Breakfasts for spies
O'Flannery's cafe is designed for spies, laid out to maximise the number of corners. Despite being a cheap cafe, it has a staffed cloakroom where items are...
How to Make a Map
Start with where you are now. Draw an arrow declaring: “I am here”.The temptation is to survey your surroundings, measuring and marking them out. Do not do...
Final Crisis
The first crisis happened in 1984 when I was 8 years old. DC Comics had been publishing superhero comics since 1938 and their stories had become tangled in a...
Professor Scarecrow
They called him Professor Scarecrow because Mike liked the old joke – that the scarecrow deserved a Nobel prize for being out standing in his field.Professor...
Excerpts from a Brighton Guidebook
The Seagull FeastDue to its illegality, invitations to the Seagull Feast are rare and few people discuss the event. Hosted in a Brighton and Hove celebrity's...
Gone Girl
I threw the book out of the window because it was shit. Everyone had raved about Gone Girl but I'd guessed the twist pretty quick - it was like We Need to...
Endless Calendars
Here in the uplands, we've our own ways of tracking time. The seasons and the equinoxes are easy enough; and the years are marked out in memories. The summer...
This Dream is Bought To You By The Coca-Cola Corporation
They're branding people's dreams now. Coca-Cola offer you the chance to play football with Beckham, but you're each drinking a Coke, one more perfect than...
The Cooking Pot
At eighteen years old – a young eighteen, according to her Dad – Christine was terrified of university. She hated the idea of finding her place in a new...
Milk
At the start of the term, Bill Barnaby took a two-litre Coke bottle, filled it from the milk machine, and hid it next to a heating pipe. It soon soured,...
The Summer Fete
The Devil was enjoying his day off. If he was being honest with himself, he worked very little these days, but didn't like to think of himself as retired....
Once I had a Golden Ticket
The queues outside the convention hall are long. Even the VIP line shuffles slowly, Sophie and her Uncle Kim waiting their turn. Sophie has taken the day off...
I'm Sorry Mr Giggles 🤡
I’m Sorry Mr Giggles On his last day at the circus, Mr Giggles painted his whiteface over the bruises, then he painted the bruises back on top of that. It...
Imaginary Picnics
I’m still amazed that the pandemic happened; that I spent weeks confined to a flat, trying to stay sane. I got by with suggestions from friends: socialising...
Don’t Go to Dreatown
The only reason that I'm writing about Dreatown is to deflate the mystery, because there’s a danger of it turning into a dark tourism spot - like The Paris...
Fridge Secrets
We’d drunk our way through most of a second bottle of wine when Celia said she’d make food. I followed into her kitchen, the first time I’d seen it. I wished...
The Secret of Fortune Telling
Predicting the future is easy, but telling fortunes is an art. Madame Quark stands outside her kiosk with a cigarette, thinking about this. If you pay...
A Page from an Atlas
Chris stepped out of Ajmer station into a throng of taxi drivers, all trying to get the tourists' attention. It wasn’t yet dawn. Chris's hotel owner had been...
Good Girls and Doomed Men
The washing up should have been the clue, the fact that the sink was always filled with dirty water and crockery. Anarchy would never be a viable political...
England is a Disease
The Pevensey children, Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter, are famous for their adventures in a far-off land, accessed through a wardrobe. In a short time, they...