Monday, 29 April 2013


Roger Noons
a large Scotch with only a little water

‘Motor Claims, can I help you?’
    ‘Oh yes, good afternoon, my name is James Roberts, I have my car insured with your company and I’m afraid I have to report that I’ve had an accident.’
    ‘Just a moment Mr Roberts, I’ll put you through to …’
     ‘Hello Mr. Roberts, my name is Alison; I’ll be dealing with your claim. Can you tell me is it driveable; are you at the scene?’
    ‘Oh no, I’m at home, it’s a bump at the front, on the near side.’
    ‘Right, if you give me your policy number, it will bring up all your details and save me asking you a load of questions.’
    ‘It’s MoI 650089.’
    ‘OK, yes I have the information. If you would like to tell me what happened, if it’s straightforward, you may not need to complete a form.’
    ‘Well, it was yesterday afternoon, I was driving towards the crossroads at Mossbridge; it’s where the A491 crosses the A4101. I slowed as I neared the shops on my left, but coming towards me was a large Four by Four with its lights on main beam. I was dazzled and pressed my foot on what I thought was the brake, but it must have been the accelerator, as I shot forward. There was a jogger so I swung the wheel, but mounted the pavement and collided with a tree.’
    ‘That’s it is it?’
    ‘What was she like?’
    ‘The jogger, what was she like?’
    ‘How do you know …?’
    ‘Was she wearing tight white shorts, with a pink top? Did she have red hair, a pony tail that bounced from side to side as she ran? Was she wearing Nike trainers?’
    ‘How on earth do you know all …?’
    ‘I’m your principal witness Mr Roberts, but I can’t say I remember seeing a Four by Four with its headlights on.’

Author Bio

Wednesday, 17 April 2013

The Tramp

The Tramp
Roger Noons
a generous measure of Asbach Uralt

‘Margery, that old tramp’s here again, in the reading room.’
    ‘What’s he doing?’
    ‘Looking at books.’
    ‘Well, that’s what people come to a library for, to look at books.’ She ticked off two more reservations from the list. ‘What sort of books is he looking at?’
    ‘Art books, I think, big ones with pictures in.’
    ‘He’s not doing any harm is he?’
    ‘I suppose not, but he smells funny. I think he’s spilt thinners or paint stripper on his coat.’
    ‘Has anyone complained?’
    ‘He’s had some funny looks, but no-one’s said anything yet.’
    ‘Let me know if anyone objects and I’ll speak to him.’

‘Margery, I took some magazines back and I sneaked a look. He’s drawing as well, copying from the books, on to envelopes; naked women.’
    ‘He’s not defacing our books, is he?’
    ‘No, just drawing with a pencil. But he does smell and he’s very scruffy. I don’t think the others like him.’
    ‘I’ll go and have a word.’


 ‘Has he gone?’
    ‘Yes, I suggested that he had perhaps had his money’s worth and he should call it a day.’
    ‘What did he say?’
    ‘He shrugged and said OK. He thanked me for giving him the opportunity to pursue his studies and wished me good afternoon.’
    ‘Do you think he is a tramp?’
    ‘I don’t know, he had a cultured voice.’

 The old man left the library and walked the two hundred and fifty yards to a building behind the Co-op Funeral Directors. He slowly climbed the stairs and let himself in through a blue door.
    ‘Jacob, Mr Davies is here. He’s given me the five thousand.’
    ‘Thank you my dear.’ He went through to the studio. ‘Harold, how are you?’
    ‘Good to see you Jacob.’ The two men shook hands. ‘It’s a fine painting, the one on the easel.’
    ‘Thank you my friend. I just need to sign it, and you can take it with you.’
    As Harold Davies watched, his old friend strolled to the easel, selected a fine brush and after dipping it into a spot of red paint, on a small palette, signed L. Freud, in the bottom right hand corner.

