Category: imprisonment

Teach your Children

The ‘great white hotel’, as we called it, began across the road from where our small apartments ended. Its elegant, curving facade made it one of the most impressive of the ‘grand hotels’ on the Atlantic island of Gran Canaria. Majestically, it hugged the line of the small ‘wadi’: a set of wide waterways designed to absorb the floodwaters from the nearby mountains. “There … Read More Teach your Children

Midnight Mask

I’m not a fan of horror films. Many are simply exploitative, and the genre in general has normalised extreme violence. But once in a while I come across something that, to me, is exceptional, and only in the genre of ‘horror’ out of misunderstanding; or even better, because the ‘film’ has two layers of meaning… and if you stick with it, you get to … Read More Midnight Mask

An idea whose time has come

An idea: invisibly potent A watery creek A new and gentle breeze of ripeness Felt by few A red propeller spinning in the soil? A sail – unfurled and flapping Held fast with thin steel ropes which ‘clack’, dull metal, at its imprisonment … Whose time: like the now-revealed spinning toy Whirring in the wind Unwraps, revealing shining teeth Rotating gear, synchro-meshed Engages, beneath … Read More An idea whose time has come

From Bakewell with love – the gift of surprise

What do you do when two of your best friends put you in gaol for a crime the three of you carried out… and leave you there? The characters of Wen, Don and Ben in the Doomsday series by Stuart France and Sue Vincent are not-so-loosely based on the three people who run the Silent Eye School. Imagine, in real life,  joining the other two one … Read More From Bakewell with love – the gift of surprise

Ben’s Bit, part four – Into the Dark Waters

The night time is the worst. Within a world which contains so little, I find myself clinging to what is there; growing more present to the slightest changes in my meagre environment. When the daylight starts to fade in the evening, which happens earlier and earlier under the gathering cloak of Autumn, I can actually feel the waves of darkness changing the atmosphere in … Read More Ben’s Bit, part four – Into the Dark Waters

Ben’s Bit, part three – The Oak Leaves

After exercise in the tree-lined yard of the old gaol,  I am returned to my cell, clutching a fallen twig of oak. Yellow eyes doesn’t seem to mind this simple addition to the contents of my room, and lets me keep it. “They will fade and crumble soon,” he mutters, as though the judgment carries enough negative weight against the idea of keeping them. “You can … Read More Ben’s Bit, part three – The Oak Leaves

Ben’s Bit, part two – The Little Red Book

I’ve done it again – drifted off, fully conscious; somewhere else. I do not know how long I’ve been staring at the Bakewell Gazette (see part one), absorbing their celebratory levity at my incarceration. ‘Local Businessman’? Well, stretching a point, but I know what they mean – certainly born among Northern hills very much like the beauty around Bakewell. ‘Businessman’? Definitely, until the recent, long-awaited … Read More Ben’s Bit, part two – The Little Red Book

%d bloggers like this: