Our Nest

It was us who polished off your bottle of Laphroaig and refilled it with water. And yes, it was us who borrowed all the pound coins in your giant bottle and haven’t replaced them (yet). But nowhere does it say on that flimsy bit of paper you gave us when we moved in that you can boot us out with only a week’s notice.

We like this room: the carpet of technicolour galaxies with its signature scent of cat wee, the black MDF furniture, the bed with its lunar terrain mattress populated by bugs. We’re skint. We’re in love. This is our nest.

So I’m asking: please let us stay. We’ll turn off the music at midnight rather than 2am,  like you asked us to. We’ll wash up after ourselves and scrub the bath. We might even try to pay some of the rent.

 

On the last day of my Arvon week at Totleigh Barton in August 2017, Jo Bell gave each of us a slip of paper with a line of poetry on it. Mine is at the top of this post. She couldn’t remember the poem, and I haven’t been able to find it.

Ms. Anderson

Saturday 24 June was National Flash Fiction Day. It seems like a long time ago now, but what a joy to spend the day reading short-short, sweet, scary, beautiful, quirky stories as they were posted on Flash Flood journal every few minutes. My story Ms Anderson was included. This story has been brewing for a couple of years and started life as a much longer piece that included an in-the-classroom rant about Mr Breheny’s love for Steely Dan, and some of the narrative is from Ms Anderson’s point of view. I might post it on the blog sometime. It was fun to write.