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(1, 'node', ' a welcome from the editor read the first issue here it s a real pleasure to announce that the first issue of the puffin review is now alive and kicking or should that be squawking at any rate it s been hard work launching the magazine and we re glad we can sit back and relax at least for a day or two after which work on next month s issue will begin in earnest we ve started from scratch with the puffin review as a writer i know how important the first few publications are so we created the magazine to give new writers a chance at seeing their name in lights or rather in print we have no pretence no artifice no delusions of grandeur and no money our idea is simple send us your writing if it s good we publish it we don t care whether your publication record is yards long or nonexistent we don t bother if you re a student or a pensioner we don t mind where you live what you eat who you love what you do we just want good writing and to provide a place for emerging talent to publish thanks are obviously due to our writers and you can find out more about them in the contributors section in the menu we ve included links to their various blogs and their twitter names as we want to publicise our writers and spread the word about them so if you like what you see check their details and read more from them we want to hear from more writers so check our submission guidelines and send us your work we ll be publishing monthly and are already looking ahead to our next issue also take a look at our poetry contest where you could win a weekend for four in the south of france we also welcome feedback so feel free to get in touch with the editorial team or leave comments at the foot of each article i hope you enjoy our first edition julie mcdowall editor arielmcdowall introduction ', 0),
(3, 'node', ' write for the puffin review fiction we accept flash fiction of up to 500 words and short stories or standalone novel extracts of up to 3000 words poetry we accept up to three poems in one submission with a maximum total of 150 lines with haiku we will accept up to 10 per submission articles we are looking for a range of essays reviews and opinion pieces of a maximum of 1500 words book reviews authors and publishers are welcome to send books to us for review email editor puffinreviewcom for details please attach your work in doc or docx format in 12pt text plain font and direct your submission to the appropriate editor see contact us remember to include the title of your piece and add a short third person biography which we will add to the site should we publish your work ', 0),
(4, 'node', ' contact submit your articles and enquiries to the editors below  editor puffinreviewcom fiction puffinreviewcom entertainment puffinreviewcom travel puffinreviewcom opinion puffinreviewcom poetry puffinreviewcom ', 0),
(5, 'node', ' contributors bethany anderson bethany is a writer reader book reviewer and teacherintraining she blogs about her writing and reviews books at wwwsubtlemelodramacom fergus anderson fergus has lived and worked in nepal since the early 1990s he served as a communications officer with the brigade of gurkhas in kathmandu from 1992 to 1997 and has trekked extensively in the annapurna and everest regions of the himalayas fergus has travelled throughout the south asian region and has recently spent 3 weeks in bangladesh traveling by bus canoe ferry paddle steamer rickshaw and train he specialises in short essays of his encounters and places that he has visited and aims to compile them into a picture book using his pieces as captions if you wish to read more of his writing or if you require any information on nepal he can be contacted through his blog wwwoffexploringcom fergusanderson blog anthony ash anthony works in english language teaching and is a postgraduate student of english linguistics he enjoys writing and producing quality journalism his main interests are education the economy and society comment is always free follow anthony on twitter ashowski samuel best samuel best is a glasgowbased writer and also runs octavius a literary magazine for students studying in scotland samuel has been published in the cadaverine clockworks and fractured west and is writing two novels based on different blends of scottish national identity violence and running away he tweets at spbbest richard biddle richard biddle aka bid grew up in the brewery town of burtonontrent he has an ma in performance writing and has made a number of live texts including work for 3 bristol poetry festivals last year his poem a bequest was published in brittle star magazine and he was invited to read his short story endorphins at story studio in brighton he lives in chichester where he continues to experiment with writing using the twitter account littledeaths68 you can find more evidence of his work here http writings43blogspotcouk  he is also a member of echovirus12 jared a carnie is a writer in his twenties who fled the dull neon of essex for the freedom of the outer hebrides graeme cooper graeme is a high school english teacher from southwest scotland he started writing poetry in 2012 having considered himself a poet for 20 years initially he used the pseudonym the elusive andrew smith because he was afraid of his friends reading his poems alan crossan alan is a writer of short stories and flash fiction from barrhead he is a member of the glasgow writers group patricia duffaud patricia duffaud is a french writer who lives in london she has a degree in english language literature from france and an ma in social anthropology from goldsmiths college she writes short stories and is working on a novel she is also a columnist for litro magazine max dunbar max dunbar was born in london in 1981 he recently finished a fulllength novel and his short fiction has appeared in various print and web journals he also writes criticism for 3 am and butterflies and wheels he blogs at maxdunbarwordpresscom and tweets at maxdunbar1 he lives in manchester and can be contacted on maxdunbar gmailcom  daniel gothard daniel gothard lives in oxford uk with his wife and three children he has a masters degree in creative writing from bath spa university and has previously been published in three anthologies mix eight hours and the poet tree in 2008 his novel relax and swing was published in paperback his website is wwwinspiredwriterscouk verity holloway verity is a graduate of anglia ruskin university s literature masters programme specialising in fiction poetry and freelance journalism she is currently finishing her first novel for which she received the new writing partnership s escalator award her website is wwwverityhollowaycom jones jones jones jones was born in wales but now lives somewhere else he is the author of the humiliation triptych a collection of dark violent tales of woe set between central eastern europe and wales he blogs at jonesjonesmoonfruitcom dj mac dj mac fouters dithers with an itchy scratchy pen in an edinburgh garret in the odd moments when the bewilderment of life fades a proud member of the binge inkers writing group he meanders rants muses and chortles on wwwdjmaccouk  he likes to look for humour in the darkness or darkness in the humour in order to craft good writing observers hope that some day with the wind behind him he may just yet succeed rachel macgregor rachel macgregor is a graduate of bournemouth university with a ba hons communication and media degree despite being a brit she loves american television and is passionate about film and literature she loves to review the latest releases as well as some old favourites rachel can be found on twitter rachelmacgregor and also likes to update her blog  rachelmacgregorwordpresscom  in her spare time james bruce may james bruce may is a writer and musician based in london where he graduated from goldsmiths creative writing ma course in 2011 may specialises in prosefiction and is currently completing his first novel he is also focussing on several short stories a number of which are being considered for publication by various literary magazines before studying at goldsmiths may attended greenwich university where he graduated with a bachelor s degree in creative writing in 2010 prior to this he studied at the brighton institute of modern music his blog link is jamesbrucemayblogspotcouk and his twitter address is jamesbrucemay chris markwell orrin christopher markwell studied english literature with creative writing at bangor university in addition to his odd scribblings he plays guitar for north wales rock outfit bad excuses and finds both pursuits strange and invigorating chris markwell s tweets can be found at markwelljones and his band can be found at wwwfacebookcom badexcusesband julie mcdowall julie is the editor of the puffin review her blog is due to be published by blasted heath in april 2013 her website is wwwjuliemcdowallcom michelle honey mullet michelle is a writer living in cambridge massachusetts and her work has been published in a few tiny literary journals in new england she recently selfpublished a book of haiku on lulucom called scrimshaw vincent o connor vincent o connor is originally from kilfinane in co limerick in ireland having graduated from university college cork with a ba in english and sociology he lived and worked for a number of years in spain and japan vincent now lives in cork in ireland and is the assistant director of studies at nations language training centre where he helps run english and communication courses for european business managers laura peatman laura is an avid theatregoer and blogger with a particular interest in new interpretations of classic works and a weakness for musicals after graduating from cambridge university last year she is making the most of having no more weekly essays to write by spending as much free time as possible at the theatre alongside her job at a secondary school more of her writing can be found at laurapeatmanblogspotcouk  rachael pells rachael pells is an english lit grad and freelance journalist currently fumbling her way through mexico and central america where she will probably find herself get a tattoo to scare her mother and write for mexican newspapers she is rachaelpells michael ray michael is a glass artist and art therapist living in west cork ireland his poems have appeared in the moth and the irish independent alistair roberts alistair roberts is a graduate of the ma in creative and life writing at goldmsmiths university of london he has recently completed a novel entitled chnam oun 16 i am 16 it is set in phnom penh cambodia during the last few months of the golden age of cambodian pop music before its destruction by the khmer rouge on 17th april 1975 alistair teaches creative writing and drama and is currently working on the sequel superman is dead alistair can be contacted on aj alistairrobertsmycouk emily kate sherwood emily kate sherwood is a feral shop worker and 21 year old freckly lady she writes frequently and is mostly silly but only when she isn t studying for her bsc in health and social care she also has fabulous hair and may or may not be considered hilarious tweet emily here voilaemily or read her nonsensical scribblings here on her personal blog wwwfreckledramblercom  thomas simpson thomas simpson has written and directed for both stage and screen a finalist of the sir peter ustinov television screenwriting award 2011 thomas has also directed music videos for up and coming glasgow bands he was recently appointed an official member and charity trustee of the loch ness film festival and is a regular writer for web magazine moviescramble ellie stewart ellie stewart grew up in wimbledon and tunbridge wells and studied english and philosophy at the university of leeds she has been published in various literary magazines online and won the writer s village best writing award winter 2012 her stories have been included in anthologies by fluster magazine and arachne press she currently lives in south east london and works for king s college you can follow her on twitter elliemayonnaise sarah taylorfergusson sarah taylorfergusson was born in remote north yorkshire and studied at the midcheshire school of art and oxford university since then she has lived in london italy and cheshire she works as a freelance editor on many wonderful novels and books for a raft of fiction and nonfiction publishing houses she likes drinking coffee and wandering the borderlands of the welsh marches mark west mark is a phd candidate at the university of glasgow writing on the poetics of time in contemporary american literature his writing has appeared in type review dancehall and thestate he reviews books for gutter magazine and the list he blogs at mpwmpwmpwwordpresscom  nici west nici west lives in manchester with her boyfriend and two guinea pigs she doesn t get lonely writers syndrome because she lives with her boyfriend and two guinea pigs she has recently completed an ma in creative writing whilst curating the annual literature festival in lancaster and is currently in naples italy pretending to speak italian bernard wheeler bernard wheeler is 22 and studied english literature at the university of birmingham before deciding he wanted to become a novelist in the meantime he is a freelance journalist working between essex and london he has a fear of flying philippa wilkinson philippa is in her twenties and works in the slums of nairobi she enjoys writing about her experiences in her spare time ', 0),
(6, 'node', ' about the puffin review exists to give a voice to new writers and journalists whilst publishing reviews of the latest fiction and author interviews getting those first publications is crucial to a writer s career not only in terms of building a reputation and a record but in terms of confidence there s also the matter of validation it helps you cope with the dreaded dayjob immeasurably if you have some publications to your name the puffin review wants to help writers take those first steps to begin making their name we have no limit on subject matter send us your delicate haiku poems about moonlight or meaty opinion pieces on welfare reform you are the writer and the floor is yours our only rule is that we demand quality julie mcdowall editor arielmcdowall ', 0),
(7, 'node', ' poetry competition the puffin review is pleased to announce an exciting new poetry competition which we are running with le manoir de gurson a country house and writers retreat in the dordogne we are seeking poems on the theme of peace and tranquillity with a maximum word count of 200 the closing date for entries is 31st may 2013 and the competition will be judged by the poet ros barber with the winner being announced in our july edition the winner will be selected by ros at the manoir itself where she will be running a poetry course from 16th 21st june 2013 details of the poetry course are available at le manoir s website wwwmanoirdegursoncouk the prize will be a selfcatering holiday for up to four people for the 13th 20th october 2013 the party will have complete and private use of the manoir and of the pool weather permitting entries should be emailed to editor puffinreviewcom good luck  ', 0),
(8, 'node', ' a crisis of faith by james bruce may i couldn t bear the quiet house a second longer so i drove i got into my car and took whichever turns led towards the darkening clouds i sped through the suburbs and out into the countryside the engine rushing loudly in response to my urgency my need get close to the storm under the fringe of the weather my car was greeted by a few fat drops of rain puddles gathered and then gushed as the rhythm of the sky quickened hedgerow flashed by its blurred green dividing the greys of the road and sky i rolled open the windows freezing air came flowing in about me the drumming on the roof intensifying as flings of wheelspray splashed about the car i was led to a village where the rain was heaviest i didn t recognise the place i pulled the car over by a little church its thick stone walls darker where they were exposed to the rain as if a bleak paint job had been abandoned halfway to completion i stopped the engine the windscreen wipers lurched once then stopped the rain obscured the view almost instantly it assembled and darted downwards snaking over the glass and fell directly onto my arm and shoulder through the open window i opened the door for an hour i sat reading and rereading the email four years of close knit friendship and intimacy vanishing as quickly as it had arrived i knew we d been having problems i knew that recently we felt like something jarred went against us platonic we called it and we celebrated it friendship and love finely balanced our great achievement had the balance been tipped the email said that it had we believed in investment in work we knew it wasn t easy to carry this off had our friendship really overtaken our love really made everything awkward when we had made love lately it was exactly that awkward like plato himself was standing at the end of the bed disappointed tutting we both seemed suddenly nervous or just not relaxed how this had happened i had no idea we d often joked about the fact that neither of us had met the one previously and drank to our luck at meeting someone companionable to grow old with someone sexy funny sensitive who understood what life was about knew how to respond to the other not instinctually but informed intelligently perhaps it was unconventional but neither of us had wanted more than space freedom and time there were so many advantages neither of us had lost our friends neither of us became controlling or paranoid neither of us felt envy insecurity stress we believed it was genius practically avantgarde of course there were doubters but we ignored them called them blind narrowminded but now i could hear their whispers growing louder i read the email again i loved this garden especially first thing especially at this time of year the frosted grass crunching under my slippered foot the laurel s green withstanding the temptation to pale the bareknuckled sleeping roses silent my ritualistic morning cigarette and tea seemed larger a more intoxicating awakening the tea s steam was doubled in the cold my warm breath doubled my smoky exhalations so i seemed descended from dragons not a human at all enclosed still far from the main road there was little not to love about this garden the sky was azure today in all directions but one to the west a weather front approached a wandering shadow of rain clouds it would throw sleety icy rain driven by a cold bitter wind but our garden didn t care the darkening clouds were far off could not be heard and would probably pass us by here everything was quiet calm like watching a cellist playing behind thick glass my dressing gown swished as i moved from room to room the computer was firing up in the study the kettle chugging boiling in the kitchen the bath running and steaming the bed unmade i pulled the curtains to spotlight clothes scattered across the floor you d left in a hurry this morning so used to being late i thought working from home afforded me amazing observations i used to take advantage of the empty street and play music full volume but these days i chose the dampened serene melody of the house instead i watched as the sun cast away the condensation on the windows i watched the slow advance of shade the windows intrigued me i d seen all seasons through these windows i knew what was expected of me from work and had developed a system of rush and wait rush and wait hammer out umpteen emails and then wait for their replies sit and watch the weather pass sip tea think of you such a creature of habit you d probably chide but today the kettle clicked off unheeded the bedroom remained silently untidy the computer after delivering your email sat shy i slipped into the tepid bath the drip drip of the tap peerpressuring my tearducts i stood for some time next to my car the rain was heavy intense freezing the car seats were getting wet had i really wanted this to stand in a storm to let it pelt me to let it soak me i was not dressed for it but i didn t care after all what difference did it make i quickly unbuttoned my cardigan wet cold fingers struggling and threw it into my car i wound up the windows and slammed the door then stalked into the churchyard the gate creaked the puddles slapped the yew trees glistened and swayed with reverence in the strong wind grave stones leaned mossstrewn letters eroded by countless days like this one i stood for a moment a few strides back