at the end of the day. People meet and settle down and split up all the time. Empires have been won and lost because of it. More powerful than dynamite, or so they say.”

“Yes, but what about loyalty?”

“Don’t ask me, ask them. They’re the ones who ran away, not me.”

“I’d look a bright bugger going up to them and asking why they did it, wouldn’t I? Have some sense, will you.”

“Well, how the hell should I know what they were thinking? How the hell should I know what their marriages were like? Must have been something wrong, mustn’t there?”

“Makes you think, though, doesn’t it?”

“No, it doesn’t. Now, please stop bugging me. I’m trying to write.”

“OK… what’re you writing?”

“I’m trying to write something about two people having a conversation about another couple who have run away together.”

“Sounds boring.”

“It is ‘cos I keep getting interrupted.”

“Ooooh… sorreeeee!”

In Good Faith

I had no reason to doubt his word. He was smartly dressed, well spoken and carried a briefcase that looked very official. He even showed me a card he got out of his wallet – one of those laminated efforts that English policemen carry and flash at you when they want to give you bad news or before they arrest you. Not that I’ve ever been arrested by an English policeman. Or any other kind, come to that. One of them did give me some bad news not long ago, though. He told me my Uncle Ron had been killed in a fight outside the Dog and Duck, but he was in uniform at the time so he didn’t need to flash a card at me – the policeman, that is, not my Uncle Ron. I don’t know what Uncle Ron was wearing when he was killed. Probably his brown suit. He usually wore his brown suit to the Dog and Duck. He said it suited him. He was quite a laugh was Uncle Ron. It’s a shame he got himself killed. Another time he made me laugh was when he came to our house for Sunday lunch and sat himself down on the sofa. My old mother pointed at his legs and said: “Eeh, look at Ron’s bare legs!” And it was true. He had bare ankles and his feet were bare too except that he had his brown shoes on to match his brown suit. Quick as a flash, Ron said, “Excuse my ankles, Edith, but I’ve run out of socks.” Lord, we did laugh at that. Anyways, as I was saying, Uncle Ron got killed in a fight outside the Dog and Duck a couple of weeks ago. I wouldn’t mind but it wasn’t anything to do with him, the fight. He was just coming home having had one or two too many – you know how it is – and he stumbled into these two blokes who were having a set-to on the pavement. No more ado, but one of them nuts him. Down goes Ron like a sack of potatoes and he bangs his head on the kerb and it kills him, just like that. What a fuss there was. The two blokes legged it away but the police caught them both next day and one of them’s going to be tried for murder - or was it manslaughter? I’m not sure – some time in November, I think. So, back to the tale. As I was saying, I had no reason to doubt his word, this smart looking chap who knocked at the front door this morning. “Victim Support,” he says. “About your Uncle Ron,” he says. “We’re collecting for the Victim Support Scheme to help victims of crime like your Uncle Ron and Freda, his beloved wife.” I didn’t like to tell him that Ron and Freda hadn’t got on for years. That’s family business isn’t it, and best kept in the family. So he showed me his card that had ‘VICTIM SUPPORT’ in big letters typed out on it and asked me if I’d like to donate. So I gave him fifty quid. Well, I mean, he was my uncle after all. Ron, that is, not the smart looking chap. But, guess what! You could have knocked me down with a feather when a young policeman comes around not three quarters of an hour ago and tells me they are looking for a smart looking chap who’s going round swindling people out of money by pretending to be from Victim Support. What he does, apparently, is he reads about some crime in the paper, then visits the victim and their relatives and gets them to donate money. Fancy that! It looks like I’ve been done! I’ll tell you what though, he’s very enterprising.

Virtualit Interactive Tutorials

Here's an interesting and useful website - a simple and accessible introduction to literary analysis. It starts from the basics, 'walking' you through the various structural and stylistic elements of selected stories and poems.

http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/default.asp?uid=0&rau=0

Highly recommended!

Who Knows?

