Category Fiction
The listening weather vane
It was another very ordinary day with nothing outwardly obvious to disturb our village as it plodded its way through each unhurried hour. From my observations few of its inhabitants gave much thought to the comforting sounds of humans and nature working in a kind of harmony as they did back then. Machinery with […]
Hidden venom
It was early morning as Tai Woon, Captain of the 12,000 tonne fishing boat Nyanga, stood alone at the helm. He regularly fished this area just off the West coast of Gabon at Libreville where the waters of the Atlantic brought a rich harvest at certain times of the year. Now with the holds full, […]
To know or not to know
There are some things that are best not to know. I was well into my thirties before I gave serious thought to the family tree I’d dropped from. You’d think I could have coped with all kinds of droppings by then, but I couldn’t. The antics of some of my forbears were of the humbling, […]
Stonehenge, and me
I felt a bit smug recently when Stonehenge was mentioned on the radio. Oh! Been there, done that, I thought. It was during my time in the army as a young man. A friend took a photograph as I leaned against one of the stones. You could get up close then. In those days when […]
Cybil, a stranger now
Cybil was not going to be disappointed. She sensed that, and the warm glow that had started only as a mere suggestion somewhere in the pit of her stomach was encouraged to continue. Earlier, she’d sat through the Sunday evening entertainment on TV while her husband, as usual, had enjoyed the rather mundane fare offered. […]
Natural beauty products with Gordon Asper
For the past months, Mr Reginald Parker-Holmes of the BBC has interviewed quaint and unusual characters to be found in New Zealand; most of them unknown outside of their own districts. In a few weeks’ time, these interviews would be broadcast in Great Britain to an audience of one million who have come to appreciate […]
What lies beyond
It was pleasant in the early morning as Mrs May Prentice made her way through the village; something she did occasionally to escape the mould-shaping of those around her. The call of a curlew and the graceful swoop of swallows greeted her as she stepped lightly through the soft wet grass skirting the village green. […]
One green sock and one brown sock
It took a little getting used to, me, a New Zealander, marrying an American lady and producing a few offspring with her. She was different, more confident about her ideas and about, well, everything. I didn’t mind at first, I’d been in a rut long enough and with her not being short of a […]
Pooled donations
It was a strange advert really and he’d turned the page quickly without giving it much thought. Later, he went back and read it again, several times and was persuaded. It was the last sentence you see; it appealed to the altruistic side of his slightly erotic personality. ‘Wanted: Healthy males to assist future New […]
The writings of a Lancashire lad 
Smuggling
The wind blew wild on the coast of Kent as I went to join my father. It was bitterly cold where he waited on the promontory out of Dungeness. The work my father put into selling his wool to weavers in France was threatened by the duties imposed by the government, and danger lurked everywhere […]