Edgar the Male Blanket Octopus Is Disconsolate

You can't really do anything to console the male blanket octopus (let's call him Edgar). He's at the wrong end of some pretty extreme sexual dimorphism that has resulted in him being 100-200 times smaller than the female blanket octopus (let's call her Goneril). Try telling Edgar that he's got a third arm and that this third arm is used specifically for holding his sperm and see if that cheers him up. Yeah right. What good is a tiny armful of spunk when your missus is two metres long and built like a four-man tent? And it's no good suggesting the things that normally cheer you and me up - a light-hearted French film, Ben and Jerry's ice cream, a violent game of badminton. Come off it, he's an octopus. He'll hate that sort of thing. And anyway, I don't know what he's got to complain about: he might be tiny but he ought to consider the benefits of his girlfriend literally being a giant comfort blanket. Get over it, Edgar.

A Horse That Looks Like Ian Paisley

Have you ever seen a horse that looks like Ian Paisley? What I mean by this of course is, have you ever seen a horse that looks like this horse I'm writing about that doesn't exactly look like Ian Paisley but has one, maybe two features that remind me one way or another, perhaps inexplicably, of Ian Paisley? It has, I should explain, nothing to do with this horse's habit for rolling on its back in warm weather, or its large eyes, or its hatred of homosexual horses, or its predisposition to colic, or its inhumanity, or its strange laughing neigh: these things could just as easily have reminded me of, say, Mitt Romney and this horse definitely reminds me of Ian Paisley. It screams Ian Paisley from every inch of its sweating, steaming flanks. Come to think of it, don't all horses look like Ian Paisley?

Look at me writing about horses when I haven't seen a real horse in months. Anyone would think I had an agenda.

Putin the President and Yevtushenko the Poet

Yevgeny Yevtushenko - or YevYev, as I like to call him - is one of Russia's leading poets, a man widely known for his progressive-liberal political stance, his keen intelligence and his long string of wives. Vladimir Putin is the President of Russia. He is known for his questionable human rights record, his downright hypocritical attitude to free speech and his often shirtless defiance of the boundaries of good taste. One would expect that YevYev would join the majority of dissident or morally driven writers in an outspoken denunciation of Putin's regime. But no, he is surprisingly soft on his president. Vlad is a man who is merely struggling to find his way, YevYev says, implying that he is to be pitied, helped through a rough patch. But have a look at the photos of Putin with the fishing rod and the bare chest. Does that look like a man who has lost his way?

I've thought about why YevYev is so soft on VP and here is my theory. YevYev is sitting in an expensive cafe in some or other middle-class Prospekt in Moscow. He's writing about politics and eating a piece of millionaire's shortbread which should be good, given the cost, but actually tastes like Play-Doh. He is at that stage of his life, he thinks, where he has come to know what Play-Doh tastes like. He thinks of Putin, and how he too must have reached that same stage of his life by now. Despite the tough-guy image, the guns, the tigers, Putin is a man who knows what Play-Doh tastes like.

So, what YevYev is really saying when he says that Putin is struggling to find his way is that the two of them are similar in many respects and it's hard to denounce someone similar to yourself without denouncing yourself, which is something no self-respecting Russian (except perhaps Daniil Kharms) would do.

This is where I come in. It's here that I infer that, by saying Putin is struggling to find his way, YevYev is implying the same thing about himself. I hope he can forgive me this conjecture - after all, he is a writer too. I'd also like to think that he can forgive me for disagreeing with him, for me saying that Putin has not merely lost his way, that he has done so much more that is wrong. But what do I know, I who have yet to learn or relearn the taste of Play-Doh.

Five Pencils

He has forgotten to bring out a pen and so he buys a packet of five pencils. He sits in a café and begins a short story about two people who are walking along a cliff path on a summer evening in the south of England, discussing literature and probably sex. The first pencil is soon blunt, and of course he does not have a sharpener. By the time the protagonists have reached and decided to descend an accessible route down the cliff the second pencil is also blunt. The third pencil fails him as the two people light a fire and throw stones into the darkening sea. By the time his fourth pencil is finished his characters are looking up to the top of the cliff where they see two people who, from this distance, look exactly like them - clothes, relative height, hair - perfect doppelgängers. Seabirds wheel and squawk as the air grows colder, etc etc. At this point he becomes aware that five pencils will not be enough to complete his story. He makes a snap decision: in future he will only write stories that can be finished within the lifespan of one sharpening of a single pencil. He takes out the fifth pencil and begins to write the story of a man who, having forgotten to bring out his pen, buys a packet of five pencils and goes into a café to write a story about two people

Ingmar Bergman, Now Off Limits

It is not impossible to write a piece of short fiction from the point of view of a shop window, or a Christmas tree, or Ingmar Bergman, but I don't suggest you try it.