from the church door watching its cobwebbed porch being assailed by the rain why was i here i d wanted rain storm recklessness and if i d driven further the skies would have brightened here the rain was heaviest here the distance had been crossed the horizon met the church stood as an image i had never felt attached to it had always been normal mainstream conformist whereas i had built up a world of forerunning of freedom the rain did not ease slanting quickly across the day the church stood in front of me i in front of it i read your email again it was short and frank leaving no room for questions how could i reply to this should i even bother wouldn t it be better to wait to talk about it tonight assuming you d be coming home tonight if at all it said you d seen a decline but a sudden end in response to a slow decline just didn t make sense was there someone else had everything you d said you d believed about the nonexistence of the one your rejection and dismissal of fate had it all melted away in the face of some new lover was it all worthless had you strung me along taken what you d wanted and now intended to move on i stared at your words i hated them my head was full of questions each as groundshattering as the last why wiping my eyes i tore my gaze to the window i could see the rain clouds that had seemed so distant this morning now occupying more of the pale morning sky turbulent wintery and dark cold as my thoughts i felt close to them then at one gasping i wanted to be that storm i wanted it to blow my anger away wanted the wind stabbing straight through me i had a sudden need to be on the move to feel like you felt i snatched up my car keys inside the church my world of rain felt far away dripping wet i could hear the tiny descent of water from my jeans falling onto the flagstones could feel all my clothes were soaked heavy against my skin i stepped forward past the aisles a draught pulled at my senses cooling me further attempting to bring my blood in line with the cold nature of the heavens all was still in the church dim and immemorial images of a desert came into my mind dry sand at the base of a coarse cross heat thirst blood but it all seemed so far removed from here my pain my shock felt closer more real my anger kept the cold at bay but i was beginning to calm the unfamiliar surroundings of the village church helped me focus and force all of my questions into order and i prepared to feed them answers standing there under the rafters this old building it suddenly occurred to me held within it the same quiet as i so enjoyed in our home but with more shadow more space i then felt an unpleasant sensation of being watched turning slowly around a full circle revealed no one the altar a golden cross candlesticks stained glass windows darkly varnished smooth benches carpeted kneelers bibles musty hymnbooks gravestones in the walls i imagined skeletons under the floor owls hidden in corners the space cold and dusty had me or i had it why now was i more in love than you had i let my love show too much i hadn t thought so i had loved quietly as you had i had walked the wire balancing between love and friendship that was our quest both of us to avoid betrayal heartbreak to build trust maybe we had besmirched love so much its role had become languid and the balance tipped perhaps we d been fooling ourselves wrong all this time our unconsciousness storing every sigh desire and fear remembering them against our will had it all suddenly come to the surface our enlightened postmodern relationship was it always going to be one day crushed by our human nature should i have told you i love you did i want to hear you say it i began to shiver and i hugged myself for warmth did i have the strength to start again the tingling of stress lightened my lungs i resented myself standing in a church asking questions i thought would never be asked again with an uncomfortable feeling i thought of the similarities between this church and our house this place did not feel empty it felt like a home a ghostly home this made me stop and hold my breath nothing moved apart from the uncontrollable beat of my heart i could not hear the wind i could not hear the rain the storm had passed in dry clothes i sipped hot tea and lit a cigarette i haven t smoked inside for years outside of the window the afternoon sun sparkled across the garden it had been raining here too the house was warm and the neighbourhood quiet everybody still at work you would still be at work sometimes whilst sat waiting for tasks to present themselves to me i would write and tell you about my day i loaded up your email and without any right answers began to respond the roads were empty the car s heaters smelt of burning dust making mechanical transitions i looked for signs towards home wiping drizzle from the windscreen bringing you into my mind i tried to put myself in your shoes how much of this had been ideology how desperate were we to go against the grain i d always hoped that ultimately love and friendship would really be one and the same when we first met there d been a spark some chemistry something natural blossoming trying to govern those emotions to liberate ourselves from control itself from hurt and disappointment was a mistake the conversations discussions plans we had made beliefs we share all we ve worked for has clouded and relinquished the oneness of us i pulled into our street up to our quiet house our home i opened the door issue 1 fiction james bruce may thank you permalink submitted by joe not verified on february 5 2013 1201 thank you puffin and thank you james bruce may i feel moved by this story the description and poetry i can feel the rain feels like a bon iver us folk artist song in prose with appreciationjoe reply genius permalink submitted by adam not verified on february 5 2013 1304 amazing work can we have some more from you please  reply james permalink submitted by puntila not verified on february 5 2013 2038 wonderful stuff as always my friend keen evocative and in the momet reply captivating beautiful words permalink submitted by janie not verified on february 6 2013 917 captivating beautiful words james reply wonderful permalink submitted by jammymummy not verified on february 26 2013 1226 finally got to reading it beautiful more please  reply ', 0),
(9, 'node', ' club class by jones jones he has a photograph of her just before it happened holding on tight to the handrail looking out to sea she s laughing her dark hair blowing wild in the almost galeforce wind it was the morning after their wedding they d caught the delayed 10 o clock ferry and he d paid extra for club class so they could be among the first to board and sit in the lounge they drank the complimentary champagne despite the rough sea that turned them both pale the girl behind the bar said she d had worse crossings though this wasn t good going on deck was his idea at least if it sinks we ll have a better chance he joked they held onto the backs of seats and tables as the rhythm of the sea made them walk then run walk then run through the restaurant cutlery and glasses slid one way then the other they had to push the door to the deck open together then they laughed as they ducked and ran to the handrail the salty spray coming in bursts when they looked over the side it was hard to imagine anyone loving the ocean he took his camera from his pocket lined her up and pressed the shutter then something hot hit the side of her face and she screamed he ran to her wiping the slimy stinking mess from her cheek he s been sick on me she sobbed that man s been sick on me  issue 1 jones jones i really enjoyed that ending  permalink submitted by garreth keating not verified on february 8 2013 1259 i really enjoyed that ending that was classic reply ', 0),
(10, 'node', ' mali alqaeda s new frontier by anthony ash if you re like me then you woke up one morning turned on the news and found a war suddenly underway but when did this conflict in mali actually begin we know it started with french intervention but when did they intervene and why the media doesn t offer many answers but the does keep us up to date with developments before we knew it we d gone from brief breakfast bulletins about french troops in mali to lengthy reports on the six o clock news about hostages and terrorist situations how did we get into this mess if you consider the flow of events as a line of dominoes it perhaps becomes easier to comprehend it all malian coup d état french intervention to help failing government terrorists take hostages including brits uk steps in with special forces however the enlightening question is not which dominoes have fallen but who actually put the dominoes there from the arrival of french troops in mali on 11th of january to the first editions of uk newspapers on the 21st a period of just 10 days the situation went from being regional politics to the prime minister declaring this is a global threat and it will require a global response do not be under any illusion that this is a natural flow of events with governments responding appropriately to each situation on the contrary the dominoes have been strategically placed by the powers that be to ensure these events occur how do we know this was all planned one thing is for sure the government will never release the whitehall papers which show their cunning work however some deductions can be made thanks to the press just days before french troops landed in mali the uk government alongside other european and world governments warned their citizens to leave the country asking why about everything and anything helps lead to the answers why would western governments fore warn their citizens to abandon mali the worst fighting of the malian coup d état took place over 6 months earlier and they weren t asked to leave then is it perhaps because they were about to step up the game on the topic of why why would governments in the developed world want to send their troops to mali the answer lies in the word which begins with m and ends in y it is the blood of our economy without it we die when it s ill the economists give it fiscal medicine that word is money our economy lies at the core of our political system that means business economics and politics are all interlinked war is a political discourse yet a profitable business for many especially for large supply and service firms such as halliburton and aegis halliburton in the period 2003 2006 alone profited 172 billion in iraqwar related revenue the british company aegis sees an ongoing supply of income through its security contracts in iraq with the troops out of iraq and the end in sight for the war in afghanistan it seems the profit margins of these big corporations are set to shrink rapidly have no fear allow the politicians to step in when david cameron said on the 21st of january this is a global threat and it will require a global response it will require a response that is about years even decades rather than months he laid the necessary foundations to begin building a war on terror in africa which will last yet another decade so bring the battles in iraq and afghanistan to an end but don t stop the war just move it to another location and that way profits will continue to be reaped issue 1 anthony ash ', 0),
(11, 'node', ' the date with the janny by julie mcdowall the janny asked to meet me for brunch in the goslow café on victoria road not a great location so my first internet date was to be in an area known for its stabbings its pound shops and its pit bulls with a janny it was hard to know what to wear it s a date yes but it s also the morning in a place resembling hiroshima on one fateful 1945 day and it s with a janny i wonder what a janny looks for in a woman well what does a woman look for in a man certainly not a janny that s for sure we were meeting outside queens park station he was there first so i had a clear view as i walked down victoria road i was horrified when i caught sight of him he had a humpback oh god now i ll always be known as humpbacked janny lover as i got closer i realised he was not deformed he was just wearing a bomber jacket and was all hunched up against the cold we introduced ourselves and shook hands i wasn t sure about the etiquette here but is it normal to shake hands on a date i thought not but neither would it have felt normal to clasp the bomberjacketed janny in an affectionate hug or give him a peck on the cheek he seemed very nervous which was good for me as it meant i could act all calm and superior after all i m not the awkward janny in the bomber jacket he clapped his hands together and stamped his feet and we talked about the cold then it dawned on him we were supposed to be on a date so he said well shall we and we started off down victoria road to the café this was only my first internet date but i knew that the janny and i weren t going to hit it off people say you must be patient get to know someone bla bla bla but i say go with your instinct and that you can usually tell within the first few minutes after all first impressions count and my first impression of this guy was deformed janny it ll take a lot for him to come back from that as we struggled down an icy victoria road he made painful attempts to start a conversation it was a saturday morning and the road was packed with shoppers and knowncriminals everyone was jostling one another trying to avoid the slush and the big issue sellers so it was hard to get a conversation started we both tried and were shouting what i didn t catch that when i suddenly stopped he looked at me nervous i think we ve walked past the café i said he looked agonised so i took over and headed us back down the road we finally sat down in the go slow and ordered a latte each as he took his bomber jacket off i gave him a cheeky glance to make sure he was definitely not a humpback he also ordered a bacon roll with tomato sauce i d have loved the same but it was unthinkable to eat a roll on a first date grease crumbs neon smears of sauce too risky the painful startstop of conversation resumed he asked me questions and it began to feel like an interview but he was no jeremy paxman so we had strayed into something like what are your hobbies and interests list them for me and show your workings i would answer and just as i tried to ask him the same ie draw him into a conversation he would launch into question no 2 something like how long have you been on the dating site and what do you hope to achieve by this answer with reference to three novels you have studied this term my spirits were low and sank even further when his bacon roll appeared and i was deliciously assaulted by the smell of crackly bacon i think it was at this point that i gave up and resigned myself to being interviewed and making a decent exit i stirred my coffee and wondered how soon i could leave he asked me what bands i like not being 12 i thought this was just a silly question so i turned it back on him well he said it s hard to say but the best gig i ve been to i mean like the best do you know who it was i admitted i hadn t the faintest idea and stirred my coffee harder the best gig has to be rolf harris for the first time he had actually caught my attention i looked at him the phone vibrated in my bag i knew it d be rude to check it but i needed a distraction eh tell me about rolf harris i said and dipped into my bag it was a funny text from my sister asking me if i was still out with the weird janitor guy i shoved my phone away and looked across at him i was smiling and he smiled too no doubt thinking i was impressed with his talk of didgeridoos suddenly the café door opened and a blast of cold air came in i put my coat on for warmth the janny eventually stopped talking and scratched his ear i mean really scratched it he actually put his coffee cup down so he could devote his full strength and attention to it his pinky was right in there working away funny to think it s still morning i said no no he said it ll be afternoon now as we clearly had nothing else to talk about i picked up the ball and ran with it no i bet it s still morning here i ll check i lifted my bag back onto my knee and dug my phone out i checked the time see 1158 still morning he shrugged so it is then i had a stroke of genius i ve got my coat on now i ve lifted my bag onto my knee i ve remarked on the time it can t possibly be clearer that the date is over can it is there anything else i can do to nudge us out the door then i remembered his love of equality you must let me pay my share i announced and put some coins on the table there can be no clearer sign the date is over he took the hint and my money and pulled his bomber jacket on we parted at queens park station with not even a handshake i gave him a nod and flounced off home issue 1 julie mcdowall lovely story you had me the permalink submitted by tracy not verified on february 4 2013 1735 lovely story you had me the whole way  reply ', 0),
(12, 'node', ' poems by jared a carnie october and in comes october drooling the first winter tragedies with a wink and a crooked grin of old gravestone teeth the heating breaks and the hot water stops and our breath taunts us in the air of our bedroom and his claws come out but still we laugh surrounded by candles and wrapped in blankets with books and songs for we recognized his tattered outfit before we met his eyes and made sure to make sure he would have to come again redemption you take her supermarket flowers like they tell you to and on the way she calls it s over and you throw them to the floor stamp on them and finally they look beautiful issue 1 poetry jared a carnie ', 0),
(13, 'node', ' book review by bethany anderson warm bodies by isaac marion zombies are great i love zombie horror films and the walking dead is the best thing going right now so as soon as i heard about warm bodies  i knew i had to read it more so because it s zombies on the flip side r is a zombie a first person narrator and an allthinking zombie he doesn t know how it happened and he doesn t remember his name but he does know that he doesn t like this kind of living on a foraging mission to find some living food he kills a young man and eats part of his brain the next thing he does is save a human girl julie the result is a relationship without precedent as the two try to figure out a way to coexist in a world that is falling apart meanwhile r seems to be connecting with the soul of the young man whose brain he has eaten and so becomes a zombie both inwardly and outwardly conflicted i didn t think it could happen but apparently it is possible to be attracted to a zombie r is thoughtful and charming and the reader is easily pulled into his nostalgia for living life his passion and desire for all his good intentions is heartwarming but being a zombie he s still distanced from complete human life watching r change and grow through the book was exciting and nerveracking i wanted so badly for him to cope and to be understood julie the main human focus of the novel annoyed me at first initially i couldn t put my finger on it but i really think that it s because i was so close to r and his world view that i was frustrated when julie didn t understand him and that she wasn t treating him the way he deserved to be treated that s quite a testament to an author to have a reader so keen on a protagonist especially so early in the novel she grew on me though and the difference between her personality and r s was often nothing short of adorable isaac marion has created a modern fairytale a whatif scenario in a world that might not be too far off our own warm bodies is written like marion had a great time writing it and it often feels like he enjoyed creating r s story as much as i enjoyed reading it zombies decay and death and yet i closed the book with the fuzziest contentment issue 1 bethany anderson ', 0),
