|
Perry Estelle
Guide on a Yak © 2003
Dear Beau
Get yourself over to Taylor Towers Rest Home, Framlingham at noon today. I got a phone call from the manager there. Your interview is with David Douglas, great nephew of Ernest Shackleton the late great explorer. We are editing tomorrow for Sundays supp. Usual format, (g.o.l.d.) greatest achievements, own testimonies, levels of endurance and last but not least death defying acts etc… blahdeblah. Hit him before lunch. Before he's liable to nap or get medicated. I want a five thousand draft on my desk tomorrow, double spaced. No excuses, have him sign the consent form. Plenty of portrait shots and loan some photos of his expeditions etc, leave that to Geoff from FOCUS, he will meet you there. Tape it and get at least an hour with him. Who is he exactly? Nobody has read about him because he is a stealth explorer. Never been exposed  more...
“None so blind” © 2002
"Ven voz the lass time you had your eyes looked at, Dr Kubelik?" The ophthalmic optician gave an inviting gesture and swung a swivel chair across brown vinyl in the direction of the letter card. She was a bony female with a short black bob. She had green eyes and a brittle click of an Austrian accent. The sort that ended up in an omelette of cheesy Californian twang. As she flipped through a selection of lenses she held them up to the light like a suspect hand of cards. "Its been the third test this month….I have a friend in the hospital ….he advised that I get my eyes checked…..he…..I mean…..I need to be fit to…." Levon was now aware that maybe his eyes were not the problem but his mouth was in need of emergency treatment just to enable him to string a sentence together. He followed the more...
“Pick more daisies” © 2002
Liverpool docks, England. 22:15hrs. Present day.
Stephanie stared heavenward admiring the vast black velvet with its festoon. She found Venus. She remembered being told by someone that a Venusian day is longer than an Earth year. Almost as long as her day. Back on earth, she wished her client would finish the "Jousts of Venus" and pay her, so she could go home.
A year had passed since the loss of her baby. It was just a fetal four months old when she had thrown herself into the Mersey in a bid to avoid both their real fate. She was almost off the hook. She felt brief euphoria. A cure all. Except, it was a barge hook that pulled her to the bank. A swarm of luminous bodies clambering in the more...
“Plead the baby act” © 2002
A Scarborough holiday motel. Summer of 1968.
Sheridan shuddered with horror at the thought of what he was to expect. The shame to befall him. A holiday at the "Silver Waves" holiday resort. A converted army barracks with sniper posts. A so-called state of the art, holiday of a lifetime. Complete with a shilling meter, black tarmac for a beach and wet string and brown Windsor for tea. It was the dawn of the self-catering holiday that should be pronounced 'concentration camp'. At least at Solibor they had some form of heating and then were liberated at the end of the incarceration. Being shoulder to shoulder in a fenced area with three thousand people who obviously had not tried very hard at school when they had the chance. One way arrows more...
“Contents may not Settle”
Donny Gates was a product of the American airforce. At fifteen years old he had followed his Father around the world more times than his own shoe size. A colonial giant, that had managed to grow his arms and legs at the same time. He had a Little Richard moustache helped in its pubescent growth by using mascara. He wore mirrored pilot glasses. The crinkly 'regulation' flat top made him look too young for the military, but old enough to be a 'Guardian Angel' in a New York subway. Eyes, as big and brown as upturned horse-chestnuts more...
Warts and All © 2003
Marriage never works, divorce always does. Gina had heard that one out of three marriages work. She was just waiting for the third one. She took the guilt and avoided an acrimonious separation. To Genevieve it was like taking a tight shoe off. He always called her Genevieve when they were in company. She hated her name, it sounded like the usual pet names meteorologists give to hurricanes threatening the Florida coast. She left a note saying that he was the perfect husband but clearly it was all her fault and that she could not settle down to another marriage. It was not loves thirty something's dream. She forced herself not to write a P.S telling the truth. That he was a idle egomaniac with the brains of a mongoose.
Her new home was over one hundred miles from her Lewisham roots. A quaint coaching house that she decided to rent in the Norfolk border village of Hockwold. One thousand pounds a month of unmolested rustic history with no dishwasher, a barn owl in the larder and two feet of mud and Triffids passing itself off as a garden. Gina dropped her suitcases at the crumbling step and let herself in which was not easy as the door had practically rotted away more...
"Whiff of a grapeshot." © 2003
Bermuda terrace shopping centre, Edwardston. South East England.
A woman dressed in deep mauve and wearing a matching chiffon scarf picked up a newspaper to read of the death of Edith Piaf. Paris had lost its 'little sparrow' to alcohol and morphine. Her last song summed it all up. "Je ne regretted rien". Piaf's close friend, Jean Cocteau had died on the spot from shock when told the news.
"The wages of sin is death. Anyway she had a voice like a rusty gate." The woman frowned and shook her head, neatly folding the paper and placing it back on display.
She was without make-up and hauntingly beautiful. A tensile, elegant woman with Christine keeler looks. A pointed bodice, to be envied by Miss Keeler also. She was told by her hairdresser to avoid purple. A shade usually chosen for the prematurely old. A hurrying form that clickety clacked in a straight line through Edwardston High Street. Others weaved to avoid her. She wore a hat and veil, sharp to one side. She fiddled with a bow at the back that added more...
|
