by Steve Tanham
Ben’s Bit, part 7 – Heels in the Night The sound began one night; an insistent tapping entering my dreams, making me think of leaking pipes and other failing elements of the old infrastructure of Bakewell’s ‘improving’ jail. When it continued, my thin sleep on the thinner mattress came to an end, and I lay with ears straining in the total blackness as the insistent … Read More Ben’s Bit, part seven – Heels in the Night
by Steve Tanham
The air is blazing on the Greek island. There is a faint breeze blowing off the shore, but it does little to cool the afternoon. Sitting comfortably in my beach chair, I wiggle my toes in the sand, digging them deeper and feeling the hot, dry grains give way to the wetter and more compact sublayer of the beach. The tidal shelf extends all … Read More Ben’s Bit, part six – Far Away Places
by Steve Tanham
Ben’s Bit – part five – The Reasonable Dr Grey The man is calm. His dark-rimmed, circular glasses focus the intensity of his study at me, rather than taking in the light that bounces off my prison uniform, whose monotone colour, resembling a modern warship, bears his name. “Do you think it’s normal for a person in your position to refuse bail?” Dr Grey … Read More Ben’s Bit, part five – The Reasonable Dr Grey
by Steve Tanham
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
by Steve Tanham
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
by Steve Tanham
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
Sun in Gemini 