(14, 'node', ' theatre review by laura peatman metamorphosis at the lyric theatre hammersmith four years on from its original run at the lyric gísli örn garðarsson and david farr s innovative and daring adaptation of franz kafka s tale has returned from an international tour to its longawaited homecoming moving intelligent gravitydefying and laughoutloud funny this piece may be short but it assails its audience with conflicting emotions and possesses an intriguing focus and powerful pulse from the curtainup the set alone renders this show captivating designer börkur jónsson has done a superb job of creating garðarsson and farr s vision on stage as gregor s room is rotated in comparison with the room below to allow the audience a flyonthewall view as the tilted angle becomes apparent the mindbending perspectives of the two rooms enhances the contrast between the normal and the bizarre between a world with which the family can cope and that which they cannot comprehend it soon becomes apparent that garðarsson is one of those almost sickeningly talented types as not only has he adapted and directed the work but he also utterly steals the show on stage his portrayal of gregor the man who wakes up one morning as a mysterious apparently buglike creature is sensitive and engrossing but also incredibly impressive in its gymnastic feats as garðarsson crawls around the sides of the set hanging from walls and leaping from table to wall to window his creeping uncomfortable movements retain a natural and poignant humanity the ease with which he appears to sit on his bed almost tricks us into forgetting that in fact this man is clinging to a vertical wall the realisation elicits gasps from the enthralled audience this is a perfect example of acting and staging working in perfect harmony the attention to detail is delightful and enables the figure of gregor to evoke simultaneous warmth and discomfort there is something so enchanting in the skill involved yet a constant prickle on the back of the neck betrays the darker threatening note which steadily increases throughout the decision to keep gregor looking and sounding human to the audience although his transformation is apparent in the reactions of others is pivotal to the adaptation s potency as his marginalisation and rejection are all the more disturbing and touching kafka s themes of persecution are powerfully present without the political parallels feeling forced of course this is not a oneman show and garðarsson is ably supported by an accomplished cast his bewildered parents provide many of the laughs as kelly hunter and ingvar e sigurðsson make the most of the comedic potential of their roles yet the humour never goes too far as to dilute the unnerving heart of the work and on the whole the two balance their respective mischievousness and pomposity with a credible struggle to come to terms with their new reality their performances are somewhat less nuanced than their costars but the coupling provides a solid basis for the bizarre occurrences and conflicting emotions which emerge as events descend into the more traditionally and farcically comic with the arrival of herr fischer the intelligent staging is once again apparent as fischer jonathan mcguinness struts and flirts in his white suit the pitiful figure of gregor above is subtly bathed in a sickly green light ensuring his agonising presence is not forgotten rather disappointing however is fischer s reaction at gregor s sudden appearance garðarsson s spectacular entrance into the bottom half of the set seems underserving of such a flat ending to the episode as fischer s exit which appears anticlimactic the aftermath unexplored driving the progress of the plot towards tragedy is greta played by the highly adaptable nina dögg filippusdóttir her progression from girlish innocence to controlling and decisive maturity is genuinely shocking and uncomfortable particularly evident as violent white light silhouettes her abuse of her brother although the changes in clothing were perhaps a little unsubtle the code of softcoloured skirts and cardigans for innocent greta and monochrome severe suit and boots for manipulative greta threatens to undermine the nuances of filippusdóttir s portrayal of what farr has described as the most fascinating character however her depiction of the role by and large manages to avoid the trap of such unsubtleties adequately presenting the simultaneous potential for love and for ruthlessness which lies in this character as farr points out in an interview the question of how good people can carry out seemingly terrible acts is a resonant one and something which pervades this work with little hope for an easy answer this production grips hold of its audience and refuses to let go the lack of an interval is in fact welcome as the tension is held throughout evident by the absolute focus of this audience populated as it was by several school groups the final tableau is reached deliberately almost tortuously and is incredibly moving in its duality of serenity and tragedy complimented by a unobtrusive yet effective soundtrack it is fitting that an impressive display of aerial silks forms the main feature of the show s climax i m sure it is garðarsson s physical performance that will be remembered by many for years to come however it is also the vision and the intensity of this production that will linger with audiences it seems certain to me that these 85 minutes of theatre will not stray easily from the mind metamorphosis is playing at the lyric theatre hammersmith until 16th feb issue 1 laura peatman ', 0),
(15, 'node', ' poem by sarah taylorfergusson the drive back drive back with me in the country night under a supermoon or so they say chasing the path of an owl in flight it s a long road and you are on my way spring may is nearly summer june we light up two forest rabbits a hare you drive us down through the trees and this time the moon hangs there slicing the hot night arms legs bare i drop you pedal safe passage over the hills kill the full beam behind a polecat in the lane window wound down head full of wonder love and thrills wholly consumed with when i will see you again issue 1 sarah taylorfergusson ', 0),
(16, 'node', ' aerial by bernard wheeler i was jogging in the field not far from our house trying to lose a bit of weight when it happened it was a pretty evening and it was quiet the grass was bleached golden by the sun as my feet prodded into the turf and i made my way up the hill i felt my mp3 in my hand and my front door key jangling in the pocket of my shorts as a bead of sweat gathered above my eye ahead of me the sun bled through clouds and made a wall of light on the milky horizon the trees rattled around in the breeze and dropped twigs before the calm settled in a fox darted into the bushes and it felt like the world was standing still and waiting for the warm night to settle in for a minute it made me forget my breathlessness and my heavy calves and brittle knees pressing into the soft ground it was like scenery that couldn t be undone a setting that had always been there something pure i noticed a man and his son with a football in the goal across from me i was tracing the perimeter circling the dad and his son in the middle the breeze returned and sent a flutter through my shirt and blew my hair across my forehead my eyelids were frail and stinging from the salty sweat and then i remembered that i d left my bottle of water from the fridge on the side in the kitchen it made a sound like the end of the world it didn t fall or drift down from the sky it just exploded out of the trees and roared like horrible thunder the nose of the plane smashed a deep trench hard into the middle of the field before the incredible explosion of hard red flame and thick smoke made it all disappear i could smell jet fuel as the sound of the plane tearing through the skyline reverberated in my head the mass of machinery i never saw a single person or heard a human cry the father and son had never been there never been anywhere the football pitches were blackened grooves in the soft fields cut out for the machine s final resting place i see the fields now on a cold day made of stone with the memorial littered with pale flowers and brown leaves and can never really imagine how it used to look before issue 1 bernard wheeler ', 0);
INSERT INTO `truesearch_dataset` VALUES
(17, 'node', ' the valentine paradigm by emily sherwood the ink of my newly penned new year resolutions has barely dried and already i m being bombarded by that most dreaded of holidays valentine s day christmas is still warm on the commercial operating table yet valentine s is already creeping into the waiting room of the bereaved like some sort of hideous organ harvester unless you have a geniune reason to celebrate valentine s day it s a holiday that sucks on a scale of sucking i d put it somewhere in between spiderman 3 and the room so if you are considering taking your beau to the cinema this valentine s just don t because unless like me they enjoy seeing bruce willis yipiekayaying some unsavoury mothertruckers the chances are you re both going to be disappointed the last decade hasn t been great for valentine releases which begs the question why surely someone moderately sensible would have thought about it put two and two together and come up with something good who thought that daredevil star wars the phantom menace 3d or god help us justin bieber s never say never would have the lovedup public flocking to the cinema who could fail to envisage a romantic evening watching inside deep throat yes its about porn or final destination 3 the notion it seems of a good romantic film on valentine s day has definitely escaped the powers that be thankfully all is not lost if you fancy awooing with a good film you re spoilt for choice as long as you step back a few years there are so many fantastic romantic films out there to choose from and here are just some of the best  when harry met sally  1989 billy crystal meg ryan and that diner scene a film about how sex can make or break a friendship and how it very nearly does one of norah ephron s greatest screenplays annie hall  1979 the ever neurotic comedian alvy singer woody allen falls madly in love with equally ditsy annie hall diane keaton a testament to love in 70s new york and a very nervous romance indeed say anything  1989 ione sky stars as the lovely valedictorian with john cusack they fall in love over the summer before she starts college a great film from the trench coat the ghetto blaster and the line i want to be with your daughter i m good at it  you re got mail  1998 another norah ephron classic two business rivals joe fox and kathleen kelly tom hanks and meg ryan hate each other but fall for one other over the internet thank god for aol and a good book pretty in pink  1986 the choices poor molly ringwald has to make who to choose the rich boy blane andrew mccarthy or childhood sweetheart with amazing hair duckie john cryer did i mention the superb soundtrack  as good as it gets  1997 i might be the only person on the face of the earth that knows you re the greatest woman on the earth grumpy author jack nicholson sassy waitress helen hunt and gay artist greg kinnear make this a romcom classic an affair to remember  1957 from europe back to nyc by sea deborah kerr and cary grant fall in love and vow to meet each other six months later at the empire state building sleepless in seattle fans will love this cue a heart wrenching plot twist and a film widely considered to be one of the most romantic notting hill  1999 everyone loves 90s hugh grant with his flustering and his floppy hair and notting hill does not disappoint he owns a book shop julia roberts is the famous film actress on location and a relationship develops in amongst grant s oddball crew of friends written by richard curtis and featuring a stellar british cast it s a valentine s staple city lights  1931 before you roll your eyes at a silent film give it a chance chaplin plays the tramp who goes through all manners of misadventures to give a blind girl her eyesight back the fact there s no dialogue is so worth those last final minutes when the two are reunited and the look on chaplin s face when she realises who he is is priceless walle  2008 don t laugh i have a soft spot for animated films and this pixar great is no exception walle is a little robot with a pet cockroach designed to clean up earth and make it habitable again he falls in love with robot eve and they go on adventures through the universe changing the destiny of man amélie  2001 for those sophisticated international film buffs or lovers of audrey tautou amélie is all about a lonely waitress with a big imagination discovering love and doing good to those around her in french with subtitles it won 4 césar awards including best film why not opt for this french fancy jerry maguire  1996 precrazy tom cruise stars as a highflying sports agent he also ends up falling for renee zellweger and the film contains possibly one of the most recognisable quotes all time shut up just shut up you had me at hello  the ghost and mrs muir  1947 having had enough of her insufferable inlaws young widower lucy muir gene tierney finds a new lease of life in gull cottage however the cottage also comes with the ghost of captain daniel gregg rex harrison and together they make quite the unlikely duo then children s author miles fairley george sanders comes to town if you don t cry at the end then we ll presume you have no soul issue 1 emily sherwood ', 0),
(18, 'node', ' the castle of the high faces by max dunbar three weeks after returning to the abandoned townhouse in the village of my birth i dreamt of a horned devil in a high castle throwing babies down alternating tubes after tapping their foreheads with a blackened claw and intoning one or other catechism  alone not alone alone not alone i understood then that all the euphemisms we make about one s course through life our talk of a balance between talents and failings and sorrow and joy were all conscious or unconscious lies and the truth was as william blake had recognised it two hundred years ago in his poem auguries of innocence  some are born to sweet delight some are born to endless night i wouldn t have seen it any other way of course being at a point where i felt that the delight had tipped some time ago and the endless night was only just beginning i d been living and studying in london for four years and for the last six months of those i had barely gone out getting my food from the sainsbury s website living off freelance editing and the amazon sale of review copies i had got into political blogging during that time and had had fun but the constant pointscoring and intellectual oneupmanship depressed me the world of progressive politics was a cold second childhood of mockery and derison and i reverted to writing long pieces about romantic poetry and different aspects of romantic love eventually money and fear drove me onto a firstclass train passage bought with the last two hundred on my credit card i never thought returning to the old town would cure me completely in fact it made me worse i believed then that i would be there the rest of my life for not only had the national government driven people like me from the cities the cities of england were now machines working towards the appeasement of the capricious volcano god of the deficit i was now incapable of commuting by bus to stockport or by train to piccadilly without going through borderline psychotic panic attacks halfway down to the bowl there was a train station with services to yorkshire one of the few places i could contemplate without fear as a kid i d see these trains come and go beneath the bridge and i knew that if i could handle myself in the tramlined streets of the seven hills i could work my way back to hyde park get a job at the brudenell social or the picture house there to read and drink and live anonymously and die happily but these days i could go nowhere near this bridge any irregular degree of altitude or angle made me want to scream how good stasis must be a house of ordered lines linear pathways to the job and the pub i wanted two dimensionality over anything and everything else i recognised my state as that of paranoid anxiety something external the result of drugs and booze overwork and undersleep but the head and the heart are very different organisms for food and wine i staggered around dazed and scattered through the tiny precinct in the last hours of light in the evenings i had the facebook newsfeed on for hours drawing strength from the evidence that the people i d known in cities were still out there drinking and watching movies and playing in bands i wandered through the bookshelves of the big house trying to find a book that would bring comfort and carry me down to sleep i usually settled on elizabeth wurtzel or martin millar or stephen king i needed to know about good things of positivity and love people who were into things cute and silly and had no money but enjoyed life nevertheless on the ragged alternative edges of the cities and who risked pretension and weakness yet still had the strength to reject the cynicism of the wider world i believed that people were coming for me in cars still one must face one s fears and towards the year s end i began to run and work out again and got a job in the pub nearest to my house and got another job doing part time data entry for some estate agent on what passed for our high street and got into the habit of walking down to the bowl and up the curve to the pubs that my old gang had used as a child most of them were still around some had got married and actually bought property in this town or ones like it i was friendly enough at these times and bought loads of rounds i wore paul smith shirts and ironed jeans and a thai silk scarf given to me by my father words tumbled out of me and formed sentences like birds falling into flight formation as they are kicked out of the nest it s still a source of pride to me that i looked so good and carried myself with style for if you don t have looks and style what do you have so did it not work out for you in london then this was a small blond runt who was now teaching in a secondary school and engaged to some fool from central stockport well it worked out for a while and then really suddenly it didn t again my tone was jovial enough and so were the feelings behind it the hate i d felt for these people had been exhausted long ago all i felt these days was terror and relief the talk skipped on to other topics and i tuned into the chat of a married man who had been my best friend when we were younger we shared pretty much the same interests in music and books and games and would talk late into the night in pubs and on parks i d looked down on him in recent years first for fucking his degree and then for buying that place in fucking new mills with april barrington but then my own situation broke alone riddled with anxieties and regret and running from real and imagined enemies didn t exactly recommend the road i d walked so where do you see yourself in the next ten years april asked me now christ knows honey i don t know even where i ll be in ten days hand to mouth baby that s where it s at okay then this was a small blonde girl with buck teeth who all the men of the group lusted after for some reason how about all of us where do you see all of us in ten years i see you as a cheshire woman playing golf wearing laura ashley occasionally having sex with waiters and barmen april cut in before she could answer and me where do you see me i don t know maybe you will own that residential home company i just see you and harry continuing to be this positive unifying force of the group i always thought that you would write the book of the group april told me as the year turned and lightened i developed a habit of meeting up with april on friday or saturday nights and having a platonic pint i would walk across the bridge i had walked across so often as a child i could see the yorkshire train over the craggy rim of the bridge at some point just after the clock change i got on it issue 1 max dunbar ', 0),
(19, 'node', ' poem by graeme cooper smoke signals those nowhere days at the dogend of a year on which i have inhaled deeply even though it sometimes made me cough march lit the match and hope smouldered in april s fancy ashtray waiting for the long hot summer which never came the pungent fumes of self doubt made me green with choking paranoia until a window opened letting in a sharp draught of words which mingled with the madness painting on the smokescreens a mirror of my insanity clearing the air now the wind howls and the lighter won t spark and i wait in the wintry dark nervously toying with the pristine filter of the new year issue 1 graeme cooper ', 0),
(20, 'node', ' six haiku poems by vincent o connor summer storm exhales the bee and butterfly stretch limb and wing to air carelessly beer suds spill on a barmaid s hand darting between leaves blue rain rippling air the cocooned butterfly hears sky the cat s eye opens softly screaming suspicion before bedtime the parents play the waiting game issue 1 haiku vincent o connor ', 0),
