Our coven is gathering in the forest, where trees are already bare, although holly bushes are covered with berries, and an abundance of mushrooms sprouts among trees. Samhain was well-attended, but at this gathering we’re welcoming a greater number of neophytes than previously. My teenage daughter, Stella, accompanies me, although a neophyte she is not. […]
Tag: Prosery
Under My Umbrella
As days get shorter and colder, weather wetter and wilder, I’m back in the habit of packing an umbrella whenever I leave the house. Your father laughs at me. “You’ve a perfectly good raincoat with a hood,” he says. “Umbrellas are dangerous when crossing roads.” “So are hoods.” I kiss him goodbye and emerge into […]
Pea Souper
It was the first Jack the Ripper experience for Melanie, accompanying her brother, Simon, out-of-work actor and part-time London Walks guide. She’d enjoyed his Sherlock Holmes and Charles Dickens walks, but this one was creepier: it was autumn, twilight had already turned to night, and the yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes […]
Secrets
The last raindrops drip from the leaves with a slowing rhythm, so Maude closes and shakes her umbrella, and continues along the brick-weave path. Her father designed many gardens before he was diagnosed with dementia and eventually disappeared from her life, and she only recently discovered the key to the ornate gate to this garden, […]
One Black Day
It was like a raincloud was waiting to pour down on me. I had just waved goodbye to my oldest friend, who was starting a new life abroad with a man I never liked but, for her, I would have learnt to love. Black days, like bright ones, stretched ahead. Determined to forget them, I […]
Moonlight Robbery
The gnomes had escaped again and it was mayhem in the moonlit garden centre. People just don’t realise that they can go on the rampage at any time, and customers tend to encourage them with cute comments like “I’d love to take that little guy home but there’s no room in the garden for any […]
Kidnapped
I’ve been on this pirate ship, locked in a cabin, for ten days now, and there has been no sign of land, just the ocean as far as the eye can see. It’s a relief to spot a whale or a bird through the porthole, allies to a young girl trapped in a world of […]
Scatterbrain
Mother calls me a scatterbrain and a daydreamer. She doesn’t understand how it feels to be me, wanting to fly on the wind with shimmering wings when I’m tethered to house and garden. I have so many chores, I don’t have time to read or finish writing the story Miss Thomas set for homework, about […]
Lullaby for the Parents of Lost Children
Flashing blue lights pierced the ominous twilight of the alley behind the row of terraced houses, while uniformed police officers combed the fields and the woodland beyond. Friends and neighbours watched from doorsteps and upstairs windows. Later, they joined Theresa’s husband, Mick, and the police in a wider search. For now, Theresa sat at the […]
A Parka for Your Soul
I hadn’t seen Miranda since school. We sat together, walked home together, and wrote poetry in her bedroom, which she didn’t have to share with siblings. I spotted her on the pavement, shivering cross-legged on a folded-up cardboard box. Matted hair poked out of a beanie. She wore a tatty jumper; there was no coat […]
writing in north norfolk 