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“The Atlantic is disarmingly called the Pond, where Tentacles born in America can often reach our shores in Britain, or if not Tentacles, at least a ripple or two carrying what many consider to be the infections of a planet’s soul that first find root on the other side of the so-called...

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In the 1950s, I read a book as a child that I had by now forgotten; it came back to me gradually, not in one fell swoop. A library book, you know the sort: plain weathered beige mottled hardboard covers with a little thin cardboard pocket stuck inside and a piece of paper also stuck with a...

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Nearly next Christmas. The small child in its pushchair. The bars of the pushchair’s frame hung with small bells that the traffic deafened. Bells that were once Christmas decorations. Evidently they had been painted blue, it now being long since Christmas when most decorative bells were silver...

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I must tell someone. There were telltale signs on her body – the handprint-shaped bruises around the rib cage, the mouth, at that time still full of two tongues. Hers and someone else’s. She had evidently died during the act of lovemaking. In all, the body showed evidence of a...

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“When you are born, life is mapped out for you. Unless, of course, things change, even very small things changing, just one small thing being able to alter the course of your whole lifetime, and the whole world’s course will alter, too, alongside and as a result of your own one small change,...

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Chopin wrote 24 Preludes, one for each hour of the day, but I always played them when there was a full moon. There was something plaintive about them, methodical, as if all was right, bright or even rightly, brightly dark about the world. When there was a misty ghostly moon of any size, I...

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The plane was readying itself for take-off. I wondered if a plane was called a plane because it interleaved several planes of reality and dream in order to achieve flight for a heavier-than-air object that it surely was. A transporter for people across the tightening borders of the...

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"I wonder if a black oyster can culture a black pearl, its pitch black outer shell hinged to another such shell, and tightly contained within them are its slimy innards and a now bullet-hard pellet shaped into a tiny sphere whereupon all the seas and lands mapped upon it are as black as...

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SHIFTING SHADOWS "We'll need a belt as well as some braces," she said. I looked askance at where my wife Rose was sitting. What did she know about a man's need for a belt and braces? Sixty years of marriage and she still thought that anxiety was a word you set in spelling tests....

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Belts & Braces. Two words in the title tied together by an ampersand. Two words are always better than one. One no doubt better than none. But three or more? That's when you get close to renting a crowd, I guess. Belt, braces, buttons & buckles. Brooches and badges then added, closely...

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I needed a new circuit in my house. Oh, by the way, my name is Francis, spelt in the male way - 'is' not 'es'. I requisitioned, therefore, a specialist electrician as the circuit had lost the efficiency of its ohm resistor and thus required a new connection. I loved connections, even...

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He placed an empty plate in front of me. "There's a time and a plate," he said, as if this were the best joke in the world. I laughed politely. Polite laughter is never the same as real laughter. But it was real enough to elicit a small breaking of wind. He left for the...

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Names can't break you. But they stuck to Stephanie's clothes and hair like burrs. They were broken points she had felt – during this particular war of life or any previous campaign – and if they were typical of the enemy’s weapons then she should really start saying her prayers, assuming she...

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IS THAT Is that you who just kicked the side of my car, as I drive real painfully slow through the town, a town near gridlocked by other cars and by people weaving between bumpers and boots, and I cannot tell if that is you with your face now pressed outside against the windscreen,...

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THE STATUE It stood in the middle of the market square – a pipe in the mouth, a hat with flaps, a nose as long as Pinocchio’s nose, a cravat and waistcoat. All chipped, chiselled and carved from stone. I shivered as rain began to threaten with ominous grumbles from thunderheads along...

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Old Friends, Thank you for coming. As a child, I lived in Old Heath Road and, recently, I learnt that the Heath was nothing to do with Heath but to do with nearby Hythe, a harbour and a word for Harbour. That came as a shock. Being the road to Rowhedge and Fingringhoe, I had guessed all...

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FIRST IN CLASS When I approached the shop -- more a storefront warehouse, perhaps, than a high street outlet, although it was ON the high street -- I saw that its fixture of a banner above the showcase at its leading edge upon the pavement carried the words FIRST IN GLASS as set...

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THE LAST - - - I often thought I knew what thoughts others thought. It is called being a seer or medium - or even a prophet whereby I can predict the thoughts someone was about to think a few seconds before they thought them. But the real art of such telepathy – yes, that’s the word I...

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SWEETS FOR MY SWEET My darling sweet, my darling sweet, we have known each other for many years, have we not, but when we first met, in that tiny playground of the school, we were so young and now almost forgotten as the people we once were. The photos that were taken are what we have to...

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If you say that you need closure, then you are usually referring to an unresolved situation. You need a clinching - I think that is the right word. A catharsis, perhaps, or a purging. So that you can go on and forget about whatever the problem happened to be. Whether it be a bereavement or...