(21, 'node', ' postcard from mexico by rachael pells although i fancy myself as rachael pells strong independent woman traveller extraordinaire  i do have a weakness just one mind and a perfectly respectable weakness at that i require tea a good proper english brew splash of milk nice and strong no sugar thanks like many i drink tea as if it were going out of fashion and depend upon that first morning cuppa like juliet does her romeo when i moved to mexico last week for a newspaper placement travelling megafun i came pretty prepared for the tea drought in my suitcase much too large to ever be included in that hip group known as backpackers i may have forgotten a few vital things such as toothpaste and a plug converter but i did bring 100 yorkshire teabags for proper british tea now i knew that 100 teabags would not nearly be enough to last me the whole trip or even the first month but i had a plan to ration them one hit a day before gradually weaning myself off them and embracing the more readily available mexican version of mint leaves and tepid water but it wasn t that easy oh no i m staying with a retired couple and their crazy dogs in a house which is pleasant and has a roofterrace albeit decorated with dog shit and cannibis plants the latter may explain why as i sit writing this flacco the dog is attempting to swallow his entire leg whole the shower consists of a series of pipes which run across the roof and down into the bathroom to either scald or freeze the victim depending on the weather these things are all perfectly charming i can live with them but there is no kettle  every morning i am offered a cup of coffee which in turn i offer to my plant i wait with great anticipation to see whether the plant will die or turn into some kind of pimped up super plant the kitchen belongs very much to my host rosita to demand she boil up my bag of yorkshire goodness would be rude no matter how desperate i am two nights ago the couple went out to visit some family and i seized my chance stepping into the kitchen with that mixture of guilt fear and excitement that only a ten year old embarking on a midnight feast might understand i inspected my available weapons how to boil the water all pots had remnants of food left in them for later i could tip out some coffee and use that pan but then the gas switch which dial would create a flame and which would turn me into ash besides all this what if the taste of coffee remains and ruins my already tainted cup what is this casa de simplico is actually all a facade and they have a power shower tucked away at the back along with a hub of cctv cameras hidden in the fruitbowl watching my every move it was all too much i retreated and admit defeat for now i sit with a cup of hot water watching silly little mexican dogs get high and i accept my detox of course there s always flacco s choice of herb if i fancy a good gnaw on my own leg for comfort issue 1 rachael pells ', 0),
(22, 'node', ' a vocation is hard work by mark west a vocation is hard work when i m asked what i do and i answer by saying that i m writing a phd in english literature the next question is usually about what i will do afterwards with that qualification that allows me to put dr in front of my name the implication is that if someone is still in education as they enter their 30s the rewards must be worth it acutely aware that hearing someone talk about their phd is not the most riveting of subjects i sometimes say i want to lecture and make it sound like the phd is just a kind of practical training for that job sometimes i actually pretend not to know what i want to do afterwards and usually people respond positively by admiring my desire to retain the purity of learning for the sake of learning but i am lying neither of these answers is true but neither is entirely false either in truth the reality is some messy amalgamation of both hard to pin down with any clarity because it is true that i would like to gain a lectureship at a university when i finish my phd but the very nature of the work means that noone would undertake it for purely practical reasons a phd is usually three years researching a question you have set for yourself with the possibility that the question will morph endlessly and lead you to play catchup for those three years or even that you may never satisfactorily actually answer it this would be a lot less daunting if you didn t have to turn in a document of some 100000 words after those three years and then defend what you ve written verbally in person to a panel of experts when those who ask me about the phd say you must really like reading books they are asking a much more existential question than they realise but actually there is no reason to think that my two answers are mutually exclusive in fact i like reading books so much that i want to carry on doing it after the phd it seems like common sense to say that loving something and wanting to do it for an extended period of time usually a career go together by contrast it seems rather perverse not to say cruel to suggest that someone should do something they love for three or four years and then abruptly give it up and settle for a career they don t care for love of something suggests an abiding connection not a flash in the pan which ends when you get your cap and gown it seems equally odd to suggest that someone who does something for practical reasons is by definition excluded from also loving what they do we re dealing here with the concept of a vocation which can be applied to both of my answers the oed defines it partly as the fact of being so called or directed towards a special work in life and notes especially its spiritual or religious nature its etymological root is the latin vocāre which means to call or summon the word s meaning has various strands in different religious contexts and denominations but some of them include the idea that each individual has a special talent which with the proper application can contribute positively to the wider community that this special talent can be developed and if not perfected at least bettered that this development includes and espouses the value of work understood not just as something you do but the result of toil a thing undertaken willingly despite the possibility of suffering because through that commitment and endurance it becomes somehow noble and a way for humans to approach god although it is defined as a summons then having a vocation also implies the need to apply oneself to hard work often to a specific goal benefiting the community a vocation is both being called or summoned to a course of action and choosing to devote oneself to it in this sense there is a profound connection between vocation and struggle despite being summoned a vocation is not undertaken easily precisely because it is a vocation it must be worked at and worked at slowly and enduringly and it asks that the individual take responsibility for their action i cannot conceive of doing what i do without some sense of it as a vocation at times though it veers to close to fate i say if you d looked at me when i was six and had to guess what that six yearold would grow up to be you would most likely have said english literature academic yet i know that although i did indeed discover a love for literature at an early age much of my other circumstances pointed toward a different path while i felt a connection with literature that could be construed in some way as a call insofar as i responded to it and what the study of it involved i also spent years deliberating over whether to enter postgraduate education i chose to do this and i ve also worked hard at it balancing a masters with a fulltime job and working six days a week on the phd these last experiences although chosen would not have been possible for me if i didn t love doing it as much as i do thinking about vocation leads you to think in these terms of obstacles and tests and it encourages a religious outlook although i think for me the religious outlook came first and i later applied it to my work my parents are churchgoers and took me with them every sunday until i was ten or so when i decided not to go any more nevertheless the influence of those early years runs deep among other things it offered a structure for seeing the world which because it was the first one has had the most impact i associate particular ideas i hold with these early visits a sense that meaning is always just out of reach yet we should not stop striving for it for instance or the feeling that commitment and endurance are importantyetdifficult qualities to possess which need nurturing in order to fully develop these are things i imbibed somehow at a young age singing along to hymns i didn t understand the words of and following rituals whose significance i barely registered but these rituals with their carefully specified movements and the ceremonial way they linked my own repetitions of language and action to the time of the world acted as sediments to my character layering within me ways of thought and ways of seeing that are now irreducibly part of who i am what i most associate with my young exposure to religion is a particular sense of time it s one that other people might associate with other things a political cause for instance but i associate it first and foremost with religion and i can best describe it as an understanding that is often unconscious influencing unseen my reaction to events and requirements in a very basic way it is the acceptance that things happen slowly and often imperceptibly and that one can only really notice or chart change by paying careful and sustained attention to it noticing the world is slow to my mind it is no accident that some of the earliest scholars were monks whose lives carved out time by cutting away any superfluities which allowed them to focus on their vocation my religious upbringing has certainly helped me it has given me a context in which to place my choice a choice which at times is cause for doubt it provides comfort in this way it helps to imagine early scholars for whom acedia that ancient kind of tiredness was the biggest enemy not because their work was dull but because it required such attention to detail that it was exhausting david foster wallace one of the writers i m looking at in my phd wrote of the experience of benedictine monks who suffered this affliction in his novel the pale king he suggests in much the same spirit as those religious interpretations of the word vocation that this is not an experience to avoid but rather the sign of something worth doing one word of caution though i find thinking in these shapes very attractive and it is easy to get caught up in what can be quite a romantic view of things remembering that to have a vocation involves both responding to the world and choosing a particular way of responding that it includes the very unromantic daily trudge and training oneself in the practicalities of repetition is a good way of avoiding such sentimentality issue 1 mark west ', 0),
(24, 'node', ' hydrangea macrophylla by sarah taylorfergusson hydrangea macrophylla pink bubble hydrangeas little girls dreams drifting clouds of childhood landing in beds a lawn the leaves tinted every shade green boys footballs of petals lavender mauve aluminium sulphatesoaked blue lowmaintenance flowers like old ladies rinses styled and set in matins dew issue 2 sarah taylorfergusson ', 0),
(25, 'node', ' the date with the accountant by julie mcdowall my next date was with the accountant who wore the eyepatch it wasn t a fashion statementeye patch if such a thing exists and he wasn t trying to dress like a swashbuckling johnny depp rather he looked as though he d just spent a saturday night in a e and had been sent home concussed and bandaged up we were meeting in beanscene on saturday afternoon he seems to have a very bossy streak having intructed me to sit in the window this riles me as it means i need to perch awkwardly on the spindly bar stools i had intended to get there first and be found lazing seductively on the brown leather sofa but no the accountant has ordered me to sit there so he can find me suddenly i realise he might still be stumbling around with that eyepatch on and will genuinely need help in finding me this softens me a bit though i m still not happy with the window and the harsh daylight on my face i can feel the sunlight showing up every blemish and pore on my face all the fine makeup skills don t matter a jot if you re not welllit don t accountants know this so i stir my coffee and try to twist around on the stool to get away from the glare feeling very exposed my stupid feet don t even come close to touching the floor on this chair how am i supposed to get down without looking like a heaving hippo as i m pondering these difficulties a man appears wearing my clothes it s him check this out he says and gestures to his red cowboy shirt this is practically the same shirt you re wearing in one of your photos i thought it d be a laugh to wear it imitation is the highest form of flattery yes but not when it s middleaged accountants who re copying you nonetheless i admit it is indeed a laugh i also secretly admit to being glad he s not wearing the eyepatch and crashing into things these dates are stressful enough without shattered crockery he sits down and we start the niceynice first date chat it s hard to work him out he s a middleaged accountant and seems very tidy prim and serious yet he has turned up dressed as me i m intrigued so i m doing my third degree just now he says a masters in statistical modelling i m baffled by anything involving numbers i still use my fingers to count i ask him what statistical modelling is exactly he puts his coffee cup down and scoots his chair closer well it s quite difficult to grasp it s basically maths with fashion design this knockout punchline is delivered in such a serious manner that i miss it completely he helps me out joke he says oh i say then i laugh but the moment has passed i look at him not fair to crack jokes with that grim accountant face how do i know when the gags are coming statistical models indeed well here s a statistic for him 99 of women don t like their dates to dress up as them he whistles and stirs his coffee silence descends he shakes the foam off his spoon and places it on the counter next to mine hey is it ok if our spoons touch he asks eager to make up for missing his last attempt at humour i giggle heartily at this one but i ve come too soon because he then says oooh look we re spooning on a first date but i ve used up my big laugh so can only smile argh it s not going well our humour is out of sync and i can t relax with a man who s wearing my togs i try to start a new topic by telling him how much he looks like woody allen but i quickly realise this is a barefaced insult we grind to a halt more silence he goes off to order himself another coffee and i take this valuable time to discreetly peep into my hand mirror to see if my skin still looks like the surface of the moon or is the afternoon sun becoming kinder it s always a risk to take your mirror out on a date because it seems if you re desperately wanting to look good for him i don t i just need assurance that i m not the elephant man in a purple shift dress the accountant is in the queue with his back to me so it s safe i m checking my face when he appears at my side suddenly and catches me mirrorhanded listen i m short of five pence can you i give him the money and watch him rejoin the queue that s five pence i won t be seeing again and that s a man i won t be seeing again either issue 2 julie mcdowall loved reading this very permalink submitted by patricia not verified on february 26 2013 729 loved reading this very funny and well written i have suffered greatly at the hand of accountants in the workplace rather than the dating arena you were lucky you could escape  reply ', 0),
(26, 'node', ' my kind by michael ray it isn t that you don t provide it s more you choosing to forget to tell me that you d had a few too many seemed much better as his couch was free to wait until i d given up and gone to bed before you tiptoed in and woke me you seem intent on staring at the floor in this early morning gloom is there something in your eye a fading light perhaps and that smell is that my kind on your skin  issue 2 michael ray ', 0),
(27, 'node', ' new year by samuel best in the garden children handle sparklers like magic wands hot trails glimmer for a moment spelling out names or patterning the dark with lines and circles before vanishing you stand watching in the doorway with a glass of wine eyes tracing the designs as they faint somewhere in the house a cd player is turned up and it takes you a moment to place the song a gaggle of voices in the other room start to sing along but fall away after the first verse you tap the beat on your glass before taking a sip the wine is sharp but nice and you drink again deeper this time hey stranger is this where you ve been hiding a woman s voice behind you you turn and smile wrapping an arm around her shoulders as she leans into you having fun you ask and she looks up at you before nodding how long to go not long now she says in the distance a banging sound echoes you think of earthquakes and thunder before you see the whole sky illuminated pink and white for a moment the children in the garden all stop to look up sparklers fizzing still in their gloved hands the fireworks are keen you say and you both stand in silence waiting for more but none come back in the house the cd player is turned down and a tense hush forms quiet for a while the only sounds a faraway siren a dog barking then in sudden unison every voice shouting a countdown ten nine here we go you say squeezing her close your eyes both fixed on the sky eight seven any resolutions she asks six five to spend more time living life you say and less time waiting around for it to start four three mine is to capture down every moment i feel boundless she says i ll write down where i was and why i felt it the first one is tonight because you never know what the new year will bring two one good things you say i have a feeling you hold on to each other eyes reflecting the sky as overhead fireworks blossom like orchids under a hot sun issue 2 samuel best ', 0),
