How I came to write the title story of my collection of short stories, Reasons. While studying for my Masters Degree in Creative Writing, I was fortunate to have Paul Bailey, novelist and critic, as my tutor for one option. The assignment was to write a 500 word story and I was unsure how to […]
Only the River
Only the River Sweet Thames run softly, for I sing not loud or long… I am not a scenery girl, or landscapes or country. More an ‘in the head girl’ – poems and stuff, as with the Spenser quotation above. It was while at Twickenham County, the girls’ grammar school (the building in Clifden […]
Seven Ages of Man
I recently stayed in a holiday resort where there were a lot of retired fire fighters, many of them having been injured on the job, some permanently. I got talking to groups of them and some got up from the table where we had been eating and talking, stiffly, and with difficulty, clearly in pain. […]