1987: The comedian said ‘hey up, make way for Joe 90.’ Jeff asked after ‘do I look like Joe 90?’ And I said no, it’s just the glasses, but it struck me the comic was right: he’d seen some essential woodenness in my husband.

June 1987: The Triangle set to close, the Tories set to get in, the rain set to go on. A cup of coffee made with water boiled in a burnt-out saucepan with no handle. Listening to the one tape the burglars didn’t steal.

Be crossed in love before you die be swept up with the rubbish left out to rot once or twice in your life be swooned upon and shot and sacked to boot the boot the end of things and start again.

‘The best word in the world is ‘rotavator’, says this Cornish chap on the radio.

Or Uncle Hugh who sacrificed his life to the consumption of cigarettes. He had the look of a man caught doing something silly, thinning out in his last months.

Sitting by the geese-shit studded slippy path around the boating lake. No boats today on the unrippled surface. He waits for some kind of bell to summon him. He walks the long way round to avoid the beggar.

The dusty and oiled Pershore Rd with the houses darkened by emissions and old shops wheeze to close down as no customers go in or out.

She was into cars, he wasn’t. He drove reluctantly, she recklessly. There had been a couple of near misses,usually at night dazzled by lights/going too fast round a corner. Crossing the road she’d march across, stand halfway across, nonchalantly waiting as cars passed an inch in front & behind her.

He liked to be in hotel bars on weekday afternoons.

It was a big pig area, pig-sized tin igloos scattered across acres of scruffy fields. Would the restaurant owner take her to the window: which one would you like for your chops/cheek/belly, Madam? May I recommend Carly, see her over there snuffling in the dirt? A very good-natured saddleback.

Long arse story but you know I got promotion. Remember? Then I got pregnant: 7 months gone, & Dolores advises me where to take it you know, she’s golden Dolores, really sound. Next I'm up for a disciplinary, sitting there while he went on… can’t he see I’m 7 months pregnant? Blind man could see it.

Someone tripping in a corner, trying to hold himself together, arms round his own shoulders, later he will slink off, walk seven miles down urban roads feeling sorry for himself.

Nigel Stone. Marram Grass. The cliff edge, the plunge down. He’d push his characters over he’d take them to the edge for the view he’d whistle above the beating waves.

He liked George Best of all the Beatles.

God the neighbours will think we’re having a saxophone party (‘is that a euphemism?’ she asked). He didn’t like pens running out on him, he didn’t like his wife running out on him: thankfully she hadn’t, but she’d been ‘that’ close to it, she admitted once, long, long ago.

Greggs cheese and onion pasty missing one bite in one hand, mobile in the other. Three buses go by, each with huge pictures of Jennifer Lawrence’s face on their sides, going round Cotteridge roundabout in procession.

The beggar gets all my change, £3.50, says someone stole his cup with all his money in, shows me his leg wound – deep hole on his shin, red raw, as if cut and then scraped out – I give him another fiver.

‘Now he was just chatting shit like a chatshitting machine.’

‘Another day in the domestic trenches,’ he used to say to her, and now regretted it. Regretted all that he had managed to do to her, to encumber her with the tawdry mess of himself.

His wife took to wandering out of family gatherings, found walking by the river smoking cigarette after cigarette.

Beautiful Cotteridge.

Loses his phone, loses his mind on Kings Heath High Street.

The woman shouting in the pub, want a wee wee-wee, and sliding through the group; the young man, baseball capped goes round kissing the many sat down bald men on their heads. Thin, wee, wiry, dead set, surely aimed, heading for the loos.

Every list he had to go through twice; as for a menu, he could be reading it all night. He wanted everything.

Rise rise rise from crap-ness to at least not-badness.

‘Seen Phone-a-Friend’s jumper?’

In Cotteridge a thin black bloke in dirty clothes shouts My Name is Terence at a shopkeeper, through the open door and then tells the rest of the street what his name is. And topples over, people go to his rescue, although not you.

