GROWING PAINS
DO YOU remember the first time? In a series of self-indulgent walks down memory lane, the writer tries to remember HOW to write.THE FIRST time I came back was only a couple of months after I left.A friend of mine…
HILL FIRE
FIRE BROKE out on Helsby Hill, Cheshire, on Friday 29 June 2018. Social media carried rumours and speculation about the fire and how it started. The fire service said the blaze began by accident. The following is an imagined version of events.THE FIRE happened…
ATYPICAL
I’M SITTING opposite my dad in a shitty two-for-one family pub. “It’s OK if you need to starve yourself on a Wednesday and binge on a Sunday,” he says, “lots of people do that. You just don’t want to get any…
THE RESIDUE OF A RELATIONSHIP
THIS ISN’T a film about a breakup, but rather an intimate cinematic experience about a man rediscovering who he is without the love of his life. Brett Chapman’s “The Residue of a Relationship”, explores the leftovers of love – the artefacts…
NONE SHALL SLEEP – A SERENITY TALE
THE FORBIDDEN City theatre of Sihnon – beautiful, imposing, and terribly, terribly exclusive. Famed throughout the Verse for being host to the finest productions and players of the Alliance. No finer setting than this for one of the most rare…
MATERNAL ESTRANGEMENT
MY IN-LAWS are visiting for the weekend. They took an hour-long flight then drove for four hours to stay with us for two nights, so that they could spend time with their granddaughter, our baby girl, Sophie. They make this…
DODDY AND ME
HUNDREDS OF mourners gathered in Liverpool today for the funeral of the comedian, Sir Ken Dodd, who died last month, aged 90. Fans lined the streets outside his home in Knotty Ash as his funeral cortege, led by a horse-drawn…
MAKING A BABY
MY BROTHER is making a baby. If my parents had made us in the same way, we wouldn’t exist. I understand his reasons. He doesn’t want his child to suffer the same things we have. Doesn’t want to put his…
SINGLE IN SHANGHAI
TWENTY SOMETHING questions for a 20-something, single woman in Shanghai – the real life story of Teresa Feng. What it’s like to grow up in “the best place in China” and not become a “bad girl”?I – Am I a…
A REALLY SMALL THING
THE BOY had one dream and one plan and three days after his twentieth birthday, he decided it was time to act. He said goodbye to his mother. She cried. He said goodbye to his girlfriend. She cried too, although…
MWC
