I’m your Venus (in blurs)

Did you ever have a dream that was so great, you not only woke up annoyed that it wasn’t finished, but sincerely hoped you could pick it up where you left off the following night? And did you then rack your brain trying to remember exactly what made it so great, only to find that […]

Gothic

O would some Power the gift to give us To see ourselves as others see us! It would from many a blunder free us, And foolish notion: What airs in dress and gait would leave us, And even devotion! Robert Burns

Comedy nightmares

I dreamed that the population was divided into two distinct camps: those who willfully provide Michael McIntyre with a lucrative career, and those who want to continually whack the unfunny, jelly-bellied, smug, self-satisfied, pompous, middle-class, gibbering oaf in the face with a large, heavy-bottomed frying pan. We won the ensuing battle, of course, then we […]

Where the lost things are

Where is that other dimension? Surely not everyone falls off a cliff or circles the plughole of life watching Midsomer Murders before fading from view forever? This other place sounds more exciting. Not so much a place to disappear, as a more obscure place to stumble into. I don’t know anything about it but I’ll […]

Dark water

“Don’t do it!” we shouted, with our usual mirthful, carefree abandon. Bob looked up and around at us, a tiny smile appeared at the side of his mouth. I can’t remember exactly what he said as we passed him by, but it was something to the effect of: “I’m just having a rest.” The bridge […]

The terrifying beauty of the Monopods

I was at primary school when I read John Christopher’s brilliant sci-fi novel The White Mountains and it terrified me. This was around the time I’d first heard Orson Welles’s The War Of The Worlds broadcast, and a good few years after I’d had my first nightmare about a Dalek invasion of my village, so […]