My shrivelled sausage fingers grope for forks in greasy water, eyes to the front, no choice but to look as I wash up breakfast, lunch.   Half-naked bodies dart across the rectangular view of next door’s kitchen; Pink Hair and Music-Pump Testosterone vie for a place at the gas cooker hood,   A curl of […]

He was an unwilling tenant in his new lodgings. He didn’t say as much, but it cost us a lot of grief to get him comfortably installed. I was worried about the location. The neighbours were all much older than him, though Barbara on the left looked likely to be kindly and William over the […]

See here a toddler’s arm, the plump wrist creased, the dimpled fingers curving   as if waiting for the mother to clasp all six tight in her own. Hush now, she’d say, it’s all right.   There in the next jar, harshly lit, hangs another, the mirror image down to its supernumerary digit.   Whoever […]

Alert to the arrival of ambulance or hearse, they appear clutching casseroles and condolence at times of unexpected crisis – sudden loss, marital breakdown, prolonged illness.   United by postcodes and drying greens, power-cuts, stairwells and entry-phones, they share hedges, driveways and tax bands, the wax and wane of house prices.   Divided by bolting […]

Too close for comfort, shoulders braced,   they stand nose to nose with jutted chins,   he mirrors her, lower eyelid stretched   open, held in place with one finger,   his look intent and all the while   he gives a running commentary Over   this way, down a bit, up, left, just there, […]

We are in our neighbour’s garden. Here’s his shoe. Three hundred years ago he slipped it off and today the County Archaeologist encourages us to guess its size and look for signs of wear. We inspect other finds laid out on the trestle table: jettons raised from the bottom of a well, a fourteenth-century horse’s […]