Author Bio



Wednesday, 10 April 2013

The Bath ‘O’ Matic

The Bath ‘O’ Matic

Trevor Belshaw

Water with bubbles

Sir Oswald Hennessy opened the door to his workshop and stood aside to allow his guests to enter.
Once inside, Mrs Henrietta Parkin laid a gloved hand on the arm of her host. 'This is so tremendously exciting, Sir Oswald. It's such an honour to be the first to see your latest invention.'
Sir Oswald took a puff on his cigar and smiled.
'I think this one will prove to be a roaring success,' he said. 'We call it the Bath O Matic.'
Sir Oswald sipped at his brandy and waved a hand towards his latest steam powered machine.
'There are still one or two little issues to be sorted out, but we're more or less ready to give it a thorough testing.'
Henrietta studied the device intently. The machine was gunmetal grey, circular in shape and stood some four feet high. Rows of metal rivets ran around the circumference. There was a double door at the back with a rubber seal and a hole at the top just big enough to allow a head to poke through. It was fed by a series of pipes from a compact boiler in the corner of the room.
'So, this Bath O Matic is … personal bathing and massage machine?' Henrietta was fascinated.
'It is exactly that, madam.' said Sir Oswald proudly. He opened the rear doors to allow his guests to see the interior of the machine.
Inside, there was a small seat and two levers. Fixed to the front wall, about three feet apart, were a pair of foot pedals. Protruding from all sides of the machine were hundreds of tiny brushes on thin retractable handles.
'It works like this,' said sir Oswald. 'The bather sits down and places their feet on the two pedals at the front. I readily admit that this is not a very ladylike position to take up, but we haven't been able to find a better place to situate them.' Sir Oswald averted his eyes from the blushing Henrietta and continued.
'The steam level is set by the use of the two levers. Pulling the right hand lever adds more steam whilst pulling the left hand one will allow some of the steam to be removed from the cabinet. On the top here, to the left of the bather, is a temperature gauge. On the right is a speaking tube, so that the bather can call for assistance if needed. Liquid soap is dispensed through this aperture here. The foot pedals are used to control the speed and intensity of the brushes.'
'It all sounds very complex,' said Mr Parkin. 'Do you really think it will catch on?'
'My dear fellow, I'm convinced of it,' replied Sir Oswald. 'It hasn't been fully tested yet but I'm actively seeking a volunteer. The servants run a mile if I approach them.'
'I'll do it,' blurted Henrietta. 'I love the idea of working on a new invention.'
'I couldn't ask you my dear,' said Sir Oswald.' I was going to advertise for a tester.'
'Oh Please,' cried Henrietta. 'I do so want to help.'
'Are you sure, Old girl?' said Mr Parkin. 'It all looks a bit awkward to me.'
'Do let me, Henry,' said Henrietta.' It's such an exciting idea.'
Sir Oswald led Henrietta to a side room and ordered the maid to bring a dressing gown and towels.
'I'll see you when you're safely ensconced,' he said.
Henrietta undressed quickly and slipped on the dressing gown. A couple of minutes later she walked into the workshop and sat down in the Bath O Matic. The maid closed the rear doors and wrapped a towel around her neck to stop the steam escaping.
The maid left the room and Sir Oswald's voice came from the tube next to Henrietta's ear.
'Right oh, Old thing, start her up.'
Henrietta pulled the right hand lever until the steam gauge read, 'hot,' then she began to pedal.
'It's working,' she called excitedly.
I'll leave you to it now, Henrietta. Call when you're ready to come out.'
Sir Oswald patted Mr Parkin on the shoulder and refilled his brandy glass. 'Don't worry, Old chap, she'll be fine.'
Henrietta pedalled slowly as the soft chamois brushes gently soaped her skin.
'OOH,' she giggled, 'that tickles. Ooh, haha, Oooooooh.'
As she pedalled harder, clusters of tiny brushes began to soap her chest and thighs.
'Ooh I say, this is....Ooh...OOOOOOOOOH.'
Fifteen minutes later, a bedraggled looking Henrietta staggered through the sitting room door. She was dressed in a long, thick dressing gown. Her damp hair hung around her shoulders and her eyes sparkled like wet diamonds. She took a deep breath, puffed out her cheeks and collapsed on the carpet.
As Mr Parkin rushed across the room towards her, Henrietta lifted her head and gasped, 'Henry, you must buy me a Bath O Matic.

