Running backwards, forwards and sideways in time.
I mentioned in ‘Living a Boy’s Adventure Tale’ my fear of water. From memory, I was always quite cautious as a child. Nervous, timid. During the summer holidays, we would regularly visit the beach at Teignmouth, both when we lived in the town and in Ideford. I found the beach a bit of an ordeal.…
We left Teignmouth after Mum and Dad separated, although I’m not too sure of the hows and the whys involved in moving out of the town. In fact, thinking about it, it must have been a little while after the split that we moved because more stuff happened before we made our way out to…
We stayed in Teignmouth for a while, in the Devon-based equivalent of the house from the Amityville Horror movie, after my parents had separated. I remember my Dad being involved in a relationship with a woman named Sharon. I think she was a bit younger than him and if I’d been in a different headspace…
It had been a busy day in the seaside town of Teignmouth, the sort of day that publicans loved as it precipitated heaving gardens and thirsty punters. The sun had shone and the beaches had been busy, ‘early busy’ too, as families had fought for space to lay down their towels before the sea had…
A Sky Full of Stars The first few flakes of snow had gone unnoticed by pre-occupied shoppers and Christmas revellers. Undeterred and perhaps a little disgruntled at the lack of interest, winter descended upon the picturesque scene that might have adorned the front of festive cards of previous years. Huge, white flakes fell in flurries…
Why Does it Always Rain on Me? It was raining. No surprises there, obviously, in England. But it was raining and I was getting married. In about six hours and twenty-one minutes. I checked my suit, for the umpteenth time, gave my shoes another quick polish and looked in on my so-called best man, who…
Just One of Those Things The sun was high in the cloudless sky as the faintest of breezes whispered across the cricket ground, teasing the pages of newspapers at the boundary edge and hinting at the possibility of the weather closing in later in the evening. Out in the middle, shimmering in the heat haze,…
That was Then, but this is Now There was, as the song by Prefab Sprout begins, a girl I used to know. Isn’t that how all the best stories start? A boy and a girl. Or a girl and a girl or…come on, if you haven’t got the picture by now you’ve really not been…
So, that day, that memory that I alluded to earlier. If I were telling it as a story, I might imply that it started like any other day. Indeed, it may well have done so. On this particular day, however, there was mystery afoot, a plot bubbling beneath the surface of our working-class existence in…
If you find the dogs are crying in the morning If the piano plays a song while you’re asleep If the days we had repeat while you are dreaming It’s the echo of a heart you couldn’t keep If the cat should settle where I used to whisper If the snow should fail to lie…
A Life More Ordinary