Spends a whole dream night searching for it, in cases and boxes, inside lorry cabs where the driver sleeps in the back. Hey, I shout down a dream tunnel, do you know the title of that story? Whole lives, civilisations depend on me remembering it.

The earth a round ball like a head shaggy with rocks and seas. Blue, deep oceanic eyes. A brain of molten lead. Nods its head at the sun, the slanting light.

Inside the insane comfort of a dream I live in a massive house with basements and attics, and endless corridors that merge with an airport and you can hop on a plane within minutes of leaving your bed.

Peter Michaelson traversed the streets of his borough daily, through park, along canal, cutting through the shopping centre all the while waiting like a passing fish for the stab of a giant heron. Gobbled down a spasming neck. Humans too would eat you up, he thought, if they could get away with it.

large family meeting, greeting, working their way round to ensure they don’t miss anyone, everyone gets a hug or a squeeze or a kiss, a word of comfort in the ear before moving back to assess, stood in a circle the better to see & compliment each other on their health & the growth of their children

I have new flash fiction - The Clarity - up at @flashfictionnorth.bsky.social www.flashfictionnorth.com/recentfiction

Girl with a paper gold crown, brandishing a feather, magicking the things she touches with it, bin, a passing dog, mother’s shopping bag. Orchestrating the world around her to make grownups vanish.

The fierce waitress - do you want a dessert? - becomes glum when we say we do.

[Train] Woman in beige. ‘Lee: how old is he now?’ ‘12’ ’12! Last time I saw him he was 6. Little man, now?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Bet he’s a mate. Little mate hanging with you.’ ‘Oh aye. Some cheek though.’ ‘Oh does he go up against you now?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Need to put him in his place now and again.’ ‘Yes.’ 'You bet.'

A baby in a pushchair tries to hand us a fir cone.

Christmas haul!

So pleased to have a new microfiction at @fictivedream.bsky.social my first publication since my book launch www.floodgatepress.co.uk/books Thanks FD!

A satisfying night out for him: witnessing a raging row, later he’d cuckold the husband and laugh all down the lamplit street, stolen music in his head. If he could he’d steal the flavour out of coffee. He’d stolen the essence of people and left them crumpled, windless, made off with their souls.

So happy to be amongst this lot!

Christmas reading sorted thanks to Alan Beard's latest collection "Afternoon Drinking" (Floodgate) @alanbeard.bsky.social #newbook #shortstory#fiction. And here's the title story. Please click on the link and enjoy fictivedream.com/2025/04/13/a...

The autumn that she went was shoddy, mulchy, the leaves I’d kick with my daughter in the park seemed too sticky and vile to step in. Fog hung about. At work everyone crushed by monotony, routine, winter coming, the rain splattering the fire exit window.

Now I know what a wealthy Saxon woman would be wearing pre-1066.

With a flat palm he batted away an angel.

A bandy, tall bloke walks ahead of me, mobile to ear, now & then shouts, fuck no! tell him no! & stops, turns away from the traffic, towards me. His haircut a Beckham attempt that failed, the jeans with the pale faded patches on the thighs. Wasina of a flookabat! Wasinaflooka!

[1982] Mum and George enter with gateaux, glad rags and stories of kitchen units, the houses of parliament and Freddie Starr at The Night Out which is where they are headed.

Alan Beard & Wendy Erskine at Voce Books - It's Standing Room Only as Birmingham's excellent Voce Books hosts Alan Beard's Afternoon Drinking book launch ...the latest story in Outsideleft - outsideleft.com/main.php?sto...

Man with one eye in the pub on his way to the Old Vic to see the Story of Live Aid! Another man says he’s a salesman from Norfolk. A little dog barked, all hair and sharp teeth by the chair his owner sat in, looking down, mouthful of cheese and onion roll, too full to speak, a Lager beside him.

An opinion I quite like.