The Dogs of War

There’s a girl, her curly ginger hair pulled to one side with a turquoise slide, wailing in the cloakroom, tears trailing down her freckled flushed cheeks. Beyond distraught, she’s on the verge of hysteria. A year older, having clocked up my fourteenth year that May,...

Lies, damned lies and…

Lies, damned lies and statistics. For some reason, these words came into my mind, and since, politically-speaking, they summed up January 2022, they are the theme for this blog. The full phrase, There are three kinds of lies – lies, damned lies and statistics, was...

In Xcess

In my previous incarnation as a cartoonist and illustrator, back in those days of editorial demands and demanding deadlines, come December, another self-imposed deadline would be added to the Must Do list ahead of Christmas: the all-important Christmas card – a...

Running Away: the story of a story

If success can be judged by being placed in competition with other writers, then Running Away is one of my successful stories. Written in 2011, sent out into the competitive world of international short story competitions in 2012, it was placed on two longlists,...

Happy Holidays

I have never been someone for whom an annual holiday is a quintessential part of life. This may be due, in part, to my childhood experience of that getting-away-from-it-all word: a working-class background that meant, until the age of twelve, family away-days and a...