A shop window at Christmas, or a Christmas tree in Ingmar Bergman's family home on Fårö or Bergman doing his Christmas shopping with his last wife Ingrid von Rosen, probably buying wooden toys for his grandchildren: any of these things are perfectly legitimate settings for a story about family life or old age or an argument about the nature of truth and happiness. But I would advise against it, not least because it could constitute an act of plagiarism.

Edvard Munch's Madonna

A few days ago I ordered a cheap print of Edvard Munch's Madonna and today it came in the post. I took some time getting it out of the cardboard tube, relishing the potential creative inspiration it would give me. I thought that my thoughts on seeing the poster would be, like the painting, divine, pure and honest on one hand and modern, willful, strange and passionate on the other. But when I unrolled the Madonna I thought first of Madonna, the singer, and this made me think of the music video of hers which involves a bullfight, and this made me think of Hemingway, writing his balls off about bullfighting, and Hemingway made me thing about the Deux Magots, where he did a great deal of writing, and this in turn made me think about my impending trip to Paris, which I am looking forward to but am also somewhat apprehensive about because it will cost me a lot of money and I haven't got a lot of money - I am essentially poor, certainly too poor to make a habit of buying art prints just so that I can look to them for inspiration.

Skinning a Cat

There are many ways to do this. One way would be to write a story about skinning a cat, or rather writing a story in anticipation of the act of skinning a cat, detailing the events leading up to the skinning and taking pleasure in leaving the reader guessing as to the nature of the skinning whilst leaving him in no doubt that the skinning will take place. Another way would be to carry out the skinning alone and with definitive skill and directness, letting no-one other than the object of the skinning and (let's say the cat) and possibly your former mother-in-law (let's say the cat's mother) know that the skinning will take place, then revelling publicly after the act. The third way is to completely ignore the cat, and indeed the cat's mother, in the hope they skin themselves, or get stuck up a tree, or are ripped apart by dogs.

Lettuce

He sat down to write a story without realising that it would turn into one of those stories about origins of words, the type he writes on a fairly regular basis even though his girlfriend hates them. What he wanted to write was a story about an unnamed female character, about how, if she were an edible plant, she would be a lettuce, whereas he (an unnamed he, of course) would be something like a dandelion. But he couldn't resist looking up the etymology of the word 'lettuce' and was hardly surprised when he found out that it had the same root as the word 'lactation' and the French word 'lait'.

He already knew the origin of the word 'dandelion' of course, but had temporarily forgotten the plant's alternative name: piss-a-bed.

Indecision and the Bird Box

First he painted the front panel of the wooden bird box red because that is the colour of his wife's hair, then he painted the roof of the bird box yellow because that is the colour of the shirts worn by his favourite football team, then he painted the sides royal blue because that is the colour of his son's school uniform, then he repainted the roof mauve because that was the colour of the envelope containing his seventeenth birthday card from his first real long-term girlfriend, then he repainted the front with its perfectly circular hole a kind of autumn-leaf orange because it reminded him of the wood fire on the camping trip at the turn of the millenium when he had shared a sleeping bag with a girl whose name he could no longer remember, then he repainted the sides magenta because it looked good, then he repainted the roof pink because that was the colour of the bow in the hair of the girl who worked in the cafe where he had just had two black coffees, then he repainted half of the roof aquamarine and the other half tangerine because he thought the rhyme would symbolise his love of writing poetry, then he painted the back grey like his grandfather's hair and his grandfather is dead now, then he painted the whole thing the same colour as the garden wall because someone told him this would deter cats, then he hung it on the garden wall but it was already the twenty-second of May and the birds had built their nests in trees and eaves.

Shakespeare is a Bread Roll

Human decency dictates that a beautiful girl shouldn't wear a bread roll as a hat, particularly when working with the public.

It is not the bow in the girl's hair that makes her pleasant to look at, beautiful even, but it is this bow that I first noticed about her and that my eyes keep coming back to. It is a simple bow - pale pink and positioned slightly to the left of the girl's head, riding the tight swell of her hair, which she wears up in a kind of wispy bun while working.

