Articles

Phoenix
We sat in the park, watching the hills burn above the town, the red glow swallowing the sunset. It found a faint and disconcerting echo in the blanket spread below us on the dry and dying grass.

Taking my breath away
You Really Saved Me There (my habit of always mentally capitalising each word you say as if it was an orcale started there. I still do it now).

100 things I'd like to tell her (if we ever meet)
5. The largest known prime number is more than 7.8 million digits long. The

Sometimes
Still we didn’t really talk – the silence was too perfect, filled as it was with the gurgling of the water and the somehow muted twittering of the birds. Sharp sounds, and fragile, so that we didn’t want to interfere at all.

Daddy buy me a pony
The clouds didn't hesitate for a second, and clubbed together behind old man sun's weary back as he hobbled off far away. Till tomorrow then? The girl was always thinking about things that way.

Meandering
A glimpse of elegance - a character - caught for a helpless moment from a floating car, on a rainy autumn Saturday in Stellenbosch - and clutched at for the lifetime that I sense drifting away from me, today.

My Shadow
It's always like this I see her, in a crowded place, running, but no-one ever talks about it. No, it goes further, they don't admit it happens.

Blue Beret
If I could meet just one girl who wore a blue beret, somehow it would all turn out okay.

Birds
There's a pigeon on my windowsill this morning. Dash it, the noise it makes! Early on, with the break of day, it hatched from my dreams, shattering them into brittle baby-blue spotted fragments, and free it flew.

Impressions of Matthew - Part 1
He had just broken up with and moved out of the flat he had shared with Zoe (with whom I remain friends, and would still pick to play Holly Golightly if ever I was to do a re-make of Breakfast at Tiffany's - but in a nice way) and was staying with a frien

Impressions of Matthew (part 2)
Matthew stood there, not retreating, and - as I remember - smiling, though that might be a trick of memory. He knew what was coming though. It is the single clearest guiding image I have of what it means to be a man.

The tale of the hero's friend
Did you ever hear the story about John and Paul just before the Beatles imploded? On late night in the studio, with the tension crushing all creative collaboration, John Lennon suddenly took off his glasses and said, "Paul, it's only me, it's only John."

The lover of cats
Cats, to me, are like closed books in a foreign language in a library far away to a blind man. It is exactly that bad. Except that they aren't far away and I'm not blind.

Waiting for the Moon and My Oblivion, Tindersticks, Beggars Banquet 2003
If you'll kindly take your seats, fill up those whiskey glasses and abandon all hope ye who enter here, we'll start our journey through Stuart Staple-land.

Be a Hero- wear a hat
the use of a hat is both the recognition and the interpretation of one's relation to those around you - and as such requires a constant weighing-up of what goes on around you and constant attention to those around you: the hat as instrument of ethics!

A dying horse
No-one moves, no-one is brave - or foolish - enough to venture onto the field and try to lead the horse away, into shelter where he would be safe, where he could be treated, cared for and saved. The horse must die - we don’t want it, but it is inevitable.

In so many words
No, of course, one night is just enough, really, for this town. In fact, most of our customers stay for one night only, did you know that? Learn something new everyday, doesn’t one though?

The shopping-mall Santa
Think - again - but what else could it have come to? Know for certain you aren’t up to this; know just as surely that it will not be so bad. Know that this too shall pass.

Under the Mistletoe
Christmas is a complete waste of time, if you ask me (but then, I'm only 14 aren't I, so do you think anyone ever asks me anything ever? Hah, think again!).

The way (first) dates never go
"Personally I blame the Mexicans and their damned cacti. You must have seen him knock back the tequila?"

Noonday
The town is drowsy, asleep, the only movement the interminable flying of the birds, the straining of the trees away from the stoveplate clay towards a hotter sky, and the trembling of buildings down the silver streets and up the hill. Cicada's whine out a

Strawberry Field... Forever?
Finally the lawn was completely taken over by strawberries. No-one really knows where they had come from, but come spring - there they were!

There is no why
Sleep lifted suddenly. I think it must have been around 4 o'clock. I'm not sure.

The Mystery of Love:Sherlock Holmes and Valentine's day (Part 2)
"Love? I quite fail to see how this parcel could be related to that mystery, and even should the connection be proved upon me, wherein the mystery could reside, and even then, how it is to be solved!"

The Mystery of Love: Sherlock Holmes and Valentine's day (Part 3)
the author is probably not one to concern himself with trifles. He tends to rush over small details out of a concern for the larger picture.

A Walk in the woods
Mostly it’s a pretty day, there’s a scintillating autumn chill in the sky that’s turning palest baby-blue and we don’t fancy being in town. So, tea in flasks, flasks in bags, bags in car and on out to the hills.

The Federal Food Reserve
So I said, sure, I'd take it, even though at that stage I couldn't hardly boil an egg. I mean, you take a guy a like me, and if he's willing to put his mind to it, I bet he could do just 'bout anything.

The Federal Food Reserve (part two)
By now you probably think you got me all figured out: you've listened to all these handy jobs I been doing in society and everything, and you probably think I'm more of a practical-minded man and probably not much of the thinking type, but if that's so, t

The Wake
She is sorting through her drawers, remembering the way she had been. She strokes tenderly over soft lace and silky smooth secret things that have not felt any other fingers for too many years now.

The child is the father of the man
By the age of two, chances are you'd already taken your first steps, said your first words, perhaps even made your first friend. You'd made lots of people smile.

Red flowers
I'm not a pervert, or a stalker, like that. In fact, I hardly look at it at all. Just twice a day, briefly - when I leave in the mornings, and when I come back in the afternoon. Sometimes late at night too, if I can't sleep or I'm feeling down.

Cocoons and Caterpillars
If you were like me, then you had them too, shoe-boxes and mulberry-leaves and beetroot-leaves and little cardboard cut-outs. If your school was like mine, then everyone else had them too, once.

One step at a time
You place a music-box upon her dresser, and fringe her mirror with glittery pink stars, cover the bed in soft-toys and top it off with the hugest, softest pillow.

Best of Friends: Jack and Sarah
And no, they didn't fall in love now either, nor did they finally realize that they had been in love all along and bitterly curse the waste years. They just liked walking with wach other once again.

With fingers crossed (for F.B.)
But at the same time I know that I'll stick it out this time, as I watch my clumsy fingers flicker on the useless hand resting on the table, trembling. Somehow I will be okay after this.

The psychosis of other people
Sometimes I worry about psychosis or the onset of schizophrenia. I heard somewhere that in many cases it only appears in the late '20's, in which I still have a while to fidget nervously about it.

Fingertalk
"But something did make him stop and turn – perhaps his senses

Here I Am
At first I said I didn’t cry – that I sometimes wanted to, but couldn’t, couldn’t remember how. This wasn't quite true, but it was something more important – plausible, and you believed it.

Reviews

Saturday Looks Good To Me: Every night
A case in point is the lovely summery 'Lift me up', which is at the same time probably the most blatant Supremes rip-off you're likely to hear, and yet absolutely gorgeous and breezy in its own right.