Author Bio

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Thursday, 4 April 2013

Cut to the End

Cut to the End

Charlie Britten

Cafe Au Lait

Earphones are an effective device for blotting out the rest of the world. My mother stands in my room, opening and shutting her mouth like a goldfish. ‘Switch that thing off,’ she says, and I wonder how I know that. Can I do telepathy now?  With my mum?  This is scary, so much so I switch off my iPod, even though I am in the middle of ‘Neutron Star Collision’ by Muse, which is truly amazing.
‘We’re on holiday, Matthew. In France. You can listen to your music at home. Now, are you ready?’ 
‘I told you. I'm not going.’
‘Come on, love. We’re all ready to set off. Dad and Steph are waiting. We’re going to have a nice family day out.’
‘At a museum?’
‘You’ll like it when you get there.’
‘Why would I want to go to a D-Day museum?  Why do you, Mum?’
‘It’ll be very interesting.’  She sits down on my unmade bed and then stands up again. ‘Come on. You can't stay here by yourself.’
‘I'm all right.’ 
‘No.’ She draws in her breath and blows it out again. ‘It’s so stuffy in here. You never open windows, do you?’  Her face has become flushed, droplets of water forming on her forehead.
The sun pours through the dusty casement; a river of sweat trickles down the cleft of my spine, making my black t-shirt cling like a damp cloth to my back and to the sticky patch on my wrist.
‘Change into something cooler, Matthew. Black absorbs the heat. I packed you a couple of light-coloured Ts.’ 
I wince at the word ‘Ts’; is that what they call them in M&S?  Anyway, black is what I wear: black T-shirts, black jeans, black hoody, black hair dye. ‘I'm all right,’ I say again.
We both hear Dad shouting outside, something about a bottle having leaked and ‘made a mess’ in the car. Mum goes out to speak to him, but my sister Steph appears in her place, as if the two are working shifts. ‘Move it, Matthew. Now. They’re waiting.’
You don’t want to go to this museum.’
‘I do, actually.’
‘Why?  You’re not Dad. You’re not into war films and all that death and glory stuff. I'm joining CND.’
‘Can you afford the membership fee?  You owe Mum £5 for the last gig you went to. Just get your arse into Dad’s car.’  She reaches for my hand, pushing back the cuff of my black T-shirt.
‘Leave me alone.’  Snatching my hand back, I pull my sleeve down over my wrist.
‘What have you done?’ 
Her eyes scan my room, but my safety pin lies deep in my jeans pocket.
‘I scratched myself on the brambles in the yard.’
‘Yeah, right.’  She looks straight at me but I turn away.
‘If you insist on not going and spoiling everybody’s day, I'm staying with you.’
I suppose I always knew I'd have to give in eventually. I rummage around under my bed for my trainers. ‘I don't know why you come on a family holiday. You’re a student.’
‘I haven't got any money, have I?  And Mum and Dad offered to pay for me.’
‘When I'm nineteen, I'll be on the road with my metal band.’
I bump my head on the kitchen door lintel as I walk outside. It hurts. Being tall is annoying.
‘Would you like to sit in the front with me, Matthew?’ asks Dad, as he attempts to fold up the map, but the gentlest of breezes flaps it around his hands like a duvet-cover on a rotary-drier. Taking it from him, Mum smoothes it out in a few firm movements, all the time talking to Steph about how many calories there might be in pain au chocolat.
‘I don’t mind.’  I sit in the back with Steph.
‘All aboard for Arromanches and the D-Day Museum,’ says Dad as he starts the engine.
I cringe. So does Steph.
We drive along straight French roads, through pine forest, families sitting at picnic tables, children running around amongst the trees and scrambling over stumps and logs, as Steph and I used to do in England. For a moment, I feel the springy bracken under my feet, bits of bark in my shoe and dusty mud between my toes. Afterwards we would eat squashed, peanut butter sandwiches, clammy and glue-y, washed down with a little box of Sainsbury’s pure orange juice.