The bow is not a bread roll.

But the girl is selling bread rolls, and every time I see the pink bow I imagine that the girl has put a bread roll on her head, and I am forced to look at it, despite or because of her beautiful face.

I have started a story with an observation about bread rolls, and now a bread roll has afflicted my story.

Next to me in the cafe is a boy, roughly five years old, talking to his friend about constructing an army of Lego. I imagine that he is called Fortinbras although his mother has just called him Archie. Now Shakespeare has infiltrated and afflicted my story; like Goethe said, Shakespeare is an overgrown tree that has stifled all of literature.

A bread roll to me is like Shakespeare was to Goethe.

Six Moveable Stories

Alarming shawls fell off obvious shoulders.

Simple jaws moved with certain pleasures.

Soft eyes closed on dubious windows.

Electric fingers clamped over dubious mouths.

Symmetrical shoes hovered about illicit streets.

Prepared animals die for malleable humans.

Dream: Louise Brooks and the Giant Worm

A giant earthworm, its tongue a two-foot poisonous metal rod, drives an eastern European car through a seemingly deserted modern housing estate. After a while Louise Brooks emerges from one of the houses and defeats the worm in unarmed combat.

Later, I spend hours thinking about how a worm with no arms could possibly drive a car. This leads me to doubt whether what I think I've dreamt is actually what I have dreamt, whether it was Louise Brooks at all, and not Katy Perry or Lenny Henry. Whether the detail of the eastern European car was made up after I finished dreaming.

Later still I wake up and pull several long knitting needles out of my ear.

The Philosopher and the Pedant

She has said that their relationship could be on the brink of attaining some kind of Aristotelian eudaemonia, but that in order for this to happen he needs to buck his ideas up. Just a bit, but enough to equal her high standards, she seems to be implying.

But as well as being the type of woman that talks about eudaemonia in in everyday life, she is also the type of woman who says 'fine tooth-comb' instead of 'fine-toothed comb' and 'ATM machine' instead of just 'ATM', and eudaemonia is impossible, he thinks, when such basic principles are violated.

The Colours in the Courtyard

Red, orange, yellow, cream, beige, white. Made-up colours like ochre, terracotta, fawn.

But mostly orange.

A sign warns people to keep off the grass, although the colours indicate, or rather dictate, that there is no grass.

A tiny rodent, possibly a shrew, scampers across the courtyard. From forty feet away it looks like marble rolling down a hill. The effect is heightened by the fact that the courtyard slopes slightly, although the slope is on the very edge of perception.

In the other direction a wonan pushes a hospital trolley on which another woman lies. All that is visible of this second woman is her face, heavily made-up.

The woman pushing the trolley seems to be expending little or no energy, although she is going slightly uphill. She cuts straight across the courtyard, does not take the path around the edge. She is wearing blue.

She has ruined the illusion of steepness created by the dust-coloured rodent.

A Short Story About Joey Barton

Matthew decided to buy his wife a really nice bottle of white zinfandel. On his way to Thresher's he glanced into the front room of his neighbours, the aspirational couple with Sky Sports. On the TV in their front room Joey Barton petulantly kick another footballer as he was being sent from the field of play. Matthew hated Joey Barton, as most sensible people do. The scoreline he saw on the screen suggested that an interesting finish was in prospect, particularly as Barton's team now had only ten men on the pitch, so Matthew decided to find the nearest pub and watch the conclusion of the match. The result went the way he hoped it would, but that's not the point. Luckily his relationship with Ellie did not suffer as a result of Joey Barton's antics, but that's not the point either. The point is that the relationship could have improved. There is no way of knowing what new avenues that one bottle of wine may have opened up.

The moral of the story: Joey Barton is responsible for the stagnation of the human race.

The Giant Squirrel Story

Of course, when he went into work all of his colleagues had turned into giant talking squirrels. That was the predictable bit. He wasn't sure whether or not he was a squirrel too, so he checked the mirror. He was still a human. Slightly hungover, panda eyes, but definitely human.

He checked his emails. There were thirteen new messages, all from squirrels. But work was no more or less difficult than usual. He let the squirrel thing lie.