Trevor’s soul had withered away, leaving in its place a hole the size of an open cast mine whose minerals had been extracted to distraction years ago. Instead of valuable minerals, the hole was lined by a wet grey shale whose dust had combined with the trickling ground water to create a grey paste the colour of despair. The paste stuck to everything it touched and only spread more widely inside him when wiped with an ordinary damp cloth. It would require an extraordinarily powerful detergent to cleanse Trevor’s soul of the grey paste.

The therapist had offered Trevor several damp cloths - relaxation techniques, breathing exercises, yoga, acupuncture, hypnosis, under-the-pillow recordings of cetaceans chattering to each other somewhere just off the Marianas Trench. They only succeeded in spreading the grey paste from his soul to his mind. A dangerous thing to do, if you ask me anything. His father’s advice to ‘tough it out’ was similarly useless although it had the benefit of drying the paste so that it formed hard lumps on his soul. At least it didn’t spread but Trevor know it would take force at some time in the future to break down those lumps once they had calcified. Electricity was one option.

The therapist offered hypnosis but Trevor couldn’t suspend his disbelief sufficiently and regarded the counting backwards process as mumbo jumbo that was only for fools.

Chinese medicines and homeopathic remedies, purchased at great cost, didn’t work in their turn. They only added snake oil to the grey paste, making the resulting mixture a glutinous mess that would need a pressure hose to remove.

“If you were able to see that the glutinous mess is really only a product of the irrational employment of language inside your head,” said the therapist. “we’d be able to get somewhere. Cognitive therapy would help, you know.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Trevor.

“It’s all down to chemicals, you know,” said the therapist.

“I don’t know about that,” said Trevor.

“Negative thoughts create certain chemicals in your brain that make you feel bad that leads to more bad chemicals that make you feel worse… and so on.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Trevor.

“All the life crises you have described are enough to give anybody negative thought patterns.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Trevor, trying hard not to smear grey paste on the therapist’s leather couch. “Is this cognitive therapy? Are we doing it now?”

Hip Hip Hooray

“They’re never apart.”

“Who aren’t?”

“Julia and Julian.”

“They’re married.”

“I know that. But they’re never apart.”

“So?”

“It’s unhealthy.”

“What is?”

“Never being apart. Being together all the time. Having no time to themselves. Always…”

“OK, I get the idea.”

“Don’t you think?”

“Different strokes for different folks.”

“True… but, still… don’t you think?”

“No I don’t.”

“Well I do.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s not like they are related. Not by blood anyway. Just by marriage.”

“But they’re supposed to be close.”

“Not that close.”

“I think it’s sweet.”

“I think it’s unsavoury.”

“You’re very judgemental.”

“I’m right to be in this case. It’ll all end in tears, you mark my words.”

“I was talking to them only the other day. They seem perfectly happy together, perfectly well adjusted. They love each other.”

“Well, they might do now but they need to be careful. Love soon flies out of the window when you get money problems or kids come along. What if she fell pregnant?
How would they cope then?”

“They’ll be fine. They really really love each other.”

“They must do to have had that operation. Whoever allowed such a thing? Joined at the hip indeed!”

A series of small and foolish sketches

1. Temptation

“Luxuria, my darling, come here a moment will you?”

“Of course I will, Big Boy.”

“Ohhhhhh!”

“That was quick.”

The End

2. Yum.

“Well, you can do the dishes then, Gula.”

The End

3. … nine… ten…OUT!

“…and Superbia’s never gonna make it off the canvas… it’s all over… the fight’s all over…after all the hype, it’s over in the first round…”

The End

4. Shut the Fuck Up (A Double Act)

“If you mention their new car once more, Invidia, I swear I’m gonna punch you on the nose…”

“You never get me anything nice, Ira. I hate you. Let’s split.”

The End

5. It’s the Modern Way

“Certainly, Mr Avaritia. So, just to check this is right… that’s a yellow Hummer for the shopping trips and a pink Hummer for nights out on the town? And for work?”

The End

6. Hangin’ Around

“I don’t care how many toes you’ve got, I’m your mother, Acedia, and I’m telling you to get off your arse and do some work.”

The End