‘Darling, I don’t know how to put this.’ He stared at the flaccid bacon rind on his plate, forked a piece of fried tomato, shoved it into his mouth unenthusiastically, then set the fork back down. ‘Please don’t get defensive,’ he raised both hands in the air as though giving himself up to arrest. ‘I’m … Continue reading Stripper
She had once read a parable, something annoyingly New Age that took a sledgehammer to a perfectly digestible message and ruined it with sentimentality and blatancy. Still, she had remembered it, so it had served its purpose. It was about a man who hated life, was weighted down with worries, personal ailments, family predicaments. Then … Continue reading Retirement Day
I move seats to sit opposite him rather than talk across the aisle, as I had been before the train started moving. He looks distinguished: Donegal tweed jacket in colours of the bog in summer, pen clipped into his breast pocket, peacock blue lambswool jumper, pink striped Oxford shirt. He’s wearing specs – clear Perspex, … Continue reading Mission
The Sleeper I woke in the small hours and listened to the night. Too early for gulls, too late for the murderously screeching cats. The previous night, I had wakened at the same time and heard a voice (or was it two?) echo around the backgreen. The voice, not loud, was like a radio turned … Continue reading The Sleeper and Her Watcher
Early last year I went to hear Sara Ahmed speak about her new book, The Feminist Killjoy Handbook. In a city that rarely whoops (Edinburgh restraint) I was astonished to hear American husting-style whoops as Ahmed took to the stage, though perhaps they were more subversive than joyful. We were served up a rare smile as Ahmed … Continue reading Down With Dishcloths
I’ve been going through an Anita Brookner phase. I read A Misalliance, quickly followed by A Start in Life, after which I watched the film adaption of Hotel du Lac. I love her. Love the odd, other worldliness of some of her detached characters, whom I fear I might, at times, resemble. Here are the opening lines of A … Continue reading This Uneasy Month
Have you ever been told a piece of family lore so vividly that even though you weren’t there, you paint yourself into having been there? It happened to me when I was reading Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station, up came a memory I had falsely absorbed as my own. In the opening pages, Lerner describes … Continue reading Like Sand Through Fingers
I begged him not to, told him the consequences of going through with it would be worse than staying put. ‘Nothing’s worse than this trench,’ he said. ‘Rats running over us in our sleep. Except I don’t sleep. I watch you sleep – if you could call it that – I watch you jolt and … Continue reading Desertion
‘What are you waiting for? The longer you stand there, the higher it’ll get.’ She was standing behind him, much too close by the near sound of her lightly teasing voice. Frozen to the spot and stuck dumb, he could neither turn around to glower at her nor speak to tell her to back off. … Continue reading On The Edge
Miss Florabelle Appleby was the go-to tutor when one’s children’s vowels needed de-tangling. Filtered through her mellifluous, perfectly-elocuted voice, the word “mirror” suddenly had two syllables, as opposed to the single flat drawl with which the local children butchered it, their bloodied speech turning out some version of “myrre”. ‘Pop this in your mouth,’ Miss … Continue reading Elocution
My Edinburgh Press 