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.

People jump out of their disguises, jumble of blood and anxieties.

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.

Photos from the launch: 1) Wendy Erskine interviews me about the book. 2) Voce Books outside. 3) Post launch with Clare and daughters Chloe and Grace outside the Kilder bar. 4) more post launch antics with Nigel, Jonathan, Hazel and Ashok. More coming..

Here he is in the pub again, licking the crisp sludge off the back of his teeth. Near a group sat around involved in the story one was telling, leaning forward. Except for the glum one at the end, tight lipped. Looking around, reluctantly sipping his pint, putting it down.

I couldn’t cope with him not coping. Him not getting up. Him reaching for an anger from his history from the men in his family, reverting to type.

We had mice for a time everything we ate was peppered with mouse pellets. Spiders lived in our bath, plants grew mushily in our brains fucking everything up. The days joined up and sank away.

In my mind I stabbed him just behind his large clean earlobe; I stabbed him in the hall just big enough for two as I opened the door for him on to the thin sloping street.

Wants to get high will go to great lengths will tackle the dark the twisty streets of love canal reek beside him the trembling hand on the door the spots and boils the bloodshot eyes the days drummed out of town, the seas within broiling, coughing up cabbage. The peace that might come.

He could see his end wrapped up in his beginnings, the coming round of things, the circling that happens.

The book exists! So happy.

He was recovering. If he could stitch all his wasted minutes together, waiting for the computer to load or fix itself or update or whatever it’s doing; waiting for a bus, anyway if he could stitch all those minutes together he could build himself a whole other life where he did nothing wrong.

Something shifting in him, sorrow welling in him, something off centre, something going on in his body and his soul. He ate raspberries. Reverted to childhood. His son commented on it.

Her & dad giggling together following me through the Lickey woods, down to the golf course where I could get ice-cream & feed ducks with the sandwiches they brought for me. Hiding & watching them pass, not looking for me but kissing each other & laughing because they knocked teeth, drew blood.

Afternoon Drinking with Alan Beard - One of Britain's Best short story tellers has a new book of flash fiction out in November ...the latest story in Outsideleft - outsideleft.com/main.php?sto...

‘There’s even a shortage of beggars,’ she said, ‘or perhaps it’s their day off.’

Hey I wanted to tell him, we can be equally miserable. We can sit in Wetherspoons together with its 7 quid rounds and cheap burgers growing into our frailness together our white hair. Our bar stool future ahead, our Stella and crisps life, our Sunday gatherings at the Toby Carvery.

The night before we’d had a sesh, afternoon drinking stretching into evening as the kids came back and told us drunken on the sofa of their swotty day, how Shay had fallen out with another friend because X fancied her. I can’t help being beautiful! We laughed and agreed she was.