(28, 'node', ' chnam oun 16 by alistair roberts chavy woke with the sun took a strand of hair from her eyes and rolled sideways into the river kicking her legs in the water she held onto the edge of her punt and reached in to grab a small cake of yellow soap that sat impaled on a nail forced into the wooden hull she slipped a hand inside her tshirt and washed armpit and breast on her left side and then swapped hands next she dredged the soap across the outside fabric of her shirt pressed the yellow cake back onto its waiting nail and dived she kept her eyes closed in the muddy water and dreamed of being on a riverboat under an umbrella smoking a cigarette a glass of wine a boy staring at her in rapture and with one fierce wriggle of her body she pushed herself to the surface of the river and shook the water from her face chavy leant her arms on the side of her punt reached for her water bag and filled her mouth with clean water she lifted the lid of her wooden box removed a twist of brown paper and unfolded it it contained salt and she dabbed a damp finger in and rubbed it around her teeth feeling her way to the back of her mouth she twisted the paper and put it back in the box picked up the remains of an old lime popped it in her mouth and bit down to removed the last of its bitter juice she spat the lime into the river and finished the last of her drinking water chavy grabbed her grabbed her plastic sandals put the straps between her teeth snatched a small water apple from her boat and made for land she was good in the water someone must have shown her how to swim when she was a child she climbed from the bassac into the early heat of the day and the sun became her towel as she headed towards the city lines of women were bringing in their daily haul of vegetables yardlong beans chinese broccoli bitter melon and unripe luffa they would have been up before sunrise to pull the produce from the sleepy earth and there should have been more women and they should have been carrying more produce at the market stalls were thin the prices high and the customers rank and poor chavy only went there to steal and that was getting harder to do as the women were now more alert to any loss she walked along the sunbaked path between the clouds of dust raised by sandals pumps buffalo hooves and the wheels of carts she looked across the flat fields and the straight and lonely lines of sugar palms last night she had heard the long rolling explosions getting nearer chavy paused at the edge of the city and prepared herself for the suddenness of concrete after bamboo the turmoil of the streets the jostle and the forests of elbows chavy moved silent and near invisible through the mess of feet the spin of rickshaw wheels no one ever halted if you didn t weave you were felled and bruised and if you drifted someone might steal you once a man had grabbed her hair and forced her face against a wall he had bit her ear and tried to put a finger right inside her but she had stomped on his toes and run away never seeing his face or knowing his age she turned off the busy boulevard into a quieter street and came to the silent alley that led to thy s house the entrance was flanked by his sentries two smoking boys that flattened themselves against the wall as she squeezed past as if one touch of her might be fatal one day when things had changed for her they would beg her for a kiss and say but you knew us once we all worked for thy do you not remember we were friends and she would laugh and spit in their faces she stood outside thy s door and waited behind her one of the boys said something and the other laughed the door opened slightly just enough to let her slip inside and there was theary blank faced mute and towering above her she moved quickly past him with her eyes cast down he was thy s brother and known for his brutality quite often she had overheard thy s boys talking in hushed tones about the hideous things he had done to someone who had displeased his brother in some business deal but she didn t trust one thing those boys said they had less brains than teeth and they didn t have many teeth at all and those they did have were stained with smoking and none of them were any older that herself and she was struggling to reach sixteen and failing but she wasn t stupid and so she avoided theary as much as it was possible to avoid someone you met everyday she went into the dark little kitchen area took the kettle off the gas ring and went over to the tap and began to fill it the tap came right out of the floor on one leg and looked like it had appeared there by accident and had never been able to escape it shook when you turned it on once she had told it that there was nothing to be scared of and then she remembered that the world was full of things to be scared of when the kettle was full she put it on the gas ring and took a match from a small box she slid the match along the wall and watched it catch the gas popped when she lit it outside in the wash area she picked up the bucket brought it back in and half filled it with cold water the kettle sung and she turned off the gas and added the boiled water to the cold water in the bucket and headed back outside again this was her place of work a walled off concrete area under a roof of corrugated iron held up by two wooden posts on one post there was a handgun hanging from a piece of cord it was worn and dirty and she had never seen it used she had held it sometimes and no one had rushed out to beat her it was quite heavy but she liked the weight of it but she had never tried the trigger on the other post a pair of scissors hung from a nail in the centre of the concrete floor was a single hole and in the corner were the things she needed for her work a glass jar an enamel bowl a sponge and a cake of soap all sat on a low wooden stool theary came out with thy in his arms and placed the stump of his brother upright over the hole in the centre turned and went back inside chavy knelt down behind thy and steadied him as he strained to do his morning toilet the smoke from his cigarette drifted across her face but she couldn t enjoy it because she had to hold her breath against the stink of his dung the toes of his one foot wriggled like impatient infants and when he was done he relaxed and spat out the end of his cigarette she eased him to the ground so that he was lying on his side with his back to her she looked at the greasy hole and wondered how far the turds fell and if they sailed away how far chavy took the bucket over to the corner and dipped the glass jar into the water and filled the enamel bowl she picked up the sponge and soap and brought them over to thy she wondered what he must be thinking as he lay there business she imagined threats and boasting she wet the sponge and passed it over the bar of soap and began to wash around his rectum she liked to think of herself as someone who could be trusted to do a delicate job she was a nurse brisk and efficient she had known nurses that time when she was taken ill and she had an ambition to be just like them she squeezed out the sponge poured the water from the bowl down the hole and went to the bucket to get fresh water she rolled him over on his back his eyes skywards and her not there at all and washed around his groin he wet himself at night and there were red sores in the morning she replaced the water again and soaped and rinsed his chest and around the stumps of his arms the theary came out just at the right time as he always did as if he had been watching her working picked up his brother and took him inside to dry she went to the room where thy slept and bundled up the sodden straw took it out to the back and flung it in a corner it would be gone by the next day she went into the kitchen where pauk was eating at the table his eyes hidden by the mirror shades he always wore his baseball hat perched on the back of his head he was one of thy s boys although older that the rest and she thought that he looked at her when she came in each morning but of course she couldn t see his eyes thy was now dressed in one of his bright picture shirts strapped to a metal chair with a soft scarf while theary shovelled fried rice and egg into his brother s mouth she boiled the kettle three times in a row and hated standing there they never asked her why she needed so much water and everyday she waited to be asked and told to stop there were empty wine bottles on the floor in the corner of the room and she was allowed to have any of the dregs that still remained as the men sat in silence and the water boiled for the third time she poured what little was left in three of the bottles into a fourth she filled her canvas bag right up to the brim with the boiled water and it was time to go theary handed her a portion of fried rice and pork belly wrapped in a page of newspaper her reward for the job that she had done chavy went down to the river and sat upon the wall that ran along the quayside she opened the newspaper and snatched up a piece of fatty pork and stuffed it in her mouth she swilled it down with a glug of wine and looked across the river with some pride she watched the life along the water and hoped that it was watching her in return the fishing boats motor launches with their guns a very few foreigners under sunshades on boats that went nowhere all watching her enjoying fatty porn and wine she dandled her legs above the water and noticed that there was a tear in the plastic of her right sandal a small piece of wire would hold it if she could find one stevedores were unloading barrels and bails onto the quayside she waved but they were hard at work singing as they heaved their cargo she picked up her water bag and slung it on her shoulders finished the wine and flung the bottle out into the river proud of the distance it covered the stevedores were always glad to see her but too involved in their labour to speak or smile the blind man sat on a bail in ragged trousers shoeless with calloused feet he pounded his guitar and bellowed a line and the stevedores repeated it back to him lift a weight a hundred times  lift a weight a hundred times  chavy took the blind man s battered tin mug from by his side and skipped amongst them as she did each day filling the mug with the water she had boiled a hundred grains of rice you earn  a hundred grains of rice you earn  they took it from her roughly and drank without breaking stride i hear someone saying  i hear someone saying  later the boss mr deng would make sure she had something to eat what s that singing  what s that singing   that s the sound of the mekong stevedores  that s the sound of the mekong stevedores   they slowed down very slightly towards the end and then the boat was empty and the quayside piled with barrels and bails and they squatted down and passed round cigarettes chavy longed for one but they never offered an hour passed before mr deng beckoned her over he had the book in his hand chavy loved the covers of the books he read with their dead bodies and beautiful women soldiers and lovers all in colour i got to the end he said laughing but there were no tarantulas yesterday he had shown her a book called the tears of a tarantula and she had asked if the story had many tarantulas in it and how big they were and how poisonous they where mr deng said that so far in his reading of the book he hadn t come across any tarantulas at all and she had said that maybe they all appear at the end and bite all the bad guys and the girls are all saved and the boys fall in love with them but now she knew they didn t she liked mr deng she would have gone to live with mr deng if he had asked he never mentioned family and she wondered if he lived alone she would happily be his child or his mistress if he demanded it mr deng stood the sign that it was time to eat and they crossed the road to eat at the chinese café that stood between a shophouse and a ship s chandlers the sun was at its highest now and no one would want to work this time of day they sat inside and ate pig s trotter stew with whole fat eggs she lavished her meal with fish sauce until the taste of it made her tongue explode and as she ate she thought about the bar she had passed by accident a few weeks ago she picked up her bowl and drank the last of the broth and scurried off wiping the fat from her chin with the back of her hand the bar was set back from the street with a small shaded area in front for a few tables chairs and potted plants each day voices choking with melody burst from the open sides of the bar and the boy came out into the street to tend the flowers with his green watering can and each day she watched him do it hiding in the shadow of a building a few doors down the music swayed her hips coaxing her towards the sound and the boy but she didn t dare didn t dare to let it take her oh she wanted to wanted to to walk out into the sun and reveal herself but she worried worried that there might not be anything for the boy to see for she sometimes wondered if she were invisible no one ever talked to her apart from mr deng and what is she were not real at all but a character in one of the books he read she watched the boy put down the watering can and look up the street towards her he had never done that before she froze pretending to be nothing more than shadow and the boy went back inside and she just stood there breathing and waiting to see if he would come out again he had forgotten his watering can she would have happily have stayed that way for hours but she had to leave the city would hurt her after darkness fell she had to go she knew she had to her tshirt was very thin and she looked down at the shape of her breasts she looked the street up and down it was deserted she put her thumbs in the waistband of her shorts and pulled them down to show her belly then she pulled her tshirt up and let the city see her breasts then she gasped and pulled the tshirt down again pulled up her shorts and ran issue 2 alistair roberts ', 0);
INSERT INTO `truesearch_dataset` VALUES
(29, 'node', ' the nereids by ellie stewart the world broke down in a small way when my mother was wheeled out of the house on a stretcher the last time i saw her she was sitting up in her armchair waxen and pale after her heart stopped beating the next time it was only her shape zipped up in a body bag sailing away i watched from between the banisters as the men and women in green sombrely removed her from the house i turned my head another way and they transformed no longer were they uniformed professionals but headless women three of them in billowing dresses that flew around them like wings greek statues in marble depict solidified gods and nymphs like this my eyes reformed the matter in the air from mirages to new deities they took the stretcher in their long white arms and their clothing flew slowly round as if underwater silently they moved in a procession out the door and down the steps and out of sight i don t know where they took her a hospital a stainless steellined morgue to cut her up to sew her back together to dress her up in clothes we had selected perhaps then she was in a box carried up the hill to the grave by four men with sunken skin and stiff black suits then they lowered her into the ground and we looked down into the pit there was a body in the box they told me it was her time shifted along like ice flows at the poles i sat on my piece of ice that floated slowly on the arctic seas aimless never moving forward cracking on contact freezing again the seals moved as dark shapes underwater the sun shone cold i reached out a hand and found hope another human s warmth a young man with eager hands and straining clothes and growing impatience he grew afraid of the look in my eyes the watery imprint of another realm a place of darkness he did not want to visit he couldn t bear to look at me and he left my mother had left me all over again i looked up to the bareness of the sky and longed for god my ice sheet moved away and onwards through the freezing sea no this will not do i thought i will find her again the nereids the headless women in their underwater movements who had taken my mother away they took the souls of the departed and carried them across the sea to the afterlife if i could find them i could find her i could go back to where we had begun i called to the narwhals and they pushed me along northward onwards to the top of the world where the sky swims in technicolour shot with electric green they stood in front of me those three headless women they swayed like seaweed their bodies hummed down to the underworld one said but you re not dead i know i said bowing down in supplication but i can offer you whatever you want please let me descend so i can see her again the nereids moved their torsos distractedly if they d had heads they would have shaken them they turned to each other this is not allowed surely said one but we re not fussy are we said the next as long as there s no guarantee of her ever coming back said the last they paused they turned back to me we can take you there one said but we can t promise we can take you back said the next only hades decides who leaves said the last i know i said i understand the terms i gave them each a cup of my blood and they were satisfied come then they said and off we went they carried me in their arms across the sea we skimmed the water with our feet rode on the vast backs of blue whales and travelled through the turns of the clock from light to dark and on to endless day when the sun never sets and the doors to the underworld stand there they set me down we ll go no further said the nereids i stood on the glittering rock and nodded thank you for your kindness i said they paused a moment sighed collectively and left i stood at the edge of the world the gates opened out of the ground and the earth gaped wide it was a leap of faith to jump i knew i might never return again the sun blazed in the sky that was nowhere and endless the darkness rumbled i jumped i landed on the damp shores of the river styx it was an underground river with a great ceiling above it dripping cold water that echoed in the cavern the mud was black and sucked down my feet as if it meant to swallow me whole on the shore the boatman stood he was old and tired and he looked at me from under hooded eyes he knew i was alive it s only one way he croaked he looked worried on the other shore the air shifted no one stood on the other side i know i said i stepped forward please take me across as you wish he said and stepped back to let me board the boat the oar moved through the smoke stained river my eyes took in the space around that stood still like stems in water the air watched it chose when to move i looked down into the water that passed slowly underneath dark shapes moved on its surface debris shadows memories it sighed a heavy sad sigh the sigh that departs the human body in the final moments of life a sigh i thought that came from the souls swimming in the river though i saw no evidence of them no matter how hard i tried to bend my eyes into the deep dark of the river styx we re here he said as the boat jolted onto the shore thank you i said he said nothing but turned the boat around and began to row back to the other side the air was thick with something that felt like soot in my lungs it wasn t meant for the living as i walked along the path i felt eyes watching me from the rocks and mud they moved as i walked they wondered at the heavy reality of my presence i tried to pretend they weren t there and trod on through the land of the dead there was a kind of sky in the underworld it slid and shimmered above like petrol and reflected the underside of the sea looking far through i thought i could see the pilot fish drifting on down there there were no bird calls only the whale song way above in the dark water where life peels away hades met me on the riverbank he appeared as a dark shape that grew larger as i grew nearer he looked like an undertaker with long fingers and he turned his head like an owl the water changed colour when he did so and the air shivered and morphed into new forms he could fashion new beings with the blood from his fingers he could extinguish lives with a motion of his eyes now what do you want my dear i bowed down low before him i pressed my hands into the dark mud at his feet the sadness of the water soaked into my skin lord please let me have her back i ll do anything hades laughed ah my dear he sighed they all say that he crouched down i looked up and saw his face the shadows lowered i looked into his eyes his eyes stretched backwards into the darkness i felt dizzy i wobbled he pressed his hand onto my shoulder he was like a cliff falling and i the trembling waves beneath you really want her back tears from my eyes fell onto his arm and echoed in the cavern please i said i ve come so far hades nodded and for a moment it seemed as if he had changed into a shark a great shark lying on the bank with its fin on my shoulder and its great mouth opening wide with rows and rows of teeth and the black forgetting falling away inside you have come far he said he was a man again you can take her back with you he said softly and singsong as if talking to a child he rose and so did i and he gestured behind him there she was standing in white her eyes looking nowhere mama i shrieked and jumped and tried to run his body fell across my path he shook his head on one condition he said you can walk back to the land of the living and she will follow you but you must not look back you must not look back even for a second to see if she is there until you have walked into the sunshine behind us a towering staircase carved from the rock appeared it led up up through the shuddering depths of the earth to the first break of sunlight of the new day if you look back even once she will return to me forever i looked at mama she stood still by the rocks i turned to hades his eyes his tunnel eyes said what choice do you have so i ascended the stairs as i climbed them i listened for the sound of her footsteps i trod as quietly as i could upon the rocks and strained my ears but i heard nothing please mama i said please give me a sign that you re there say i m here please i kept walking upwards the air became clearer the shadows fell away the rocks became luminous with the light from above yet still i could not hear her mama i cried please just a sound a cough a sneeze just let me know you re there i felt the warmth of the sun on my arms just say hello i heard the birds singing i hear the waters of the ocean falling on the sand i was almost there but what if hades had tricked me what if she hadn t followed me and was back down there in the dark if i turned now i would still have the chance to run back down say he tricked me demand a new bargain even if it meant living down there forever with her i stopped on the last step before me the sand opened up under the sun the sky was blue there was a boat on the shore waiting for me mama i sobbed please let me know that you re there no sound she was not there he had tricked me she was back down in the underworld he had kept her there and tricked me into leaving her i turned furious ready to fling myself back down those infernal steps but i saw her standing for a second the sun was on her face and she was smiling mama then she was gone and the door to the underworld closed and she was lost to me forever at the end of the world i sat down on the beach and cried the ocean rolled back underneath it was the corpse of the boatman and all my memories scattered like glass and i am at her bedside again where i always return her lids are lowered her mouth halfopen the oxygen tank hisses beside her and her moaning has finally stopped there she is at the mouth of the cave returning to the dark elsewhere there she is in a nightgown that hangs on her skeletal frame exposing the lumps of tumours and her stretched out skin the image repeats and repeats i always look back issue 2 ellie stewart ', 0),
