Stories

Yep, I write too - or at least I did. It's been a while since I put finger to keyboard. I've mountains of the stuff, but hesitate to put it all up, as I'm still vaguely thinking about getting it properly published in twentieth-century book style...

as if...

Something about London means no space is too small, no indignity too much to bear to save those five minutes before the next tube. Shuffling left, Ben slotted himself behind a small giant of a man who looked both determined and able to use his bulk to get his way: the teeth of a shark strategy, as when cleaner fish live in sharks' mouths as protection from other predators. It failed...

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...and that's how it ended

The climax was worth waiting for. After speaking to so many hostile crowds, after endless heckling and booing, after becoming used to having to shout just to be heard, he spoke to a supportive, even an adoring crowd and probably the largest he had ever addressed. They listened, they cheered, they encouraged. He was elated, uplifted, even renewed, we were later told by his erstwhile successor...

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christmas in bethlehem

In this slightly edited diary extract, I recall one of my more remarkable christmas days, when a day after the israeli army had pulled out of bethlehem I braved many raised eyebrows to take a day off work and visit the newly free palestinian city on its busiest day of the year. I was not alone...

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the cutting

With thanks to paul cohen (whose latest effort you can read in poetica) for the constructive critique, this is the rewritten story of dragan, refugee from the yugoslav wars, eeking out life in budapest with his granddaughter, as the future creeps up on him...

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