A forever work in progress

Joe was fully aware of how cold the winter morning was because his breath lingered in the air longer than some of his recent relationships had lasted. Had Joe been born and christened with the extra letters ann in the middle of his name he might have found a supportive group of female friends who'd say something along the lines that their friend was just unlucky in love and that their soul mate could be waiting around the next corner, even if they didn't necessarily believe it to be true. You know, sugarcoat it because that's what friends do and what they're there for in times of crisis. Instead Joe had friends like Barry whose speciality in life was brutal honesty. Joe had recently told him over a pint, or few, the ins and outs of how Mary, just the latest in a never ending line of women, had suddenly decided Joe wasn't the one for her. Feeling unusually sorry for himself he had been busy seeking some support and guiding words of wisdom. However the reaction he re...

Marcus smiled at the woman in her mid to late fifties passing him by with her dog, but her steely face didn't flinch as if she'd almost used her lifetime's quota of smiles up and any that now remained would not be bestowed upon him. Several seconds later, having now passed like ships in the daylight, a siren could be heard wailing in the distance. Perhaps she was the Chief of the Fun Police and had radioed for backup? No smiling to be allowed on my watch I'll have you know. Marcus allowed himself another smile to escape from his own seemingly limitless bank vault of smiles that today were bursting at the seams ready to make their escape. Spring had finally decided to make an appearance, the warmth of the sun stroked his face like a requited lover returned to his side. Why wouldn't you be happy on a day like this especially after the gale force winds and rain they'd endured the previous week? Perhaps those threats his mother had idly imposed upon him as a child a...

Children who grow up in poverty and manage to escape its clutches wear their survival in very distinct ways. There are those who try to put as much distance between them and their past as they can, frequently in something German built with four wheels. You can lie about your past, but you cannot change your past and you'll never outrun it no matter how much horsepower you have beneath the accelerator pedal with your foot flat to the floor. It's always in the rear view mirror, even if it's a tiny spec and it will always catch up to you when you least expect it to, never to be fully outrun. All our pasts echo through eternity and these particular stories of victims of circumstance, often beyond their control and certainly of no one's choosing, have been repeating since the beginning of time itself. Ghosts who want to be seen always have a habit of enabling it to become reality.  No amount of fancy watches will change the fact you were brought up on £1 dinners which had so...

Julian always marvelled at the way the local displaced African diaspora needed very little excuse to break out the colour and bring some much needed cheer to the neighbourhood. Much in the same way some of his fellow countrymen only needed to hear about the potential promise of some sunshine to break out the shorts and expose their lily white legs to the elements. Or the West Indians who'd put on their Sunday best, every inch as sharp as razor blades upon receipt of an invitation some weeks off just to get reacquainted with their uniform of choice. London had been a melting pot of cultures for as long as he'd been alive and personally he revelled in all the unfamiliar sights, sounds and smells like he'd been gifted a magical Encyclopedia Britannica until the point they all seemed perfectly familiar and he couldn't remember a time without them all. Julian had often wondered as a child when he saw flags from countries such as Kenya exactly why you'd leave your home wh...

Alice and Jason Youngman-Howe were the couple in the group that no one ever invited to social gatherings and yet somehow always managed to show up like an unexplained stain that you simply couldn't get rid of no matter how hard you scrubbed. As to how exactly they found out each time about the gatherings to which they'd not been invited was anyone's guess. Certainly no one admitted to letting secret plans slip and whilst naturally there were always fingers pointed in accusation, everyone denied culpability, though in whispers they would all quietly speculate, compare notes and each had their own suspicions on who the guilty party might be. No one could come out and simply ask them how they knew because that would be tantamount to admitting they'd deliberately been left off the guest list in the first place. However they were aware, Mossad should probably be sat taking notes because it was clearly an impressive operation they mounted which seemingly never failed to deliv...

Simon Newsome had a self confessed allergy to books and newspapers. Despite this, in his own mind he still very much believed that he was by far the smartest person in any room that he entered even though all the evidence pointed to the contrary. It might surprise you to learn that Simon isn't American although he bore many characteristics of being one and no doubt had he been borne of the tribe of the so called land of the free he'd no doubt have found himself a position in Donald Trump's cabinet for he was that unique level of stupid. Simon was however very much every inch an Englishman, and fell under the polite category of an upper class twit though many might drop the w or replace the i for an a, or simply use a stronger term in its place altogether. Public school educated naturally, though educated in what was anyone's guess as we've already established. The type of man whose bottom half of his casual wardrobe largely came in colours of mustard or a faded red....

Six pints into their evening, although it may have been seven as both were fairly well oiled by now and couldn't remember, Mick and Dave were busy putting the world to rights whilst both trying to maintain their balance on their stools at the same time. What had begun as a sensible enough catch up was now descending fast into the depths of political incorrectness.  - Davey boy, have you noticed pretty women… - Once or twice. He replied before Mick had a chance for his alcohol sodden brain to construct the rest of his sentence.  - Nah, nah man. Let me finish. Where was I? - Sat there next to me last time I checked.  Davey laughed at his own bad joke and Mick tried to flat palm his arm in annoyance but missed and nearly took himself and the stool over and so decided that standing might be the better idea. Then finding when stood that his legs were as stable as a newborn foal's, he spotted an empty table, took a swipe at his glass with an open hand and miraculously caught ho...

