A Taste of The Tyrol
“That Italy has some of the best food in the world is no secret. That the region of South Tyrol produces some of the finest in a country bursting with gastronomic specialities is perhaps less well known…”
Author Harry Chapman
Short Fiction: Henry Bird
“Henry Bird stood on the front step of his house. His hand still held the key in the lock of the front door. He always shut the door with the key, turning it in the lock to avoid that bang which set his teeth on edge.”
The Pond
“Thursday last, at the pond, early morning, at about a quarter to eight. Sun grins down on me, the first sunny day in a long time. A nascent but confident Sun, full of vitality and young strength.”
Strangers on a Train
“It was nearly two weeks ago. A Saturday. I was catching an evening train down to Barham. The day was damp and drizzly and the tube and station were crawling with the strident remnants of a football match.”
Twenty Days in June
“The road is like life in miniature, but stretched, extreme at both ends, much more so when one is flying solo. One moment you’re laughingly ecstatic, the next you’re so terribly low that it’s blackness all around, without end…”
Camden Lock
“I walked to Oxford Circus yesterday. Joined the canal at the bottom of Agar Grove. Reclaimed the city as only walking can. It is neither as big nor as scary as it appears.”
The Paper Cinema’s Odyssey
“It was with some anticipation that I went along to see The Paper Cinema’s interpretation of this cornerstone of the Western canon. Actually “see” is inaccurate. It is very much a cross-sensory experience.”
Short Fiction: Brown Lake
“Frank had been swimming ever since he could remember. His parents had owned a house down by the waterfront in Mosman, inside Sydney’s great Harbour…”
The Broken King
The sun periodically burned through the blanket of cloud so I chanced an outside table at one of the cafés on Swain’s Lane. I sat, looking enviously over at the well-heeled diners tucking into mountainous salads at Kalendar and Café Mozart.
Forty
I went to a 40th birthday party last Saturday. It was full of stupid, sleazy media types braying like donkeys, desperate to be liked, to be younger than they were, to be thought of as important, to be everything other than what they were.
Haggis
As I passed below the mysterious Chanctonbury Ring, an Iron Age hill fort planted with a copse of beech trees bent north-east by the prevailing wind, I saw a figure stop at the gate I was approaching. He was waiting for me…
Liberace’s Air
He was talking to Katharine when I entered the restaurant, in that gallant, paternal way some older men of a certain character adopt when speaking to the young. He was certainly a character, with his bear-like frame…