Having parked in one of the many car parks at Arromanches, we walk along the promenade, gulls ‘caw-caw-ing’ above our heads. Then Dad stops dead, thrusting his arm out in front of him, almost knocking off Steph’s sunglasses. ‘Look. Look. Mulberry Platforms.’  He turns to me. ‘You do realise how significant these were, don't you?’  Before I can even draw breath, he tells me - again - about Hugh Iorys Hughes building portable landing platforms so that the Allies could invade France. Blah, blah, blah.
It’s like a demolition site, lumps of rusting metal and concrete on the beach and in the sea. French families swim around them, using them as diving platforms and spreading their beach towels over them. It’s a hot day.
‘Hugh Iorys Hughes was Welsh by the way.’  Dad’s mother is from the Valleys. He bigs this up, has done ever since the World War Two craze took him over.
We have to wait in a queue to enter The D-Day Museum, alongside wall-displays of uniforms stiff with age, yellowed wartime notices in blotchy typescript, gas masks, photographs of men with round, horn-rimmed glasses and brylcremed hair, standing behind bulky pieces of equipment. ‘Fascinating, fascinating,’ says Dad, pushing his glasses down his nose. I move my weight from one foot to the other. It’s all so old, a miasma of Dad-ness. My wrist throbs under new scars. I notice that my cuff sticks to newly dried blood.
Mum and Steph stand together chatting, pointing at things and laughing. They have this joke about generals in war films moving canes over maps and saying in cut-glass accents, ‘We’re-ah here-ah. The enemy’s there-ah. And we’re going to obliterate the blight-ahs.’  It was funny the first time.
Inside the museum at last, a bald-headed Frenchman talks through the events of D-Day, pointing with a ruler at a papier-mache model of Arromanches. ‘Nous sommes ici, ici, et ici, et les Nazis, voila!’  Mum and Steph dissolve into giggles; every so often they press their lips together and look serious, but seconds later their mouths pucker again. Whose side are they on?  
I glance at Dad, but he’s so caught up in it all that he doesn't notice, which is perhaps as well. For a while I'm really pissed off with them. We’re doing this for Dad, aren’t we? It’s his thing, isn't it? But the museum goes on and on, more and more rooms and exhibits, another storey, yet another video. Dad has to see everything.
At last, lunch, open air and sunshine, cafe table legs scraping against the pavement. The waitress furrows her brow as Dad orders in English; he gets cross when she brings tiny cups of espresso, instead of what he calls ‘proper coffee’. I tighten my knuckles under the table. Mum leans across the table murmuring, ‘Grand’, but Dad shakes his head at her. ‘Bigger.’ He draws his hands apart as if he were playing the accordion. ‘And... With.... Milk.’
‘Cafe au lait,’ I say to my feet.
‘What’s that, Matthew?’ Dad turns on me, raising his eyebrows.
‘Better not be.’  As we finish eating, he takes another brochure out of his pocket and opens it out on the table. ‘Now, the ‘Arromanches 360 Cinema’. It says here that ‘This circular theatre with nine screens shows the film ‘The Price of Freedom’, which mixes contemporary news-reel images from war correspondents with pictures from the present day. There is no spoken commentary, just the sounds and noise of D-Day.’’
I don’t say anything. All I do is curl my lip about a millimetre.
Dad leaps out of his chair and storms out the cafe, leaving Mum to pay. In the car park, he shouts at me, ‘What’s the matter with you?  What were you going to do this morning that was so much more interesting?’ 
Dad’s furious eyes bore a hole into my face. ‘Well?’
‘I don’t know.’ 
‘Why are you like this?  What do you want?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know!  You don’t know anything!’  I jerk my head backwards; it’s what I always do when I'm told off, even though it’s uncomfortable. ‘Get into the car!  You will see this!’
