Those roots were so pungent they had to be good for something. For a month, Col insisted he liked them in tea, until his skin turned yellow. Kira pounded them into paste and spread it on wounds and bruises, against the pleas of her patients. I tried chewing them to

The barber ran a hand over Mick's scalp, which was smooth and supple and completely free of hair. "So what is it I'm doing for you?" he asked. Mick shrugged. "The usual." "Mick," said the barber "there's

We put down the sack of rocks and, panting, she looked at me and said, "What have you got in there, rocks?" She had done it every time we stopped. It was killing me to drag these rocks up this hill, and it was killing me faster to

Jim pressed at the lump again. It might have been a tracking chip, needled under there while he was sleeping, or an egg sac from some horrible insect. It might have been a benign little cyst. It didn't matter. It didn't hurt. Jim didn't

This week, I have been camping on the beautiful shores of Ullswater. At such times I imagine myself sat quietly by the lake, getting lots of writing done. In reality, of course, I find myself heating tinned rice pudding in the pelting rain, and looking at the many fine dogs

The directions were simple: go to the North Pole, then keep going north. A new world is not for those who accept that things are impossible. We imagined the sky splitting, and the wonders that would lie beyond. We were so certain that we could do it. And perhaps we

I turn over a rock, my breath held like a weapon, and there is nothing beneath it. Not a worm, not a woodlouse. I lift the next, and look quicker to catch them all scurrying and burying, but again there is nothing. I scratch an ankle where I have not

The boys put Frankie's little keyboard on demo mode and danced in the grass. It sounded quieter outside, or maybe the batteries were going. It had been loud enough when they took it off him. It had been loud when it caught him on the side of his

It's been eight years since the Rising, and the Committee is running out of ideas. A distant cousin of mine was sent to skim stones: each round, the least successful skimmer was dragged out into the lake to drown. Live on television – a pathetic spectacle. You can'

Sunny could hold a hot coal in her bare hand, and though you heard a sizzle and smelled that barbecue smell, when she put it down the skin was soft and perfect. You had to take care, living with Sunny. She might hand you a dish straight from the oven

With the rope around its neck, things should have been easier. Even a wild thing knows better than to strangle itself. But this one was too angry even for that. It pulled and fought until its eyes bulged. Enough to make you think it knew what it was doing. Enough

Everyone was singing a new song, just quietly, under their breath. Jerome noticed it as soon as he was back in town, as soon as he stepped out of the train station. He could see the other passengers noticing it too as they all dispersed into the night. It was

Stories about an eclipse, an initiation, a graze, a train ride, and a chess club.

We used to make the paste out of whatever we could find: blackberries and ladybirds, cuckoo spit, the stinking stuff from the bottom of empty beer cans. It all got mixed up thick, and the new kid had to eat a spoonful of it from the weird old spoon we

For the keen red moment my knee scraped over the tarmac, I felt like a child again, grazed and quick. Then I had to pick the dirt out, and put on my own plaster, and find my own way home – and all of it without a tear in my eye,

It started with a tin of sardines. They twitched and flopped out of the tin, trying to breathe in their tomato sauce. I gathered them in my healing hands and dropped them in my glass of water. I had to eat the next tin with a fork, and take care

Having slept through the eclipse, Daniel resolved to blot out the sun. He would darken the whole world – but that proved impossible. So he swore to bring night to the country, the city, the street. It was all too much. And even with his curtains closed, the light sprayed through

Pat painted the shirts and I fixed them with the iron. Maybe I didn't need to do that. We didn't expect them to see a second wear. But I couldn't stand not to do it right, and you should never give up before they

The board was glitching, so that the top half of each letter was shifted over to the right, but still I could read that the next stop was mine. And yet we kept stopping, at towns I had never heard of, where people I recognised but couldn't place

Once its head disappeared into cloud, I began to think my sunflower might be too tall. I couldn't enjoy it, and nor could the bees. I had the secateurs in my hand, ready to bite the stem, when I heard a plane overhead. I put them down, and

Stories about graffiti, sunshine, seeds, wind, and the breakdown of the hope machine.

The thing on the beach is no longer terrible. Now, the children climb up it and jump into the water. Waves have softened the edges and colour, and things live on it now, on and under and around it. When I was young I thought it would boil the sea.

After the photo op there was a scent on her hands that lingered for hours, earthy and metallic. She thought about the hands she had shaken that day, how they must always smell that way. She covered her face and breathed deep and long, and wondered when her first wrong

Enid carried the seeds home in a snug fist, only softening the pressure because she feared crushing them. She wouldn't hold hands to cross the road. Once through the door she wouldn't take her shoes off, trod dust and dry grass up the stairs to her

The wind blew, and I let my message go. I watched the paper flutter until it was gone, and then I lowered my eyes to write another. The wind was wide. It could hold everything I wrote. But one day soon it would change, and words would fly back the

Once each year, on Isy's birthday – at the exact hour she took her first breath – the setting sun threaded through the city to shine gold on her favourite park bench. The bench hadn't been there when Isy was born, nor the park, nor the buildings. And

On the chequered tile floor they pretended to be chess pieces, he a knight and she a bishop. They danced around each other, around the chairs and counters and the cat who wouldn't follow the rules. She stood a square away and taunted him, then he stood on

Lloyd rolled cheap white paint over a sunrise. A spray gun would have been quicker, but he was not paid to be quick. He was paid to be seen. A cruel blank stripe through the colour, then the long covering up: a warning to the artists not to bother. An

Stories about letters, a first date, ice, an egg, a library growing in the rock face, and the nonsense your dad told you.

I have to warm up before I can write to you. A shopping list, to get the ink flowing. An affirmation, to get my head right. A few words about the things I can see in front of me. A poem, a story, a novel, a memoir. A list of