Burn Buried
One night, while cadging a lift off a friend of a friend, and four of us ending up cramped in a small car: three nondescript guys, plus Candy ---a…
Lucy Starrs—Don’t Thank Your
Kathy the Goth---a graduate from Berkeley, California, so she said--- except not remotely true as it turned out--- was a big girl, meaning…
At Time, on Tune
We parted on bad terms, Grandad and I. He wasn’t a blood relation, more of an in-law, but he was ‘Grandad’ to all of us all the same. And one evening…
Jude the Unshrewd
Her name was Helen--- from Australia--- and it was all a very long time ago: the late 1960s. Helen managed a shop selling eastern ethnic goods near…
Black in Whiteface Black
We had a family doctor ---called Merrick---who came round whenever one of us was sick, and somehow always made us well again. That’s medicine at its…
Skooling on Sundaes
She was a beautiful silver-blonde girl, not exactly Swedish but not exactly not either, married to a most likeable guy, widely considered handsome,…
Ice Creamer, Part 2
XIX. Despite twenty years of strict Islamic rule, prostitution still exists in Iran. In some areas of downtown Shiraz, I think it was, for example,…
Ice Creamer, Part 1
I. Something very special about air travel: the way it bleeds fear into your soul. The tightening of the stomach. The queasiness. The hands around…
Ghost Queen
My quest for outré culinary excellence certainly did not begin with the standard fare dished up to us hapless fucking sheep strapped into our seats…
Love You, Zyra, Part 4
VII. I spent some hours in Karachi on my own. What a fucking dump. Christ. Siddiqi had gone off with some very unsavoury-looking characters to score…
