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A stone here, a bone there

10 Dec 2007

(This is a preview of Stones and Bones, the short story compilation to be published in December 2007.)

Hidden depths

...Why was he here? What had led him, from a degree in engineering and four years' work for two survey companies, to this godawful Yorkshire... sod, perpetually covered in whirling mists and sheep? He walked desultorily a little further then, looking up, realised he was at roughly the midpoint of the cove, some hundreds of yards distant. A thought formed in his head....

#5

17 Jul 2007

He gave me my first driving lesson, of a sort. To this day I don't know whether he saw it as a necessary chore, a good deed to cement our odd friendship; whether instead it came from a genuine urge to teach. Surrounded by teachers all day (even ones as mediocre as those at the school) he was bound to have inhaled some of that paedagogical spirit.

#8

10 Jul 2007

As he was starting on his third satsuma, he suddenly decided that, if he could remove its peel entirely in one single spiral of plucked flesh, then everything would work out how he wanted it to. He used to do that all the time as a child: gauge when a menial task or everyday happening could be made sufficiently complex and arduous that it might form the cosmic mirror image of some desired benefit. A benefit that otherwise was logically out of his reach.

#75

24 Jun 2007

"I look at her, and then look down at my shoes, and I think she's doing the same. Then she hands me a note. It's folded over once, and it's all yellow, like that posh stuff, vellum or something. I take it and look back up at her. She's so pretty.... Then, slowly like, I unfold the note... and I can't remember a word of it now.

#9:02

24 Jun 2007

His body (solid, running to fat) occupies the folds of tatty, oil-stained work clothes. It rolls up inside the brown slacks and strains the blue fabric of his shirt into a series of gapes. His face is normally a whole mess of folds: cheek against jowl, nose against eyebrow, eye squinting at a latheing job.

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