In dreadful silence we drive about a mile, to a bunker-like building half-submerged in cliff top. I wander away from the others, across the grass area which slopes down to the sea, grateful for the offshore breeze blowing on to my face. An elderly couple smile at me and say something in French. They must think I'm normal, but my wrist still smarts. I touch the safety pin in my pocket.
Inside the ‘Arromanches 360 Cinema’, it’s standing-room only, with metal crash barriers, like an old fashioned football ground, but our family and that elderly French couple make up the whole audience. The screen extends almost all round the auditorium, so when the lights go out, images of D-Day bear down upon us from everywhere, truly 360 degrees, soldiers in khaki and the tat-tat-tat of gunfire, buildings dissolving in smoke and fire, the view from an aircraft with the ground rising up and down. Makes you dizzy. I reach out for the metal crash barrier. Dad jerks his head round to stare at me.
They ride through a field, which changes into a modern town. Germans in grey uniforms surrender to teenage Allied soldiers, watched by ragged French villagers, who cheer and cry at the same time. In the auditorium, I hear a gulp: the elderly French couple are sobbing, easy tears flowing down their cheeks unchecked. She taps me on the arm and points to her chest, saying in stilted English, ‘Me, I... was... here.’
I nod, my father also; he draws in his breath to say something in reply but doesn't.
More images of Allied soldiers now, scared faces under their round metal helmets, dirty and exhausted. For a moment I think I recognise one of the sixth-formers at school. Seventy years ago, this is what sixth-formers looked forward to. This would have been me if I had lived in the 1940s.
My father is still watching me, but I don't care. It’s all too much, in the same way that listening to ‘The End’ by ‘The Doors’ blows your mind, because you know you can never create anything as big, never do what they do, only glimpse at something massive. With my finger, I trace the outline of that safety pin, the loop at the bottom, the rounded catch at the top. The soldiers’ faces have scratches on their faces, but they didn't do it to themselves, because they were bored, or because their family weren’t cool.
We leave the ‘Arromanches 360 Cinema’ in silence, Dad walking on ahead of us, his shoulders sagging, his head cast down. I quicken my pace, about to join him, but he doesn't look at me.
‘Let's have another coffee,’ says Mum, forcing a smile.
‘No,’ mutters Steph, ‘not that again.’ 
Nevertheless we follow her across the road to the nearest cafe. Leaving them hovering outside, I walk into the gloomy interior, pushing past wooden chairs with tired paint and bare tables with just ashtrays on them. A waiter polishes glasses behind the bar, his eyes intent on the television in the corner, watching a games show with lots of canned laughter.
‘Café du lait, s’il vous plait,’ I say. ‘Quatre.’ 
Nodding, he reaches over to the coffee machine. ‘A la table?’
‘Merci bien.’
I rejoin my family outside. Dad peruses one of the leaflets we picked up today, pages rustling as he turns them. Mum and Steph have stopped chattering; I wish they’d say something. Anything. The sound of my heart pumping blood around my body is deafening, throbbing through the scratches on my wrist, which have reached the smarting, sore stage. I pull down my sleeve.
Then Dad raises his head. Simultaneously Mum, Steph and I draw in our breath and hold it.
‘You’ve ordered?’ Dad says.
‘Yeah,’ I reply, exhaling again.
‘In French?’
‘Well done.’  He smiles. ‘You’re a good linguist, you are.’  He holds the smile until his face muscles must've ached. He looks down at what he had been reading, then at me again. ‘What did you...? How did you...?’  He taps the brochure.
‘It was okay.’
Still smiling, he nods. ‘Yes. It was okay. Wasn't it?’
On the way back to the car, I throw the safety pin into the gutter.