He went on his lunch break and looked in the fridge in the staff room. Part of him expected it to be full of nuts. But it wasn't. Of course not. It was full of smoothies and Cadbury's Dairy Milks and falafel. Why on earth would intelligent giant squirrels limit themselves to nuts? He was angry with himself for thinking such a thing. It indicated he was losing his grip on reality.

Human Thoughts Are Poisonous To Geese

A thought is something that is trapped. When a thought is trapped inside a human casement the human casement often expires without the potentiality of the thought being realised.

Countless thoughts are lost in this way.

Sometimes thoughts are interred with human bodies and provide food for brainless organisms.

Sometimes human bodies are burned. Rising as smoke, burnt thoughts choke birds.

In Norfolk one evening I saw a perfect equilateral triangle of migratory geese, like a Masonic symbol in the flat sky. The geese were honking out the ashes of burnt thoughts. Human thoughts fell noisily like rain and were gathered by a huge artificial landscape into ditches dug by men.

The Dream of Two Perfect Stories

Both stories took place in the same dream and in the same street. In the dream the sunlight pervaded both stories, and the sunlight was perfect. The bath in the first short story was perfect. The sides were white and shiny, with no trace of limescale. It was so perfect that a man would not be able to climb out of it: a perfect bath shows up our human imperfections. A man in a perfect bath is like a spider. Also in this dream the shop window where the bath stood was perfect. Perfect glass is perfectly transparent, but you know it is there. The light reflects off it in a singular way, only found in dreams.

I was not present in the first part of the dream or in the first story.

In the second story the light was perfect and the glass was perfect, but someone had knocked over the plants. This was what I had been dreading: I knew it would make me forget the first story. The plants were in the front garden - they had been perfect tomato plants, but only one of them was left standing. I thought this was an imperfection, and I thought that because of the imperfection I would remember the second perfect story perfectly, but this wasn't the case.

Blurb

Etienne Cortez's new book examines the importance of geometry in early twentieth-century Russian art, from the early influence, via Ouspensky, of Gurdjieff and the mathematician-mystics on Kasimir Malevich, the doyen of Suprematism, to the parallels with De Stijl and Constructivist design. Cortez makes special reference to the political and social development of the Russian avant-garde alongside the conception and birth of a new Suprematist grammar within the language-world of art.

Etienne Cortez is 18 months old, likes to eat cheese and lives inside a teapot.

9 Conditions

1) It appeals to all ages

2) Its appeal is inexplicable

3) It can fit into a very small physical space

4) It does not seek to play a social role

5) Its heart will beat and its colour stay fresh only for as long as it can be viewed or heard

6) It is shaped like a conch or a castanet

7) It requires no glue or other solvents

8) It is easily transported by hand

9) It has no fur or feathers

Unfinished Sentences

I entered the
On the floor was what looked like a
I kept my eyes on the 20-Euro note until it was lost amongst feet and pierced
At this point I realised it was not a note but
The table next to mine became
I looked at the walls, which were brown and reddish-brown, and noticed that there was no
I found this odd, in fact I
I finished my coffee and got up to leave, at which point I realised that I was incapable of

Mystick

He held her leg in one hand and the tweezers in the other and got a good firm hold on the tick's bulbous abdomen. He twisted slightly and pulled - righty tighty, lefty loosey - but the tick was more stubborn than the ones he has pulled out of his dog. He gave it a good tug. It came free with a sort of screaming sound, right on the edge of hearing. He held it up to the light so that they could both take a good look at it. It seemed to have tiny fists, and was waving them in the air, like a small, pissed-up Irishman.

And the tick spoke.

'Pauper's Faith will win the 3.15 at Redcar.' The voice sounded like a knife being sharpened.

Then it died.

He began to search the rest of her body, gently and lovingly.

Notes on a Type of Non-Physical Pain

It is excruciating, he thought, and thought about the word excruciating.

We get the word cross from the same place on the creased map of Latin etymology.

They both link back to torture, trouble, misery. He would say on another, less preoccupied day that Christianity embodies all of these things.

But at the moment he is not in physical pain. The excruciating thing is the waiting, which can be defined as the time spent thinking about a particular event that may or may not happen in the future; thinking about it to the exclusion of other thoughts.

A waiting man often holds his arms out to embrace what may or may not be coming. In doing so, he forms a cross.

The Irrational Kettle

It began with short, unsolicited peeps, little more than the squeak of a mouse. But then it seemed to become braver, like an unruly parrot. Once or twice he caught it whistling at passers-by before the water had boiled - he went to the open window on one of these occasions just as a pretty blonde with a bob and a very short skirt looked up and shook her head in disgust.

