I think of those days often, when I seemed to spend my life on trains. In some ways, I've never left that journey, and the landmarks along the way have assumed the importance of personal ciphers. The dead tree at the centre of a marsh, pale as bone. The clearing at the edge of a … Continue reading Clean
Tag: writing
Automated Houses
I visited an old acquaintance, a performance poet who had left the city some years before, and moved to the wilds of the north. Our friendship had always been tentative and slightly awkward, in that I had little respect for his work, and he, I knew, felt the same about mine. Still, after many years … Continue reading Automated Houses
Canvases
At one time or another, the cottage appeared to have been the residence for a landscape painter: Mitchell uncovered scraps of oil-soaked material, brushes, and dried-out paints, and on a set of shelves at the back of the room, he found a pile of canvases. One of the pictures showed a coastal scene, a wide … Continue reading Canvases
Snakes
We headed to the outskirts of the city to buy snakes, travelling by train to a dirt track beside a busy road. We saw them uncoiling by a long ditch that ran along the dark fields: long black snakes, muscular and flexuous, some of them two or three metres in length. Headlights picked up the … Continue reading Snakes
My War
I sat out my war in a series of back end stations, always behind the frontline, couched down away from missiles and drones. The days were long and filled with abortive chess moves, and the radios rarely worked. We raided local supplies for wine and cheeses, although these were poor products, lacking in bucolic artistry, … Continue reading My War
Interzone 285
My story 'Frankie' features in issue 285 of Interzone, out this week. 'Coming over with the night train and what else is there to say? Moonlight and gin is the recipe. None of us have the time. Starlings and eagles happen. Dream is the key. The line of traffic in the rural road, the faded … Continue reading Interzone 285
Chapel
In that dream, I walk through the woods near my childhood home, along the road towards my grandparents' house, a narrow, circuitous route over the railway lines, where I cycled regularly to find new places to play, idle and adventurous through those days of exquisite freedom. In the dream, it always dusk, long shadows cast … Continue reading Chapel
Crossroads
We drove out to the old routes, the old roads, the paths across woodland and beyond the railway line, the fields where silage had been sealed in rolls of black plastic, a squat redbrick church, an old manor house converted to a retreat for affluent addicts. I remembered how we would often rove (that word, … Continue reading Crossroads
Frankie
After Frankie died, his shack in the woods became a sort of shrine. People travelled from all over the country to visit this place in the mountains to the south of our country, where he’d seen out the last of his days. Students and children camped outside on the grass, sleeping under light blankets, eating … Continue reading Frankie
Summer Reading: Goodbye Columbus by Philip Roth
It is 2000, nine months into the new millennium, and he has lived in London for nearly three years. He rents a flat with his girlfriend, on the edge of Brixton, near the back entrance to Brockwell Park. When they first moved here, they would walk across the park some evenings, to a restaurant under … Continue reading Summer Reading: Goodbye Columbus by Philip Roth
Absence Club 