Author Bio

Charlie Britten has contributed to ‘FictionAtWork’, ‘The Short Humour Site’, ‘Mslexia’, ‘Linnet’s Wings’, CafeLit, ‘Radgepacket’.  She writes because she loves doing it and belongs to two British online writing communities.



Charlie’s blog, ‘Write On’, is at

Tuesday, 2 April 2013

Bad Boy

Bad Boy
Yezall Strongheart
Black Tie
A traditional Thai Iced Tea, which is a spicy and sweet mixture of chilled black tea, orange blossom water, star anise, crushed tamarind sugar and condensed milk or cream, with a double shot of espresso

It was one of those really hot days, when the air was so thick it was hard to breathe.  I lay in bed with a fan aimed at my face.  Every window and door was open, and I could see all the way to the front door.  There leaned with his back against the door jam, was Marco smoking a cigarette.  I hated it when he smoked; it made his mouth taste bad.  Sweat rolled down his tanned cheek from his hairline, dripping on the shirtless bronze chest of this Greek god of a figure.  When his hand came up to take the cigarette from his mouth, the muscles rippled in his bigger-than-my-head tattooed bicep.  His jeans hung slightly slanted at his hips; maybe it was the way he stood.  The jeans were so tight that you would be able to bounce a nickel off his ass, and he didn't have to be hard for you to know what else he was packin'.  No shoes and I watched as his toes rolled a bottle cap on the concrete of the stairs, aimlessly.  He stared out into the bright sun, squinting a little, smoking.

        Our life together wasn't bad, we didn't have a lot, but we had each other.  Marco did odd jobs, worked on people's cars, whatever he could find.  I did nails and hair for the neighborhood, I charged way less than the salons, it was enough to cover some supplies and still make a little money. Between that, food stamps, and the local food pantry, we almost always made our rent on time.

          We would try to stay cool until the sun went down.  Then after washing the soot of the city off of us, we would meet our friends in the street.  In the dark by the streetlight, we'd gather.  The boys would tell stories, real or imagined, as they kept an arm possessively around their girl. All of us were poor, and yet somehow, there was always money for beer. The boys would get louder and more aggressive as the night wore on, depending on how much beer they could buy with the money they pooled together.  The fight was usually over something very stupid, and thankfully, it wasn't every time that someone was hurt.   It was either that or the girls would get put on display in some fashion, as if to say, ‘Hey man, look what I got to take home.’  A grab of a breast or an ass cheek was the usual exhibit.  Our self-respect was determined on how our men bragged about us sexually.  Emotions were raw on the street; little was left to the imagination. Some of the girls were embarrassed inside, but they would never show it.  They had to laugh along with everyone else when their man demonstrated how she sounded in bed.

        It was when the night ended that I sometimes became afraid.  When Marco had too much to drink, he was mean.  He would imagine that I smiled at one of his friends, or whispered to them.  Those nights he would run his fingers into my hair and ball his fist.  He would lead me home by my hair, yanking his hand and swearing.  I had to be very careful to keep my eyes down when we were around the other boys.  The littlest thing would set him off, thinking I disrespected him in front of his boys.   Most of the time he gave me bruises where no one would see, but he has been careless before and left me with a swollen eye more than once.

        On other nights, he couldn't keep his hands off me.  He would stop to kiss me several times on the way home and shove his big hands up my sides under my shirt.  I was embarrassed and saw people looking.  He told me that they were just jealous; I don't know maybe they were.  He was so drunk one night, and in a good mood, that he had sex with me on the outside stairs to our building. I remember the concrete stair step cutting into my back, as he forced his way inside me.  He said nobody saw us.  He was quick that night so maybe he was right.

        I hope this day will bless us with a breeze or rain and cool things down. This is a special day.  I will wait until darkness cloaks the city again and our world condenses to the street where we live. I need the intimacy it brings. I will make him a special dinner of his favorite, mac and cheese with hamburger. I planned this for a Thursday, because tomorrow he will have money and he will use it for beer. I have to be extra careful today and make sure he doesn't drink too much.  I need him to be in a good mood.  Not for the reason you think.  I have news for him.  He's going to be a father.

Author Bio
Yezall Strongheart is an independent self-published author, having nine books to her credit on Amazon from how to build your own corset to young adult, and erotica. Having published her tenth book with Horny Devil Publishing, she is now more of a hybrid author. After winning first place in a poem contest early in her writing experience, she was captivated. A majority of her books end with a happily-ever-after, but it's the journey to get there that makes each book a rich experience. She lives with the love of her life and their three furry babies in Texas.