It began to whistle whenever he and Ellie fucked - three short bursts, tugboat-like, just as he was about to come, or she was. But it only became truly unbearable when it began to trill in the night, just after he had turned the light off, or was turning over in bed, or had just got to sleep, and he would have to get up and see to it, and make himself a strong coffee.

The Polish Shop

In the Polish shop you can buy Polish beer. Polish beer gets you drunk in a Polish way - a way that makes you want to shout, embrace, pump your fist into the cold night air.

But Polish beer also gives you a Polish hangover, a hangover that barely shelters human life. It is the flip side: with the ecstasy of the unknown comes the fear of the unknown. Polish beer is like the Polish flag: it has its red half and its white half.

Sometimes, when I have one of these hangovers, I speculate as to what other terrible secrets of science and the occult are trapped inside the Polish shop. I wonder if all of their produce has this dualistic, red-and-white effect. If the slices of cold beef come from some cloven-hoofed cow whose task it is to tempt salivating Englishmen with the deep mushroomy flavours of central Europe then impregnate their arteries with eye-popping levels of fat. And I wonder if, out the back of the shop, behind the little lady with giant glasses, there is a laboratory or a den of alchemists working round the clock to keep red separate from white, praying that no-one invents a cure for the hangover.

The Hunger Strikers

Mr Ham's cell was close to Mr Corn's, so although both of them had taken a vow of silence to complement their hunger strikes, it was easy enough for each to keep abreast of how the other was doing.

Mr Ham heard the rats cavorting in the night, he heard them eating Mr Corn's unwanted food, and his own.

Mr Ham heard Mr Corn die. It was a soft sound, like a rat leaving through a window.

When Mr Corn died, Mr Ham broke his vow of silence.

'Well,' said Mr Ham to the guard, 'There goes another one.' And he shook his head sadly, and ordered a plate of food.

The North

My friends from the North came to visit; each one of them was wearing clothes. They all had heads, and each head was either a little bigger or a little smaller than the other heads. I shan't tell you about their legs, you wouldn't believe me.

The Ballad of Pelé, Dan and the Writer

Pelé is the greatest footballer who has ever existed, and he has trouble getting an erection. An old friend of mine, let's call him Dan, was a pretty good footballer but now he has no money. He managed to get three girls pregnant before he hit twenty.

If there was a way of measuring happiness - by attaching electrodes to Pelé's temples, by psychologically analysing Dan - it would be interesting to get the two together and conduct a comparative study. Maybe take them both out to Nando's. Publish the results in the Lancet, or whatever. But there isn't a way. And in any case I think they'd come out of it about equal.

The sun is booming down on Pelé and his family (I'm sure he lives in California or somewhere like that). Dan still plays five-a-side. I can tell you which one is happier because I'm a writer, but I won't tell you because I don't know.

Heads

In 1743 in a farm to the north of the parish a lamb was born with two heads. It was rejected by its mother but Elizabeth, the 15-year-old daughter of the farmer, took care of it, coaxing milk into each of its heads. An invisible defect, complementary to the obvious visible mutation, resulted in the closure of one of the windpipes, and consequently the death of one of the heads. Elizabeth frequently visited the nearest village and was of great interest to the local males, unintentionally turning their heads. The lamb, with difficulty, was reared to adulthood, but Elizabeth had quickly lost interest in it now that it no longer had two living heads. In 1744 Elizabeth gave birth to a baby with two heads. An elderly man arrived on a horse and, in the next room, severed both of the heads.

Notes on a Failed Short Story Workshopped in a Creative Writing Class

The short story that became known as 'Home Help' went through a long and at times uncomfortable gestation period (not unlike Ellie's pregnancy in the story). The birth itself, however, was relatively painless. This is due in no small part to the workshopping process.

I had all but given up on the idea entirely before the story was workshopped, but some good advice saved it, and the resulting changes were made quite easily. It seems that there was always a story in there somewhere, it just needed a bit of a yank to come out. One important change was the removal of the opening flashback, which was rightly criticised for being a bit 'stuck-on'. Some of the stronger images resurfaced in a different part of the story and on the whole the balance of the piece was improved.

