Steph is visiting her partner, Adam, who’s in an induced coma in an Intensive Treatment Unit. She stands at the foot of Adam’s bed, staring at the array of apparatus that’s keeping him alive. She had expected silence but the room is filled with the incessant bleeping of the many life-support machines and monitors surrounding the beds.
Continue readingTwo brothers in their seventies, Vinnie and Oz, share a ‘squeeze’, Vanessa, on holiday in Oludeniz. It’s late morning and they’re in the ‘Lions of St George’ bar where there’s ale on tap and English St George flags hang flaccid amidst cigarette smoke.
Continue readingA middle-aged woman, Penelope, is showing a potential buyer, Mr Bond, around her mother’s bungalow. It’s on the market for £387,500.
This is the dining room, Penelope says. In the centre of the room there’s a large oval mahogany dining table covered with a considerable number of porcelain horses.
Likes nags, does she? Mr Bond asks.
The Yoraths are a respectable, lower middle class family who have survived the Second World War in which Sidney served in the infantry. Olive fought her own battles on the home front, forever frightened of the telegram announcing Sidney’s death, while cherishing their son, Tony, who is now eight.
Continue readingIn the summer of 1961, Lister is fifteen and has a holiday job at a small carpet shop, belonging to Glyn Jones, an acquaintance of his father, an accountant, Samuel. Lister is pleased to be earning ‘a few quid’ and his parents are happy that he’s out in what Samuel calls ‘the real world’ and not forever in his bedroom reading. Lister suspects the truth is that Rachel, his mother, is perfectly happy to have a bookish introverted son, whereas Samuel is fearful that Lister doesn’t have enough oomph to be make a fortune, despite the fact, that he, though voraciously ambitious, has not made one himself.
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Phil Cosker 