short story project

  Jeffrey Talbot was sitting in the back of his Father's VW Beetle as it trundled noisily down a long and unmemorable A-road, one which would, he hoped, eventually lead to the much-discussed Devonshire holiday. The atmosphere in the car was tense following and incident with a map that had caused an argument between his parents. His father was driving now, so the radio was under his control and therefore tuned to football results which were momentarily disrupted each time they drove under a bridge, causing him to tut and slap the steering wheel as he missed the score of a particularly important team. In stark contrast his mother was very obviously not listening to the radio, rather she had turned slightly towards her passenger window and was smoking in a slightly theatrical manner. Every few moments she aimed a jet of smoke at the gap between the top of the glass on the door from where it would hit the incoming breeze and blow backwards in Jeffrey’s direction. Now, and again, she wo

More than one person had described Josh as aggressively handsome in the 10 or so years since he left university, and instinctively the people who heard that description knew what was meant by it. A tall blonde guy from the north of England, he had two basic outfits: jeans and a cable knit jumper for cold days, and sportswear for the entire rest of the year. All his trainers were white and filthy. His body was indeed as muscular and impressive as its description suggested but it was a trained muscularity, awkward and inelegant - earned through a fastidious devotion to working out and eating chicken McNuggets afterwards. He frowned while biting his nails. Furthermore, Josh, like his name, was famously monosyllabic - whether he was genuinely tongue tied or just uninterested in conversation was never quite clear, but the combination of moody and untalkative had made him popular among a particular subsection of the older gay community, the sort who preferred to do all the talking themselves

I was the sort of child that got upset because no one ate the Shreddies. We ignored them until they went stale and had to be thrown out, clearly defeated by the golden appeal of Cornflakes. As an adult I am still visited by such pointless episodes of melancholia, triggered by small, seemingly innocuous events. Proust too, could be struck by similar attacks; but I’m not claiming a special similarity with his talent. Yesterday I asked my partner to carry a bag out to the rubbish bins. There are quite a lot of bags being carried out from my flat to the rubbish bins at the moment as I am in the middle of a major clear out, the sort which only takes place in anticipation of moving house or a significant birthday. Alongside a slow secretion of paperbacks into my local charity shop and old tax returns to my shredder, I am also getting strict about the sorts of objects that E F Benson would have called bibilos. So thhat particular rubbish bag contained an assortment of oddities that would not