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Season of Vlad and Mellow Nukefulness…
Well, it’s been a long year. Deep in October summer still clings on, frightened, possibly, of a season still to come; but the days are shorter now, and The Ukraine remains defiant of Russia’s threats of nuclear winter. Cold winds are beginning to puff their cheeks, while not for the first time this little island…
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Memoriam
This week, in the home that had been hers for twelve-and-a half eventful years, Honey, our much-loved Labrador, passed peacefully away. She had been ailing for some time with various afflictions which attacked her mobility and were causing her pain. It was time. She gave us all of her life. Until her last few weeks…
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“Have you Come Far?
So I get talking to this American guy in the Grainger Market one day, and he says: “What’s it like being a loyal subject instead of a citizen?” “It’s a fair question. He’s a citizen. I’m not. I’m a loyal subject. I’ve got a queen. He’s got a president. His Commander in Chief will change…
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A Short Yet Fervent Wish: Happiness in the Coming Year.
I wanted to use this banner picture, because of all it says to the world in this revelatory year. Durham Cathedral which nestles among trees and can be so beautiful, reduced – or you might think transformed – into a draftsman’s exercise, an instrument of domination. Money and power proving humanity can be bought, it…
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My Name is John Connor
I’ve long believed in the sentience of machines. I’m not alone. Upon purchasing a new car, or any larger and more expensive (and therefore by implication sentient) machine, the owner’s first move will likely involve attributing a gender orientation to it. And the second will be a christening. My first car was very definitely male. …
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A Meeting on Praed Street
She is sitting by the window and far away in her thoughts when the voice intrudes, asking quietly… “Excuse me, it’s Eve, isn’t it…?” She is sitting by the coffee house window, staring out at Praed Street and the passers-by who hurry against the rain. Hoods and high collars, hunched shoulders, plastic hats of…
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The Mind in Flight
It is three o’clock in the morning. I sit at my desk, the white screen of my monitor glaring at me defiantly, lost in the silence. There are so few moments like these, when the world around me is sleeping and I am not; when the eastern horizon is still black and the landborne stars…
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The Skinny and the Mule
Pietro Valdez was having a bad morning. Bad mornings usually found him leaning against Enzo’s doorpost, beneath the shade of his friend’s straw roof, and this morning was no exception. Here he could rest, draw on a self-rolled cigarette, and contemplate the injustices that existed in the world. Inevitably, he would reach the same…
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Strings
Melissa: This story stands on its own, but readers might be interested in my first encounter with Melissa, which can be found in story-form here, Melissa arches her back, stretching bare flesh against the quilting of her lounger, the better to observe a frisbee player on the beach. “He’s quite the Greek, isn’t he?”…
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To Extinction Rebellion
With gratitude for placing the poor people of our cities under even greater stress, and for your relentless efforts in alienating the rest of us to the entire concept of climate change. Can you take comfort, when you exercise in synthetic clothes, drink from plastic bottles instead of the tap, when you drive a car…
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Meeting on the Motorway
He was driving home, not for the first but the third time this week, and he was tired. Paul’s weariness was an insidious thing, . It had begun not weeks but months since, an insistent fatigue beyond sleep’s cure with roots that grew a little deeper each day, spread a little wider each week; so…
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The Goatherd
Martin’s hand rested on the capstones of the dry stone wall, and Jacintha’s hand covered it with gentle fingers. “It feels so special, here.” She said, her voice subdued almost to a whisper. “I just know we could be so happy, darling. This has to be our house!” Beside them an Agents’ ‘For Sale’ board…
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Cherie
“Are you not going to talk to me, then?” “Yeah, of course – if you want, like.” Martin knew he was blushing. The girl with the long sun-kissed legs confronted him as he stepped out of the elevator cage. Jack, his mate, followed him, making a sound of appreciation in his ear which, had he…
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Frederick Anderson's Story Blog 