(30, 'node', ' never judge a book by its movie by rachel macgregor there s nothing i like better than curling up with a good book or watching a new film so when it s announced that a film adaptation of a popular novel is to be released i make sure i read the book straight away whilst i love film i often find i prefer reading original stories because so often despite the talents of the actors i find they can t convey the amount of emotion and empathy you can feel for a character when reading a book for example nothing pains me more than people referring to harry potter as a film or than when people say they ve never read the books but have seen the films to me watching a film rather than reading the book it s based on limits you to being passive on the very rare occasion that i cave in and watch a film before reading its source text i find i don t connect with the characters as well as i could have when i get around to reading the book and i don t find myself rushing through the chapters in anticipation of what happens next instead i find myself skimming through the pages without actually taking anything in after all i ve already seen all the action unfold onscreen where i m adamant that you should always read the source text first i find it irritating when people define a book as rubbish after just seeing the film the most common case of this is with the twilight saga i remember being in sixth form when the film was announced and the whole common room was full of girls reading the novel we were all completely captivated by it and would discuss how perfect edward cullen and jacob black were in our spare time whilst robert pattinson and taylor lautner were in my opinion great in their roles one thing ruined it for me the protagonist bella swan the novel by stephenie meyer is told in a firstperson narrative through the eyes of bella and as a reader i loved being able to feel empathy for the character for me the best part of the novel was the fact that it was from her viewpoint she was grounded yet extremely vulnerable at the same time but on screen kristen stewart doesn t convey those feelings there is only so much that eye rolling and lipbiting can convey and without a narration of her thoughts it is hard to find her portrayal of bella very appealing that isn t to say i think all novels which have been turned into film franchises have ended badly the recent adaptation of the hunger games was right on the mark for me although only one of the three books has been adapted so far it showed promise of faithfulness to the book series in the adaptation only a few plot points were changed and most were for the better it also added clever new twists that even hardcore fans had to agree were good in my opinion  the hunger games may be the turning point in attitudes towards film adaptations this is probably because of its appeal to both sexes and the fact that it isn t just focused on romance it has a more substantial plot than most recent franchises the fact that it doesn t have supernatural elements and is set in a dystopian future makes it far more believable and not as easy to mock these elements are a testament to the brilliant trilogy of books by suzanne collins her incredible writing technique keeps the reader constantly intrigued and the pace of action is truly incredible with franchises it is often the case that they are less faithful to the text with each film but i really hope that isn t the case with the hunger games  i think because there is never a dull moment in the novels we may see a turning point where each film is almost as good as the book it is based on another thing that annoys me with film adaptations is the obvious influence of the hollywood film industry especially in romantic comedies david nicholls  one day was one of my favourite novels of 2009 he created truly captivating characters to this day dexter is one of my favourites and i think the time frame of the narrative was incredible the way in which nicholls would only write about the characters on one day of the year was incredibly innovative and it was very hardhitting for the reader to see how much things can change in such a short space of time when the film adaptation came out i was hesitant to see it although critics were saying jim sturgess performance as dexter was incredible they were also saying anne hathaway as emma was an absolute disaster at first i was bewildered as to why an american would be cast in a role that is so quintessentially british in the film hathaway s yorkshire accent left much to be desired and i can only think she was cast to bring in international audiences to this day i think emily blunt was made for the role whilst emma wasn t the most upbeat character in the book i feel hathaway s performance just didn t portray the edge that the character had i think some adaptations are done really well for example i loved kazuo ishiguro s never let me go and think mark romanek made a great adaptation but it took me a long time to convince myself to watch the film because i loved the book so much i think to watch a film soon after reading its book is another thing that alters my judgment i waited over a year to watch never let me go because i wasn t sure how i would feel about seeing the characters i d visualised so clearly onscreen i think if i d have watched the film shortly after reading the book i wouldn t have been so satisfied sometimes i think it s my own fault that i m often left unsatisfied by film adaptations if my standards weren t set so high from reading the novels first i would probably enjoy the films more but as much as i love film in my opinion there is nothing better than imagining a character for the first time or picturing the landscape of a carefully thoughtout environment however more than anything else there is nothing better than getting to a twist in a plot that hasn t been predictably hinted at previously and being able to learn about these twists as the character does being able to embrace their emotions and fears alongside them so if you re quick to dismiss a film as rubbish go and read the book you might find your opinion changing issue 2 rachel macgregor field of dreams permalink submitted by jeff johnston not verified on march 14 2013 1111 you re probably not much into baseball so you probably haven t read the book or seen the movie this is the only pair i ve seen where the movie is better than the book some things are changed including one character but overall the movie is just as satisfying as the book perhaps more so since baseball is visual and full of oddball characters that a movie can portray better reply you re right in thinking i m permalink submitted by rachel macgregor not verified on march 15 2013 1151 you re right in thinking i m not much into baseball and i haven t read the book or seen the movie but i have actually heard amazing things about field of dreams i ll have to read watch but as most of the opinions i ve heard are the same as yours maybe it will be an exception to my the book is always better than the movie rule thanks for reading the article commenting  reply ', 0),
(31, 'node', ' postcard from mexico by rachael pells my first month in mexico full of many an adventure has drawn to a close be those adventures transvestite shows carpark raves or the time i caught fleas from flacco i d change nothing from my weeks of observation i can safely say that mexico is a quirky place take for instance the common kitchen there will be a gascooker and oven much like one would find in any civilised home however mexicans don t tend to use the oven everything is fried or stewed on the hob while the oven compartment is used to store a ridiculous amount of tupperware if that seems strange how about the common mexican habit of using a microwave instead of a kettle yes that s correct just a mug of cold water a dunked herbal teabag and a minute or so of solid radiation that s the local way to do it and what about cutlery i think it depends on what is washed as to whether one is presented with a knife fork or spoon and that goes for cafes and bars too not just at home madness but the one particular quirk i d like to examine today is the humble mexican bus system there are several breeds of bus in mexico some clean some grubby some with suspension and some with livestock the blue and white local cityrunners are the most common way to get around in the city and are affectionately called the camion or truck there are thousands of these monsters impossible to find out exactly how many and you too can be part of the adventure for just under 30 british pennies yes six pesos will take you all around the city and sometimes back again there is of course a slight gamble with death but it s all character building first one must manage to hail the bus i have been told that not all of guadalajara city s stops are marked but truth be told i am not sure i have ever come across any kind of markings at all statistically a person dies every single day in guadalajara from a busrelated incident and i am sure that a lot of those deaths must be from people trying to stop the damn thing in the first place they come shooting down the long straight avenues like the road runner one must stand halfway into the road facing the oncoming traffic finger out six pesos in hand the aim is to attract the driver s attention without getting hit by him or anyone else once slowed to a stop the driver will always act as if you have committed a grave injustice most likely you have the drivers get bored and race each other during the day the bus will then start to move before you have paid for your ticket let alone found a seat on every bus there are between three and six yellow seats which are designated for elderly and disabled passengers for reasons unknown this means that a bus will be crammed full of people standing and holding on for dear life while those four or five seats remain eternally empty locals sitting on the other commonuse seats tend to sit on the outside of a pair unwilling to move along and let anybody sit on the second seat friendly bunch it must be said however that most mexican men are gentlemen and will offer their seat to any standing lady young or old local or pastywhite successfully on the bus ticket paid seat or standing spot acquired great now prepare yourself for the cheapest rollercoaster you will ever experience complete with free entertainment often a musician disabled or homeless person will hop on the bus free the driver is almost always a friend or brother these people will stand at the front and recite a carefully rehearsed speech presumably telling their life story and why they are so different from all the other musicians homeless people and deserve your money my spanish does not extend enough so that i completely understand these stories and songs but it s easy to judge how good or badthe gossip is depending on whether all or none of the other passengers give money now you have a choice hop off the bus while we are still in a central district find a bar or taco stand and see what there is to see or stay on the bus until the bitter end to see where you end up i did the latter on sunday and ended up in the very back of beyond after an hour of driving we finally ran out of road and the bus stopped to cool off before making the return journey as i stepped off the sticky vehicle glad for some air i was amazed to find myself at the foot of a series of hills men on horses rode past staring intently at me and who can blame them i looked rather out of place and villagers came out to sell lemonade to the passengers it was all pretty surreal but most definitely impressive even if i did give myself a hernia from straining to hold on along the rocky ride how well does mexican transport compare against the expensive and infrequent public transport in the uk 30p well spent i d say  issue 2 rachael pells james not verified april 9 2013 1725 permalink interesting but you seem have interesting but you seem have to a really negative attitude about everything one super quick example for unknown reasons the seats are eternally empty when one sentence prior you said they are for elderly and disabled people maybe the mexicans aren t as sarcastically friendly as you think and are actually quite nice they always let me take the inner seat without issue reply ', 0),
(32, 'node', ' red chillies and cornhusks by f harvey anderson courtyards are selfcontained little worlds where all of life from birth to death occurs four walls and a pantiled grass laden roof underneath the eaves red chillies hang like pendantshaped earrings the school boys in their blue shirts and overlong trousers girls with ponytails in their hair water bottles slung over their shoulders smiling they all march off in file into patan durbar square the start of a brand new day crosslegged didis beat rice on ratan mats complaining of the cost of garlic how could the price go up so quickly sitting on benches around the edge of the courtyard topi headed men slurp scalding hot chiya out of shotshaped glasses after years of chiya and inactivity the tips of their fingers are hard and calloused immune to the heat mankaji tinkered with his bike before going off to sell eggs every morning his chain comes off his bike and every morning he puts it back on again how he longed for a hero honda oh how his life would be so much easier today it was meena s turn to go and collect the water from the local standpipe well it always seemed to be her turn green snottynosed undressed babies crawl amongst the napping hounds vying for their tailwagging attention moodily the scruffy mongrels get up stretch and find a quieter corner well how could they bark all night if they didn t get their daily eight hours of sleep in the evenings teenagers flirt and boast by the light of their mobile phones praying that the power cut will not end too soon the courtyard never really sleeps lit by oil lamps butter candles and lowwatt bulbs with the hiss of pressure cookers their safety valves building up to an earsplitting crescendo the grating clanking of metalonmetal steel mortar and pestle grinding fresh herbs and spices televisions flicker behind the screencovered windows endless bollywood movies play rats lean out precariously trying to grab at the cornhusks draped between the arches slowblinking owls stand guard nightly and it is rumoured that raj has never left the confines since the royal massacre issue 2 f harvey anderson encapsulates beautifully the permalink submitted by rampantyak not verified on february 26 2013 1259 encapsulates beautifully the vibrancy colour and unique beauty of daily life in kathmandu despite its difficulties great piece reply thank you so much for your permalink submitted by fergus anderson not verified on february 27 2013 1353 thank you so much for your comments please inform your friends of the puffin review i am sure they will get enjoyment from it and it is so wonderful that they have started this forum for novice writers like myself yours fergus reply discriptive enjoyable hope permalink submitted by mike linda not verified on february 26 2013 1315 discriptive enjoyable hope it leads to further recognition reply red chillies and cornhusks permalink submitted by fergus anderson not verified on february 27 2013 1356 dear mike and linda thank you so much for leaving a comment and all the encouragement you have given me enjoy africa and i hope to hear from you again soon fergus reply congratulations permalink submitted by corinne mustafa not verified on february 26 2013 1642 i have no beem to kathmandy so i have no experience however this could easily describe life in bangladesh where the courtyards are on the roofs of multi storied flat buildings i loved this harvey some of your ways of description are down right poetic for example underneath the eaves red chillies hang like pendantshaped earrings ilove how you scripted the old men and their chia and the part abour the dogs who use their day time sleep to give them energy to bark all night i am thrilled for you my friend reply red chillies and cornhusks permalink submitted by fergus anderson not verified on february 27 2013 1408 dear corinne the best of friends are made on a cruise of the sundarbans i will be writing some more on bangladesh shortly it helps so much to keep the memories alive fergus reply thank you for taking me home  permalink submitted by jon titley not verified on february 26 2013 1825 namaste i lived in kathmandu from from 19911997 this really took me home the images are so real that i can almost smell and hear it as if i was there a very beautiful country with the most generous smiley people surviving in a place that deserves so much more than the politicians and corruption callously offer it mr anderson you have a unique and poetic way of bringing home into my life again and for that i thank you you plainly have a deep and meaningful love for the place as we all do that have been privileged to be touched by it and it s people i look forward to reading more of your very descriptive writing you have a talent that i trust will be nurtured and enjoyed in years to come namaste reply red chillies and cornhusks permalink submitted by fergus anderson not verified on february 27 2013 1413 dear jon it is so easy for me to stand in the garden all day and just admire the mountains thank you for not wavering in your encouragement and support of me yours fergie reply renewed passion permalink submitted by double a not verified on february 26 2013 2258 lovely piece hope this inspires everyone to broaden our horizons whenever possible fantastic window into another culture and country the writing shows a great passion and empathy for the country good luck mr anderson wheever this journey takes u tashi delek reply red chillies and cornhusks permalink submitted by fergus anderson not verified on february 27 2013 1418 dear aa i am glad you got so much enjoyment out of my piece one day last october i was missing nepal so much i thought i would take my mind back to a place i love so dearly and this is the result i hope you will continue on my journey with me namaskar fergus reply passionately written well done  permalink submitted by aaron dickson not verified on march 3 2013 1908 the passion in your writing is fantastic and truly comes from the heart hope to read more soon good luck mr fergus harvey anderson aaron reply red chillies and cornhusks permalink submitted by fergus anderson not verified on march 11 2013 507 dear aaron thank you for your support you can read more of my writings at  http wwwoffexploringcom fergusanderson i hope you enjoy them as much as i did writing them yours fergus reply red chillies and cornhusks permalink submitted by george hart not verified on march 7 2013 2359 so few words such a detailed picture painted well done fergus george reply red chillies and cornhusks permalink submitted by fergus anderson not verified on march 11 2013 516 dear george many thanks for your comments with best regards fergus reply ', 0),