David Walker was ex-directory, now 54 years of age and newly retired from his job as a civil servant in the real corridors of power that lay in the offices of Whitehall and not as one naturally assumed, in parliament. During his thirty plus years he'd done his tour of duty of various ministries; Health, education, transport and he'd latterly been with Ag and fish before responsibilities were, for want of a better term, farmed out to what had become Defra and they'd decided that it was time to put him out to pasture, something which he'd not fought and accepted with a humility not found in others who'd equally been given the chop. In London he was always referred towards as Walker, first names for some strange reason that escaped his attention seemed of little use to anyone in the nation's capital. In the Dog and Duck Inn in Walkington the locals called him Johnnie, like the Whisky. Not because that's what he drank, simply because they already had a David, Da...

Strong winds carried from the west were busy whipping long grass back and forth across great acres of open agriculture land, each blade dancing in turn in a shimmering green sea of nature's equivalent of jazz hands. If they could talk, hundreds of thousands of tiny voices would all be calling out in chorus ‘look at me, look at me!’ Lucas would have testified to its mesmeric beauty were it not for the fact it was fucking freezing and the cold was shaking hands with the mug of tea now sat in his bladder that he'd finished not twenty minutes before and was now being unfairly instructed to make a reappearance with the world. That in itself wasn't so much an issue, however, the woman walking her dog some thirty foot behind was, and so he quickened his stride and hoped like the majority of dogs it would disobey its owner enough to create a gap where he could vanish into the trees and relieve himself before he did it down one of his trouser legs. No one warned you at school how ha...

Tobias Bunbridge had the incredible good fortune of having been born into wealth. Sadly for young Tobias he'd also had the misfortune of having been born a portly baby, weighing in at an eye watering 15lbs and 8 ounces which has nearly been the ruin of his poor mother. He was cursed with a metabolism as slow as a Galapagos tortoise and seemingly only had to smell food to gain an extra lb in weight. His mother always insisted on dressing him like a member of the landed gentry from the time his chubby cumbersome little legs finally decided that they would perform the duties for what mother nature had designed them for and give his poor suffering mothers back a much needed rest. Sadly for Tobias this garb left him looking much like Toad of Toad Hall as a child and latterly, as an adult, to the Bond villain Stavros Blofelt playing through on the back 9 of the local golf course. Growing up he was notoriously slow on both his feet and equally between the ears and so his parents had decid...

Harry inhaled a deep breath through his nose, slowly counting 1 through 4 as he did so, to try quell the anger that was blackening his mood like a tropical rainstorm. Not sixty seconds had passed since he'd neatly folded his FT, tucked it under his arm and gingerly made his way to the other end of the train platform to avoid having to listen to a woman broadcasting her life to all who didn't care to listen in her proximity before she was back stood in front of him again as if they'd been drawn by a pair of invisible magnets. He turned his head and looked up to check the arrival time of the 0918, the time now already 0942. Somehow it's arrival was showing 7 minutes later than when he'd last checked 4 minutes previous to that. What could have caused an additional seven minutes delay? It's not like it's a car able to take a wrong turn, it follows a track on a straight line. The thought then crossed his mind of how long he'd have to serve for murder if he we...

It was a sign of the ever changing times that whilst in one room on the third floor of the Parkside Hotel a husband was busy telling his wife of 26 years that her bottom most certainly didn't look big in the dress she'd just squeezed into, whilst behind another door a few rooms down, a woman in her 20s seemed positively thrilled when her latest beau had told her the complete opposite. Mission apparently very much accomplished for both men. Life was simply far easier when all you had to do was never actually make the mistake of looking at your significant other's derrière and confirm that her worst fears weren't being met by whichever of the half dozen outfits she had tried on and finally decided had best fitted the bill. Of course as every husband the world over knew it was always the first outfit that she'd tried on that she was going to eventually wear out if you paid enough attention to such things and hadn't been driven to distraction by being late for the t...

- How was your journey into work this morning? - Entertaining.  Michael responded and felt a smile start to form at the corners of his mouth and then grow into full bloom. Cathy looked back at him with surprise, tilted her head to one side, raised an eyebrow, pursed her lips and nodded her head in approval. This wasn't the stock answer she would receive 99 times out of a 100, if not more. Normally on any given morning he'd recant tales of woe, of train delays and passengers moving slowly like a sea of zombies each one more afraid than the last that a show of manners or the merest hint of happiness would cause the entire group to combust.  - Is it safe to ask why? Cathy asked in a manner that conveyed she'd stepped on too many of Michael's landmines before and only found out to her own detriment way too late. Sometimes answers oozed from his lips like toothpaste which she could never get back in the tube and made a mess of her morning before the daily work battles they s...