We’re ‘familiar strangers’, you and me. Each morning, we board the 6.28 to Paddington at Swansea train station but never interact. Have you noticed me?
Familiar strangers don’t speak. If you wanted to double-check what the announcement just said, you’d ask that guy over there, who’s not a regular.
The reverse is true out of context. Say I saw you in a bar, you’d be more likely to talk to me than you would a perfect stranger.
Continue reading
Jackie sighed as she heard the tap-tap of high heels approaching her office door. Forewarned by Lisa in accounts, she waited as her door swung open. Leoinie crashed through sobbing, “They all hate me. I’ve never been anything but generous to them; now they call me names and snigger behind my back.”
Passing the tissues, Jackie told her to sit. “Why do you think this is happening again, Leoinie? You had the same problem in two different offices. I thought you had made friends with Dawn and were happy there?”
Continue reading
It’s hard to savour every moment when everyone is fussing so much. Honestly, did half the ward of nurses really need to come? They buzz around me like polyester flies.
My daughter adjusts the deckchair, almost tipping me over in the process, asking me again and again if I’m ok.
‘The tide’s coming in, Mum, so you can’t stay here long. Are you sure you don’t want me to sit with you?’
I sigh. ‘I’m fine. You can leave me now.’
‘We’ll just be over there, ok?’
I nod, too tired to reply.
Continue reading
I worked hard in school but had few friends. When my classmates were out playing, I was busy working on my school projects or revising. My only friends were the librarians who would guide me to the books needed to help me in my revision. They taught me to use the computers and how to research for my projects.
My parents supported me in my attempts to do well in school, but through no fault of their own, both being badly disabled, there was no money to finance extras. My uniform came from the schools’ seconds’ shop. Because of this I was the outsider. Sometimes I lay in bed dreaming that one day I would be able to afford the expensive shoes and matching bags that Margaret Ford, one of the most popular girls in my class, sported. Along with her highlighted hair and manicured nails, she had everything, beauty, brains and personality.
Continue reading
Memories of the past ebb and flow around me like a fast-running stream. Here and there, I pick out snatches of melody, laughter or tears, heartache or guilt. Occasionally, small groups clump together in eddies, circling round, threatening to drag me into the whirlpool of emotion of a particular moment; a birth, a death, singing with joy until my voice is hoarse. I linger at each of these, but the need for closure presses me onward.
This is my personal Hall of Ancestors and, as I walk its length, portraits on the wall show each reincarnation; the twenty-first century social media star, the patent office clerk, the eighteenth-century Swiss craftsman. Here, a rural Italian mother garnishes a steaming pasta dish, and there a mediaeval herbalist offers a concoction of their own devising that claims to be a panacea for any illness from a sore throat to parasitic infections.
Continue reading
My heart races against the clock. As 17:59 becomes 18:00, it looks like the word ‘Boo.’ Mum says a swear-word and I jump. My swimming lesson starts now but we haven’t even parked the car.
On the radio, the newsreader says an asteroid will narrowly miss Earth tonight. I picture myself riding it, flames shooting behind me, and diving into the pool just in time.
Mum stops the car so suddenly that I jolt forward. ‘Jump out here, Thomas!’
My bag is wedged in the space in front of my seat. I tug while another clock inside my head counts down until Mum explodes. Beside me, she inflates like a balloon. Three, two, one…
Continue reading
“This is all of the candidates?” I heard him ask his advisors, sotto voce.
His gaze swept me dismissively, no more interested than had I been a speck of lint on his finely tailored collar. I took no offence; clients who have underestimated and tried to double cross me in the past have regretted it, albeit very briefly.
“This is most irregular.” An acolyte was addressing me directly now.
Continue reading
The orange-acned teenager read part of the letter to me: ‘Fit to go back to work.’
Fit? Twelve months of depression after being passed over for the headship at Ysgol Milton Friedman. That went to a kid with a face on him like a lamb sucking on its mother’s teat. Not to the school’s deputy head, with proven management skills garnered from thirty years teaching. ‘The successful candidate has more energy,’ I was told. Meaning obvious: Phillips, you’re too old at fifty-four.
Shortly after came melancholy and lethargy. The GP prescribed anti-depressants. She was a kid too, fresh out of doctors’ college.
It got worse. My wife, Sandra, left. Told me my moodiness would try the patience of an angel, plus she’d met a nice, younger man. That word was like a knife in my heart. Soon after, an overdose of paracetamol. They pumped out my stomach and I’m in the bin, sectioned. Four blurred weeks.
Continue reading
My name is Stephen Sacks and I’m a complete faggot.
Oh, I know, I know, bluntness is discouraged these days and words like that reek of self-loathing but I’m not pussy footing around, tonight I aim for honesty.
I’ll tell you about a revelation I had last week which stoked the embers and relit my passion. I was at an outdoor pool party, held by my sister’s in-laws. A celebration over the fact they had stuck it out for fifty years.
So, there I was, meekly maundering by the barbecue when I became aware of somebody’s nephew, Johnny whatever, wafting by the swimming pool. And as that handsome youth, wearing nothing but tight trunks, beer in hand, talked to another Adonis, dear reader I felt the desire.
Continue readingI had to move my bag to make room for him. It wasn’t as if the bus was even full. It being January 5th, I gave him a sardonic, “Happy New Year!”
“You a Swansea boy?”
“Pontypool,” I said.
“The Pontypool Front Row! Remember them?”
“Bobby Windsor, Charlie Faulkner, Graham Price,” I said.
“More of a Neath boy, me. From Resolven I am … you’d think I’d be one for making New Year’s resolutions, wouldn’t you? It’s in the name.”
I let the chug of the bus answer.
“The number of times I have given up fags and booze … Eventually, the penny drops, don’t it. No point making yourself miserable.”
I could smell the alcohol on his breath, just past mid-day.
Continue readingIt was to be the most exciting evening of my life.
A gala dinner and night in a five star hotel in London all expenses paid, a reward for all my hard work.
Time spent in the spa at the hotel, then the full beauty treatments. Hair, nails all perfect. My outfit the most expensive I’d ever bought.
Walking into the ballroom I noticed people smiling, as I went past feeling good. A waitress sidled up to me, ”Madame you have your dress tucked in your underwear.”