(33, 'node', ' sleeping on the job by james bruce may it s early on a bright cold saturday morning in camden town and tourists are already beginning to emerge from the underground hawkers engage them in bartering on the market chainstore coffee baristas serve them up steaminghot drinks policemen give them directions activity unfolds in a thousand interactions growing steadily beneath an uninterested fragile blue sky as yet unbroken by a single cloud back and forth along the high street the tourists shuffle the pavement below their feet is clean last night s broken glass and leaflitter of flyers all swept away above them townhouses lean in listening these redbricked buildings are four storeys high and have seen countless processions of tourists they may have been grand homes once and to the passing sightseer they still look impressive but inside their onceairy drawing rooms and spacious bedrooms have all been brutally divided up and sectioned off so as to cram in the maximum amount of rentpaying residents one such tenant is a writer he lives alone in a bedsit which overlooks the britannia junction a pigeon s swoop away from the busy shops pubs tube station and flower stall this morning the writer pays no attention to the pedestrians passing below his home however for he is fast asleep submerged in a bed that s pushed up next to the room s only window he s wrapped in a rucked duvet breathing in deep sleepregulated breaths the noise from the street is perfectly audible inside this matchbox home despite the closed and curtained window engines sirens the banshee brakes of buses an early busker s shivering chords the accompanying hubbub of myriad conversations enmasse it can all be heard clearly yet the sleeping writer does not stir the drawn curtains are cream in colour and are not thick and so the morning s shade slips in easily alongside its sounds as if trying to escape the bright sky once inside that dim light gathers up its shadows and casts them about the stark furnishings of the room the calendar on the wardrobe door is given a good frame of darkness gloom is pushed back between the leaning novels on the bookshelf the heap of clothes discarded on the chair develops unnatural depths while the clutter on the table seems to shift uncertain of its edges the three pairs of shoes lurking at the foot of the bed by a solid black guitar case look ready to run the writer turns in his bed oblivious he murmurs perhaps in a dream the halflight continues its slow waltz around the room hiding this highlighting that in a space as small as this the table is the logical hub and out of necessity it must have to perform many functions it is undoubtedly a place to eat a media centre a workspace and it is also where the morning light focuses its gentle dance it seems that the table was most recently used as a desk although there are signs of consumption too books are piled dismissively next to an open dormant laptop an empty mug two empty beer bottles and reams of loose paper that very nearly hide a small crumby plate shadows move freely amongst this mess but it does not cover the whole table for a little clearing has been created towards the front where another book is left with its pages open the writer s journal a pen is poised atop the journal quiescent in the straight papervalley at the spine of the book waiting like a bullet in a pistol s firing chamber the light allows for a close inspection of those open pages and discloses the handwritten heading challenges facing unknown authors on the other side of the room the writer turns again in his bed a frown passing over his face on the lefthand page of the journal a long unbroken sentence is pulled in a hurry across the paper the black ink of some words smudged by the passing of a palm capture some essence from the heart of the process some problem part of the struggle hint at the strength required no the endurance give a glimpse of the challenge made to the artist during the discipline of writing outline the need for patience during its undertaking to progress with prolonged sustained quality prose requires stamina yes often a need to dig deep especially following failure rejection how to capture this problem difficult essay to approach highlight temptation to give up and start on some other project some other easier project highlight fact that successful writers cannot quit or else nothing started is finished and anyway abandoned work is never improved work so the writer must be hardy and robust highlight difficulty of day job of suffocating city rent expectations peer expectation plus envy of peers success give detailed image of doubtful expressions seen in response to emptysound of ideas highlight gravity of phone screen computer screen television screen highlight regret of pointless procrastination addiction to various homefeeds fleeting nature of time tidal nature of sleep no wait stop subject too dense for such approach will ramble will condescend won t be useful won t make sense all bollocks all pretence what approach then maybe try to ask the page ask the page about this problem catch problem in a cage of notes on the page write it out and then sleep on it on the righthand page of the journal neater rows of writing form a square you say you re a writer you read and you love what you read you think you can offer something too a similar escape with a different approach you believe you can offer some image never seen you have ideas you cherish them you write them nurture them you tell people you re a writer you tell people you love writing people smile but you know they don t think you re a writer they ask you what you do you tell them you re a barman a waiter a clerk a temp just while you write but you know they need proof proof of success measured in money you say you don t care about money but they are not convinced you have doubts doubts about what you are doubts about writing doubts about everything you write down your doubts and act like writing them down exorcises them banishes them but your doubts remain lingering writing isn t therapy you think writing isn t medicinal but neither are doubts new other writers must suffer similary you wonder how they cope you set to work studying mimicking contemplating discussing those writers you meet people who say they are writers too their numbers dishearten you but you connect with some and it helps you stick out your job you keep your head down you squeeze sentences from spare seconds you write every day determined and slowly your work grows you take your journal everywhere people ask you what you re doing you say you re a writer they smile your doubts linger the sleeping writer stirs once more grunting softly possibly about to wake a frown passes again over his face perhaps he s dreaming of the uncertainties cast in blackbiro across the pages of his journal outside while shadows continue to shift around his little room the crowds on camden high street thicken in the pale winter sunlight the blue sky remaining empty above apathetic utterly indifferent issue 2 james bruce may nice permalink submitted by aj not verified on february 26 2013 1340 nice reply so that s what s going on  permalink submitted by jammymummy not verified on february 26 2013 2227 so that s what s going on  reply ', 0),
(34, 'node', ' fixed by nici west the coffee is bitter after twenty years of friendship she still hasn t learnt how i like it she buys extra strong and leaves it to brew for ten minutes i like the softer more subtle coffee the taste gets stuck as i try to talk and i have to keep stopping to clear my throat she nods at intervals i test her by leaving sentences hanging or diverting the conversation she continues nodding even after a long night out she s still a professional listener i stumble on a word as she lights me a cigarette i feel my lungs aching but right now it s numbing my mind enough to continue talking it feels like a stone is stuck in my throat a thick ball of all the tar and bitter coffee my saliva having to crawl around it every time i try to swallow i ask her if she has anything else without answering she brings out whiskey and two glasses the glasses are crystal deep cuts hacked into patterns she pours an inch into each glass i take a deep breath feeling the edges of my throat again as i drink the whiskey i want ice but i know she won t have any i can t get that night out of my head my hands are shaking they struggle to find my mouth without saying anything she lights a cigarette and passes it to me she s kind like that she can sense when i need help i try to tell her what s happened she may even know i can t say the actual words so i use replacement words for what i mean she continues nodding when it comes to mentioning his name i can t do it instead i skip over the word she doesn t seem to notice or she does and chooses not to i know it s a bad idea because when it comes to morning and she still doesn t understand i m going to have to spell it out for her but for now it s all i can bear the apartment becomes motionless when i stop talking she never did like listening to music i bought her a radio once though it s tucked it the corner beneath a pile of books i think about asking her to turn it on but she won t know how the window s open a motorbike occasionally breaks the silence the odd footstep of someone on the way home or a night worker on their way to work she swallows loudly i wonder if she feels the same pebble in her throat as i do my coffee is going cold but i take a sip anyway then she places a cigarette in my mouth and lights it for me i want to say no this time but i don t have the strength i inhale and feel the smoke move down my throat and into my lungs i watch it escape from my mouth in circles and disperse in the air when my mouth is clear i try again i ve got something i really need to tell you she nods you re not going to like it she nods i don t think you understand she bends down to take her heels off my feet are killing me not as young as i used to be she pours me more whiskey i take a sip and cough as it struggles to find its way down my throat i look at the clock on her oven red numbers flashing three am i long to hear birds to hear morning approaching maybe then i wouldn t have to say this my hands are still shaking i look down and watch them i run the backs of my hands against the glass to cool them down can you just let me speak let me explain before you say anything she knows how to handle this she sits back to let me speak when we were kids we used to sit on this wall do you remember down the lane between our houses we would go for walks our mums would pack us a sandwich and a drink and we d go for walks for what felt like hours just wandering around talking then we would find that wall and we would sit with our legs dangling over the edge watching the stream below that would dry up in the summer and you you used to say that no matter what happened we would be friends forever do you remember no matter what happens she pours us more whiskey filling her glass first i watch the rusty liquid swirl in her glass and gather at her lips as she drinks she s barely looking at me well from that day or that time i ve felt like no matter what happens we ll always be friends even if we don t talk for years i hope that s still the case she lights herself a cigarette remember how you used to think that the same river ran all the way through the world as a never ending stream of water she smiles i remember she says we would watch that stream and imagine the people it was passing sitting with their feet over the edge just like us on the other side of the world my glass is empty i reach for the bottle next to her and she passes it to me i pour myself a drink i watch the liquid swirl the bottom take a deep breath i can feel my lungs shaking i m not even sure if i can say this to her i look up and try and look in her eyes she s looking at her cigarette or her glass or the window what s the time she looks at the clock for me late just after three i haven t stayed up this late in years remember when we were kids and this time used to feel like it didn t exist like it was a secret time that your parents never wanted you to see and then when we were teenagers and this time felt early like the night was only just beginning she nods and tips her head to one side hmms through a closed mouth as if practiced i look at the clock on the oven to confirm three minutes past three flashing in big red lights i should go home soon do you remember the last time you stayed up this late she looks at me her blood shot eyes with gary i nod the whiskey has gone warm in my hand i sip it not really wanting to drink mine was mine was i can t remember i cough how is gary she looks up at me says nothing i can see her biting the inside corner of her lip gary s fine great in fact gary s fine she says i wish she had a tv or radio to turn on she never did like background noise said it was too distracting and filled your head with too many things to ignore your own thoughts i tap my fingers on the edge of the glass to make high pitched ting i close my eyes and enjoy the noise for a moment moving my fingers around the tip to change the pitch i look up she s looking at me i give her a guilty grin but she just looks away 4am i wonder if any clubs are still open i say she shakes her head they never stay open this late nowadays not in this country i say in agreement with her probably because no one has the strength to stay up this late any more she says i wonder if she s hinting at me i used to be able to read her better she stands up to wash our glasses that s okay i ll re use mine she doesn t stop washing she goes to the fridge and holds up an empty bottle we re all out of whiskey want brandy she says why not she takes a towel and starts to dry the cups one at a time and place them back on the table in front of us she pours us another drink i realise i have to talk if i m going to say it before i leave when you going away i say two days on your business trip business and pleasure he s meeting me out there taking a few days off she necks her drink like its water and pours herself another i hold mine and swirl the liquid in the glass sometimes i think i know you better then you do she looks at me as she says this she smiles but it s almost a smug smile too crooked to be real what do you mean well you never could get your words out could you i neck my drink pour myself another the pier night i say without looking at her the taste of his tongue what the pier night that s the last time i stayed up this late the smell of his skin her smug smile drops i feel sick from the smell of the drink it reminds me of that night of his breath i swallow i want to say the words with gary but i can t bring myself to do it you asked that s the last time i say it s getting late you should be leaving don t you have work in the morning no the number flicks from five to one minute past i stretch my neck cock my head from side to side small talk s become difficult so heavy the energy used to not say it i pour myself another shot as i go to put the bottle back on the table she snatches it from my hand to pour herself another i bring it to my lips the smell makes me gag i look up quickly and the room spins i rest my hands on the table to balance myself can we open a window i ask it is open the sun is beginning to rise outside my eyes are burning with lethargy so i push my drink to one side she takes it from me and begins to wash up she takes a long time running the sink placing the glasses in the water scrubbing with her back to me she takes the ash tray and washes that up too she places the empty ash tray back in front of me i open my mouth to speak but it doesn t form any words the table is now empty and clean she keeps her back to me for a long time i want to tell her that i m sorry that that night shouldn t have happened that i should have told her before gary did i take a deep breath and footsteps pass outside fast high heels tap on concrete like someone running late i should she ll always think of me the way he told the story i pick up my coat my hands are shaking something falls from the coat to the floor i pick it up the noise makes her flinch but she doesn t turn around the brooch she gave it to me when we were fifteen an old thing shed found in her grandma s attic i gave her a pencil top in return with my trembling hands i go to attach it back to my coat i try a few times to no success as i turn the brooch around i realise the pin is broken a small lump of air passes my throat something that would be a laugh if i wasn t so tired i should she ll never understand my version she doesn t look up her hands are in the sink but she s not moving her head is down i wish she had the radio on i tie up my shoes open the door she keeps her back to me as i walk out the door i reach back and leave the broken brooch on the side she doesn t turn around outside the sun is rising i walk home all the way home issue 2 nici west ', 0),
(35, 'node', ' southern comfort by patricia duffaud you d brought a bottle of southern comfort with you from london on the evening after the funeral you sat there smoking in the fading summer light as the dinner plates were taken away when it became obvious that no more alcohol would be offered you heaved yourself upstairs and fished the bottle out from your luggage it did well that bottle lasting as it did until 2am the widow went to bed so it was just you and your husband and the two teenagers and the drink hit them fast at the start you probably meant to be supportive as you questioned the drunken orphans but as anecdotes poured out your eyes narrowed and gleamed so much information all of a sudden after years of conjecture it was too much for you you attempted to kick your husband under the table but missed and the oldest girl glanced up eyebrows raised over tired bloodshot eyes later your mouth twisted your voice vibrated as you reminisced about your own parents how they forced you to give up your baby boy how you wished you d kept him how you yearned to know what he d become revealing too much was one of the dangers of drink but then this was no longer a secret it was a part of your repertory it was new to the girls though and they reacted with appreciable shock shrieks and hugs one of your best audiences yet your husband patted your arm a little mechanically his eyelids were starting to droop jarring music kept drifting up from the radio like rattling frying pans cut through with french chatter from an excited male presenter the tv was off you d not seen it switched on once seriously this was one weird setup chilly air wafted in from the halfopen window but no one offered to close it typical eventually you shuffled over and did it yourself you sat down again with a sigh and refilled glasses all round you reached the point of tears three quarters down the bottle and you vowed you d not lose touch with your nieces this time you were silent for a while sipping the tepid drink waiting for it explode inside you and grip at you again soon you were prodding for more strained to memorise every spilt revelation so that s what he d been like the man your sister had married just wait until you told the others back home if you remembered it all another problem with being drunk was that you forgot things sometimes then from the tangle of spirals your mind was pulsing with something whispered who cares what you don t remember you can invent so yes a pretty enjoyable evening in spite of everything issue 2 patricia duffaud ', 0);
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(36, 'node', ' welcome to issue 2 read issue 2 here here we are already with our second issue i must say being an editor is fantastic each morning the puffin inboxes are packed with submissions from so many countries in so many genres and in so many styles already we have enough quality writing to pack out months and months of the magazine but keep them coming we are constantly on the lookout for new submissions in this month s issue we have the usual mix of fiction and nonfiction there s a healthy smattering of travel journalism too with rachael pells giving another punchy take on life in mexico whilst we welcome a new contributor f harvey anderson who has written a very vivid and thoughtful article on life in nepal we also welcome back sarah taylorfergusson who wrote so beautifully about love in her poem in issue 1 that we couldn t help but invite her back with another packed full of imagery joining her in representing poetry in this issue is another new contributor from ireland michael ray we d never forget flash fiction how could we this month s pieces come from samuel best who edits a magazine of his own for young writers and from patricia duffaud also we publish our first novel excerpt this month and it s from alistair roberts let us know what you think we have short stories by nici west and ellie stewart and a very lyrical nonfiction story about the struggles of young writers to get established the latter being from james bruce may whom we re glad to have back after he appeared in our first edition finally rachel macgregor writes an article on why the book is always better than the film a sentiment i agree with except for the shawshank redemption we ll also be introducing a book review section shortly our team have received plenty of review copies of forthcoming fiction such as kate atkinson s life after life and margaret forster s the unknown bridesmaid  the reviews will be published soon and writers and publishers are always welcome to send their books to us for review finally we have two upcoming author interviews but we ll tell you more about that later keep reading and please do spread the word about the puffin review ', 0),