The most significant alteration, however, came when I was persuaded to drop the incestuous elements. It was a difficult decision, but necessary to make the story palatable. I am convinced that the change did not lessen the impact of the story, but it did result in a change of title, which is a shame because I liked 'Hoovering for Granddad'.

Blind-Man's Etymology

We normally see it in the word 'immaculate': macula - Latin for spot or stain. But we don't often think of the obverse: 'maculate', spotted or stained, or more rarely, sexually defiled.

He reads that maculate can also be a verb, to speckle. He thinks of the spots that appear on his walls, and in front of his eyes.

He reads quickly, thinking of his children and his grandchildren, thinking that time is short. He is reminded as he reads of the words 'conception' and 'degeneration'.

The Door

She knocked on his door four times (it's a pretty front door, she thought: two hanging baskets suspended like ostentatious earrings) and tried to think of what she would say when he opened it. Maybe something like 'Here I am,' but not that. That wouldn't sound right, and it might not even be true. If you think about it, she thought, am I really here? If it's true then it's self-evident and therefore doesn't need to be said, and if it's not true then it opens up a whole new can of Cartesian worms, like what is here? And does the fact that she assumes that she is here qualify as an actual thought, a thought that would confirm her existence here? This is what she thought. And then she thought that he would be inside, writing a story about what she is thinking as she stands on his doorstep dumbly looking at the hanging baskets. What she is actually thinking now is that she should write a story about waiting for him to open the door and about how her story and his story would, or should, be basically identical. And all this before he has even opened the door.

The Inadequate Husband is a Shit Washing Machine

I was actually on a couch when I said this to the doctor. A real, bona fide psychiatrist-style couch. I'm sure if I hadn't been it wouldn't have sounded so nuts. But there you go. I began by telling him how I had been feeling inadequate recently, how my wife had taken on a greater professional workload with more responsibility as my own career stagnated. How she still did practically all the housework, and all the practical stuff like paying bills. I just couldn't find a way to help and she didn't seem to want to let me help. And then the washing machine broke, and after we had taken it to the tip I decided that I would be the washing machine. I nestled quite neatly under the formica, and when the oven next to me was turned on I was genuinely cosy. My wife seemed pleased or at least unaffected by my new specialisation. She fed socks, jogging bottoms, pillow cases and knickers into my mouth, tipped my head up and poured powder into my left nostril and fabric softener into my right. I juddered into action, glad to finally be of use. But when my cycle had finished all the clothes were filthy. If anything, they were worse than when they went in. You can imagine how that made me feel, I said to the doctor. I just don't know what to do any more. I thought of trying to replace the kettle, but I don't think I could deal with the hard water.

Two Jobs

No.1: The Factory Workers

The factory employed about 200 workers. It was the job of half of these to make plates, and of the other, better-paid half to break those very same plates. If a newly-made plate had any kind of defect - a warp, say, or a missing patch of glaze - it was never allowed to be broken. Many of these defective plates were given to the poor, others were stacked in old aircraft hangars.



No.2: The Veterinary Nurse

A man bought a sick dog into the vet's surgery. The vet sat on his haunches and howled. The dog howled back. The man looked at the nurse quizzically, and the nurse said, 'It's alright, he knows his stuff. He's just making the dog feel more comfortable.'

Later that day, a man came to the vet with a beautiful golden carp dying in a small tank. The vet sat on his haunches and howled.

The Second-Oldest Bridge

The country in question is small and only has one major river running through it, so it is no surprise that the second-oldest bridge stands right next to the oldest bridge in the country. The second-oldest bridge is not jealous of her renowned sister. After all, there are many bridges younger than her - it is a comparatively illustrious thing to be the second-oldest bridge in the country. From where she rests she can see the pretty skirts and shapely legs of the oldest bridge - she has kept her looks, and even the most ornate architectural flourishes are still crisply defined in the pink sunlight. If the second-oldest bridge were the type to hold a grudge... But no.

Surprisingly few people walk across the oldest bridge - she sees the odd young couple, even the occasional suicide - but hundreds of people use the second-oldest bridge every day. Maybe thousands. From here you can see the oldest bridge in all her glory. People stop and look over the short stretch of muddy river, and rest their arms on the broad shoulders of the second-oldest bridge in the country, and she is content.

