Offspring of camel, leopard and tree – what bastard this, what sport – four of us to make the beast, each with our specialty – my Mum the Mum in charge, old Joan with Singer and with needlehooks, Elien with her love of symmetry, shapes the skin. I with my keen eye for vitality emulate […]

Twice a week I am whisked through this pleasant town, shuttling between the compartments of my life. Mostly, it presents itself arranged as slide shots of a comfortable, small quietude. The Railway Tavern, the hardware store, the old town hall, snap, snap, snap on my carriage window and gone in a streaming banner of blurred […]

Hydras and Gorgons, and Chimeras dire – William Heath, ‘A Monster Soup’, satirical etching of a sample of Thames water, 1828   We are all sapiens, all cherishable. Even those of us who drink only bottled water for fear of what’s hatching in the cut-glass carafe. Microbiology is a slow science, plenty of time for […]

“The Mad Gasser of Farnborough” in the summer of ’44 caused as much fear as Herr Hitler’s doodlebugs. A drum full of gas grew from his back and he wore dark clothing, a tight woolly hat and lipstick. He saw nothing good in people and took his revenge on fish, budgies and anyone who slept. […]

Most obviously not hers are her hands; they are her father’s, her grandfather’s, cricketer’s hands, safe hands, fat fingers “like a bunch of bananas”. And now blotched on the back, like her mother’s more elegant ones. On Italian cobbles her mother complained of her poor old feet and now her daughter has them too, hidden […]

These chimeras were brought from Bishopsgate for ballast: an empty collier sailing back London to Newcastle.   Ozymandias in a northern park, four heads rest on sober grass as if, landlocked icebergs, their bodies bulked below.   No more than emblems, they face rude frosts, gaze from blank orbs that give away nothing.   So […]