He Will Eventually Decide Not To Take His Umbrella

He will walk to her house. Her house, which is not really a house but a flat, or not even that, more of a room, a room in a house, is in the part of town that is considered to be quite rough. That is, he considers it to be rough and it is quite rough compared with some of the better-heeled addresses up the hill, but she grew up there, in the rough part of town, and never had any problems unless you count the guy that used to set light to his front room practically every week, but he was mental rather than rough. Anyway, he will walk to where she lives, and he will take his umbrella - the black one with the metal point at the end - because it looks like rain. In fact, it does not look like rain. He only wants to take the umbrella with its metal point because he feels it offers him some sort of physical protection, so he has convinced himself that it will rain. But just before he leaves he will think, nothing would be as ignominious as being beaten to death with one's own umbrella in the rough part of town, so he decides not to take his umbrella, and because I am the author I know that this has already happened, and it will rain, and he will get wet, but he won't get into any trouble in the rough part of town.

Lessons 1 and 2

Lesson 1: History

If their relationship was a historical conflict, he thought, it would be one of the colonial wars of independence – India, perhaps. There are times when the kitchen is like the siege of Lucknow. But there are times when he feels like a small European nation during the Cold War, or more precisely the Cuban Missile Crisis. He thinks that it will be okay as long as they are never reduced to the lows of Korea.



Lesson 2: Home Economics

When Ellie bakes it almost always feels like a special occasion. She bakes to feel happy. Then she eats until she feels sick. Then sometimes she is sick. Special occasions and sickness are often linked.

How They Are Different

They are different because he has tried to explain to her his theory about popular music hundreds of times - the one that focuses on The Ballad of El Goodo by Big Star - and she has never listened. She has a theory of her own, one that has nothing to do with popular music, one that states that men like racket sports because of an inborn psychological propensity for grasping, grabbing, holding and hitting. She thinks this can explain everything from masturbation to hand-holding to the way he brushes his teeth.

This is how they are different. That is not to say they are incompatible. In fact, it is rare to find a person with a theory at all these days. To find two in one bedroom is remarkable.

Like a Fucking Pirate

Always writing letters, she was. Used to be a real looker, a stunner, but lost her eye in a game of badminton. Walked around with a black eye patch after that. Looked like a fucking pirate. Some guys go for that sort of thing, I know, but it made me feel less close to her. And I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say she developed a one-eyed view of the world. Like that time she wrote me that letter, the one that began, 'My Dearest Tom, do you remember that time in summer, the really hot summer we had, when we were rowing...' and she had no idea that 'rowing' could have meant either propelling a boat or having an argument, and how was I to know which one she meant, I couldn't even finish reading the letter I was so angry. Stupid bitch, how can she be so one-eyed?

Telephone

Nobody has a real telephone these days. I mean a static telephone, one clamped to a wall or sitting on a bedside table. Nobody. But he has a telephone. A grey one on the desk in his study. It gathers dust well. He has a telephone and, like an idiot, he is waiting for it to ring. While he is waiting he realises that the telephone - its physical, light-grey presence - reminds him of a number of other things that aren't telephones or communication devices of any kind. It reminds him of a shell, because you pick up a shell and put it to your ear. It reminds him of his dog, the one that died when it was barely more than a pup, because of the Cockney rhyming slang for phone. It reminds him of a female hand, because of the way that the receiver is held. It reminds him of football matches, because he shouts at football matches. It reminds him of night because he closes his eyes when he talks on the phone.

Swedish Cars

I love Swedish cars. I really really love them. They're safe and cool. Maybe not as safe as an armoured vehicle or as cool as a Lamborghini, but quite safe and quite cool. So I guess that makes me kind of an average person. I even like their average names - Saab, Volvo - and I like other average things, like getting drunk but not too drunk, and making paella but leaving out the saffron. Maybe I don't really really love Swedish cars. Maybe I just like them in an average kind of way. Maybe I don't really really love anything.

My ex-girlfriend's mother had a Saab. Large, slow, a pain in the arse to get round corners, but plenty of space in the back. The car was great though.

See, even my jokes are average.

Alligator

His dad used to say 'See you later, alligator' like in the old song, so it was no surprise that he said it too, whenever someone left the house, or whenever he left the house and someone else remained. But this was the 1990s, Blair was in No. 10, and everybody had a little bit more imagination than before. So he didn't content himself with 'See you later, alligator'. To his parents he said 'See you later progenators' - a deliberate, humorous mispronunciation of 'progenitors'. To his younger brother and some of his male friends he said 'See you later, masturbator' (although for some reason he never said this to any of his female friends). Later in life, when he moved in with his girlfriend, he began to say, referencing a somewhat tragicomic figure from a popular soap opera, 'See you later, Cat Slater'. Sometimes it was Nigel Slater, the trailblazing celebrity chef. Australian cricketer Michael Slater was less successful. Obviously, there are other things that rhyme with alligator - bear-baiter, cheese grater, pater, traitor. He hasn't used any of these yet, but life is long and occasionally he'd just rather say goodbye.

The Leather Jacket

You know you won't buy the leather jacket. This makes you want it more.

You know the leather jacket won't suit you, that it will make you look like a 1950s loser or a character from Twin Peaks. This makes you want it more.

You know she won't buy you the leather jacket, even though it's your birthday soon - an important one with a zero at the end - and you've stared at it every time you've passed the shop with her. This makes you want it more.

You know she will say, 'Save your money. Don't buy the leather jacket.' This makes you want it more.

You know how many dead cows it takes to make a sofa, but you have no idea about a leather jacket. This makes you want it more.

You buy the leather jacket, and it looks like shit, so you take it back to the shop.

Argument

The London plane is not a native tree, but it is ubiquitous. It is therefore almost certain that the following event has happened before, to some other person.

I was walking briskly through the town centre. There was a strong wind. A seed pod from a London plane tree came away from its parent cluster and lodged itself in the back of my throat. I could not bring it up, so was forced to swallow it.

At first I was worried that the seed pods were poisonous.

London planes are not poisonous, I read later. In fact, some people believe them to be the cleanest of trees: they are apparently able to detoxify pollution. However, another view states that they take pollutants and poisons out of the air only to store them within themselves. Nothing can ever be simple.

The Garden in Munich

I found the public garden by accident - I used to walk for three quarters of an hour a day, at lunch time when everybody else walked. On that day I found myself in a part of town I had not visited before.

An important consideration for the landscapers must have been symmetry. There were echoes, perhaps, of the great Englishman, Lancelot Brown, but aren't there always in municipal gardens?

There were two ponds near the entrance. Pike roamed them in packs, lurking like submarines or exploding like mines under ducklings.

The pansies in the flower beds are planted in such a way that, when seen from above, they represent the shape of that old emblem of our country, that crooked indic cross, at least for the short period of their lives.

Flowers live and die together, like soldiers.

In the Italian sunken gardens two dogs circle and sniff, about to fight or fuck. Children play. At peace.

I walk from bench to bench, reading the dedications, the dates that are all so close to each other.

One bench stands apart.

Start

'On this warm Wednesday lunchtime she is drinking whisky' is the first sentence of a short story. The writer likes to think it draws the reader in - why would she be drinking whisky on a warm Wednesday lunchtime? Has she just come out of a difficult relationship and is struggling to cope? Is she on holiday? (We all know holidays make good settings for short fiction.) Is she a ravishing, lost beauty from the 1920s? The writer also thinks that the sentence works as the first sentence of a short story as it just happens to be the last sentence of a short story that I have already written. It is clever and ironic to do all this self-referencing crap. And on top of that it is the first sentence of this short story, although it fulfils no function of narrative value.

The Story of the Day She Came Back

She came back. He stayed. He went. He came back. She went. He went. They saw each other at various intervals. At the start something happened. Towards the middle a small act of creation occured. At the end it grew dark.

The Difference Between Soup and Whisky

Essentially, both are warming liquids, liquids we swallow to warm us up and therefore make us feel better. But there are subtle differences: soup requires effort to make it into a warm substance, whereas whisky seems to cause warmth by its own effort. So it would seem that whisky would be better for those days when you are physically tired. But this is not always the case. Warmth is a subtle thing. Why, for example, is it better to drink soup whilst feeding the ducks in the park and whisky whilst feeding the pigeons in the town square? Is the difference a difference between the need for physical warmth and the need for emotional warmth. On this warm Wednesday lunchtime she is drinking whisky.

A Success Story

They met where Symonds Yat Rock leers over the River Wye. He was teaching a group of 13- and 14-year-old geography students about ox-bow lakes and alluvial deposits. She had an aunt who was on the way to being unbearably demented but still loved to be taken out in the car. Neither felt the slightest desire to jump off the rock into the hazy, curling ravine.

Together they read the notice board and learned that peregrine falcons have bred here successfully for over twenty years.