(37, 'node', ' life after life by kate atkinson this novel is a slow burner usually kate atkinson grabs me by the throat before i m halfway down the first page and doesn t relent till the book is done not so with life after life  but stick with it and you ll be ridiculously rewarded the novel follows the many lives of ursula todd she suffers relentless deaths but is reincarnated as herself to try again and again finally scraping through childhood into her teenage years and beyond ursula is only vaguely aware of her remarkable gift which manifests itself in her ordinary life as flashes of déjà vu or maddening anxiety provoking troubled trips to a psychiatrist in one life the family maid bridget goes off to london to celebrate the end of the great war but unwittingly brings the deadly flu back home on the train in the subsequent reincarnation ursula is racked with terror at the thought of bridget going off to london and so pushes her spraining her ankle and averting her destined contact with the fluraddled crowds ursula is saved this time but death is always just around the corner as is another go at living life it takes several attempts for ursula to dodge the dangers and diseases of an edwardian childhood and it is only once she reaches her young adulthood that the novel takes flight until then there is a tinge of frustration at always having the narrative reset to 1910 whilst ursula makes another attempt at surviving her early years so there is often scant sense of a story moving forward and the narrative fails to build up a head of steam the structure also made it difficult to develop a sense of ursula s character as we spend so much time seeing her as a baby or toddler trying to emerge unscathed from childhood also in one life she may become a dreary suburban wife but in another she is leading a glamorous existence in weimar germany so who is ursula it s often hard to know as she sprints off to so many different destinies the novel finally sparks into life when ursula arrives in london during the blitz finally she is grounded and solid and though we have several versions of her life and death in this era we are at last allowed to stay with her long enough in the same frightening but familiar setting to know her the constant stopstarts are replaced by beautifully elongated snapshots of life instead of living a few seconds before being strangled by her umbilical cord or a few hours before being smothered by a cat she steps into fuller life finally we re going somewhere the constantly zigzagging line of the narrative has now steadied and sharpened and is aiming towards a great finale kate atkinson s descriptive strengths are best displayed in these blitz sections and we feel she too knows that this is the novel s finest hour we are treated to some splendid though disturbing imagery as ursula works to remove corpses after a raid she lifts a body by the shoulders only to see him come apart like a christmas cracker so atkinson devotees like me may feel they have a damp squib on their hands but stick with it and it ll soon sparkle into literary brilliance life after life is published on march 14th by doubleday book review kate atkinson archive a ', 0),
(40, 'node', ' the unknown bridesmaid by margaret forster don t judge a book by its author i open each margaret forster novel with quiet reverence and scrubbedclean hands i make sure the dishes are done and the mobile phone switched off i will tolerate no distractions this novel is about julia and the narrative jumps between her childhood her teenage years and her middleage we are in familiar forster territory in the workingclass north life is downatheel and there is no luxury joy or colour in young julia s life she tolerates it well and is good meek and quiet almost irritatingly so she reminded me of little nell a goodygoodygumdrops indeed the main spark in these sections comes from her nippy dissatisfied mother who rattles with frustration at life irritable mother and dutiful daughter go off to manchester for a family wedding here their straitened circumstances are made painfully clear as julia s mother grumbles about the cost the hassle the stress the waste she takes a nasty pleasure in seeing that the bridesmaid dress doesn t fit and is grimly satisfied when rain falls on the wedding day i enjoyed her simmering bitchiness as it sprang from her situation in life a widow struggling living in a backwater with little company except unnatural little julia however we see no reason for julia s strained niceness why is she so meek and timid life isn t cruel to her why doesn t she run about and play and get dirty so it s little surprise to see that when the narrative jumps forward to her adult life she has become a solid humourless child psychologist and magistrate the main interest in the adult sections comes from julia s clients she has to deal with bullying children vicious uncooperative children children who wander off and throw everyone into panic children who refuse to leave their beds as before the main interest here what is happening around julia not julia herself it was julia s mother and now julia s clients who provide the drama she remains the maddeningly calm eye of the storm when will she herself erupt we wonder and hope finally julia s smooth surface cracks when she enters her teenage years and nindulges in some truly vicious behaviour but why she was always so polite and nice and sensible she was as a child and is as an adult so why the aberration in her teenage years this is never explained and the reader is left dissatisfied as to why she went so horribly off the rails on the surface of course she is upset at her mother dying and doesn t feel quite at home with her new family but this simply doesn t explain the dirty tricks and cruelty she descends into there is a real disconnect between the three strands of narrative child could merge neatly into adult but how do we account for the sour and icy teenage years and no minutiae that s what margaret forster does so well the fabric of ordinary lives the weft and weave this novel was altogether too smooth there is never the sensation of prising something open and peering inside so when my review copy appeared i abandoned everything else on my reading pile and devoted my attention to it utterly but i was disappointed for i had judged the book by its author had it been written by a lesser mortal i may have enjoyed it more perhaps forster s track record of sheer brilliance dented it for me for it is a good read just not of the usual forster magnificence the unknown bridesmaid is published by chatto windus book review margaret forster archive f the unknown bridesmaid permalink submitted by june not verified on march 23 2013 2213 i agree with you about this book i like her writing so much and i really missed the detail the sort of faberge egg quality of her books i was also very disappointed in the ending it was so abrupt i don t require closure all the loose threads tidied but it would have been more satisfying to have a less ismycopymissingthelastpages feeling to it reply editor s reply permalink submitted by julie on march 24 2013 657 thanks for your comment june yes i was baffled every other novel she s written is so perfect what went so wrong here it seemed like she was just tired  reply ', 0),
(42, 'node', ' what you see in the dark by manuel munoz this debut novel from manuel munoz is teeming with scorching hot imagery and skilful narrative all woven together into a thrilling atmospheric story set in the hot dusty city of bakersfield the residents are tantalised by the flash and glamour of nearby la yet kept forever distant from it as they struggle to make ends meet in the local diners motels and shops hollywood glamour finally smiles on them when hitchcock swoops into town with his entourage scouting for locations in filming psycho  the waitresses in the local diner stare at the shimmering janet leigh as she picks at a delicate lunch in her astonishingly yellow silk blouse and smooth skirt is it really her  they whisper one of the waitresse is arlene she s middleaged and weary of her life abandoned by her husband and left to manage their struggling motel whilst spending her days pouring coffee behind the flyspattered windows of the diner has worn her spirit thin into her tired life come the hollywood film crew trailing their stardust how arlene wishes for a life out of the humdrum just as janet leigh sipping her coffee longs for acknowledgement and respect in this new hitchcock film a film where she must parade naked and is soon killed off a gamble but how she hopes it will work alongside the longings of these two women we have teresa a poor mexican girl who works in the shoe shop before going home alone to her prim oneroom apartment she wants something too to be a singer to throw her arms wide to an audience in a floorlength gown with a voice which speaks of pain and love but she has never experienced love so she tempts it into her life thereby triggering the story and the terrible murder which occurs the stories of these three women and their private desperations are threaded together through the novel all the while illuminated by hot imagery which brings us the parched air and the sunscorch on our arms alongside this is the recurring motif of darkness darkness in the cinema darkness in teresa s stairwell darkness in the abandoned motel which neatly alerts us to the ugliness lurking beneath the hollywood illusion and the futility in hoping for such an illusion despite being a debut novel munoz has the confidence and skill to make brave narrative leaps he opens the novel with a secondperson narrative so that you are taken by the wrist and hauled into the smoulder of the story he then moves effortlessly between the thoughts and stories of his three women plus hitchock himself this bold approach works perfectly and when you close the book you need to shake yourself realising you re in rainy britain and not in the fierce california heat what you see in the dark is published by duckworth book review manuel munoz archive m ', 0),
(43, 'node', ' interview with marianne wheelaghan what s your day job  i corun the online creative writing school wwwwritingclassescouk  which i set up in 2002 with other commitments how do you make time for writing do you snatch time when you re free or do you plan it into the day  i m not good at snatching time for creative stuff when i write i like to know i have the whole day ahead of me like charles dickens i find it hard to concentrate on my writing if i know someone is due to visit or i have an appointment later on in the day sylvia plath famously wrote at dawn whereas other writers sup their espresso long into the night when it comes to writing are you a lark or an owl  i used to be a night owl but more recently i ve found that if i write into the wee hours i can t then switch off and go to sleep and i am a big believer in getting my sleep so i like to start early the earlier the better before i get too distracted by other stuff then even if i do have to stop for whatever reason at least i will have got some writing done do you have a set daily word count you feel you must achieve if not when do you decide your day s writing is done  no i don t have a set word limit or set time but i do like to write for a good six to eight hours a day when i am in writing mode which is more enjoyable the first draft or the redrafting  i hate the first draft it is so scary writing it because you have to fill all those blank empty pages and you don t really know how your story will turn out i agree with the writer john gardner when he said one cannot judge in advance whether or not the idea of the story is worthwhile because until one has finished writing the story one does not know for sure what the idea is but i love the redrafting ie the shaping and sifting and constructing and moulding and correcting and cutting and creating the finished draft of my story tell us about how you got your first publication after i finished writing the blue suitcase my first novel i submitted my manuscript to agents in the usual way despite lots of positive feedback no one offered to represent me at some point and i can t remember when my husband marc suggested he publish my novel this is not as radical as you may think marc has experience publishing education books and is also a writer he established pilrig press and published the blue suitcase in november 2010 and my second novel food of ghosts in november 2012 he has now taken on new authors whose books he will be publishing later this year and the rest is as they say history do you sometimes feel like not writing if so how do you muster the motivation and necessary discipline to get to the desk and begin  i usually always want to write but i do have off days when this happens like anne tyler i make myself try and sit at the computer and type anything it doesn t matter what in fact sometimes i rewrite the same simple inane sentence over and over again almost every time i do this an idea or two will sneak into the sentences it s as if the act of sitting at my desk and writing any old rubbish fools my brain into thinking that i m really working and the ideas start flowing the one ironclad rule is that i have to try i have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning anne tyler marianne s desk do you plan your novels carefully before writing a word or do you set off on the journey and see what happens  i do some planning yes i think a plan is good even if i ditch it later in fact i will almost most definitely ditch it and make many more plans and ditch them too because until the novel is actually finished i don t know for sure what it will be about i write because i don t know what i think until i read what i say flannery o connor are you ruthless with your characters or do you allow them to develop on paper in ways you didn t foresee  i m quite ruthless i want my characters to do what i want of course they develop and change in unexpected ways just as the story does but no i don t put up with unruly characters can you offer any advice for a beginner writer  gosh let me think there are two things i tell my students when they start the first is something by the writer flannery o connor the only way i think to learn to write stories is to write them and then to try to discover what you have done the time to think of technique is when you ve actually got your story in front of you and the other is by ray bradbury if you are writing without zest without gusto without love without fun you are only half a writer for the first thing a writer should be is excited ray bradbury what work do you have in progress at the moment  i am working on the second novel in the detective louisa townsend pacific murder series as well as a sequel to the blue suitcase interviews marianne wheelaghan interview permalink submitted by marianne wheelaghan not verified on march 10 2013 1546 hi julie thanks again for inviting me to share my thoughts on my writing life it has been lovely to talk to you all good wishes marianne x mwheelaghan wwwmariannewheelaghancouk reply ', 0),
(44, 'node', ' clever girl by tessa hadley read this book what else can i say and how else should i say it read this book because it is magnificent i m appalled to think i ve only recently discovered tessa hadley a few weeks ago i d never heard of her but then i stumbled across a review of her previous novel  the london train  got a copy of her latest and have been hooked and devoted since i ve greedily acquired all of her novels and short stories and clutch them to me as i read devouring every word at speed whilst at the same time terrified to finish them clever girl is her latest novel and tells the story of stella a workingclass girl growing up in the 60s narrated in the firstperson we follow stella from her childhood in a tiny bristol bedsit living with her feisty mother who manages to remain chic despite the damp laundry the creeping grime and the grassy bombsites amidst which they live they re scooped into material comfort when her mother remarries but life in the trim suburbs doesn t suit stella who s entering her teenage years by now it s now the 70s and she meets the decade with determined glee strolling to school in her short skirt and heavy eyeliner desperate for life to show itself an infatuation with a local boy prompts her to move out of the constricting air of home and off she goes on a trajectory pulling us with her through a bohemian life in a flowerstrewn squat childbirth working in a vegan café an affair with a married man bereavement marriage it s all here and we re with her throughout there is no easy beginning middle and end to the novel there is no neat chart to plot which shows the important bits of the story the novel eases us through each page like a great ocean liner cutting smoothly through the waves so that we don t realise the distance we ve travelled till we look back and gasp her use of metaphor throughout is divine and precise with prose so beautiful it cries to be sung aloud chanted yelled from some high place clever girl is published by jonathan cape book review tessa hadley archive h ', 0),
(45, 'node', ' instructions for a heatwave by maggie o farrell britain s furious heatwave of 1976 cracked earth water shortages yellowed grass and the fraying of tempers and patience and in the frantic midst of it all the vanishing of a husband maggie o farrell s latest novel takes us back to that unbearably hot summer and encloses us in the drama of the tightknit riordan family gretta the archetypal irish mammy is up early baking soda bread she refuses to let the hot weather dislodge her household traditions whilst her husband robert strolls off to get a morning paper he doesn t come back and gretta gathers her scattered offspring to the family home to help in the crisis none of her three children are particularly happy to be summoned as all are battling with their own private demons but the ties of the irish catholic family are too tight to be shrugged off so each dutifully returns home michael whose wife is ruffled unhappy and on the verge of mentioning divorce monica who is struggling to find acceptance from her new husband s sulky daughters and aoife the rebellious one trying to invent a life in new york despite being burdened by a secret all three children arrive back on the welltrodden doorstep dutiful and good but at the same time suffocated by motherlove sibling tensions and the insatiable heat so begins the family campaign to track down their missing father maggie o farrell is obviously a gifted storyteller and when you open her novels you are guaranteed a good read she reels off this family drama with prose that shimmers like a heat haze but i felt it was at times too ambitious she uses a narrative technique which dips and dives between the points of view of so many characters that i felt the novel would have been better served had she restricted herself to one or two instead we weave between the viewpoints of gretta michael monica and aoife this means we are offered glimpses into the backstory of each but with never enough time or narrative space to delve deeply into them michael s segments in particular are fascinating he is torn between love for his family and the teasing ambition which he can t quite snuff out to finish his phd and escape to american academia meanwhile his wife smarts at having to surrender her own freedom to be a wife and mother or what about aoife s story fleeing the family to start again in new york working with a famous photographer shielding her draftdodger lover all whilst struggling with an oppressive secret there is so much material which we are only permitted a glimpse at i feel the novel would have been stronger had it been done on a smaller canvas but with more detail however it s still a great read entertaining atmospheric and with flashes of fine humour instructions for a heatwave is published by tinder press book review maggie o farrell archive o ', 0),
(46, 'node', ' the date with the clown by julie mcdowall as i walk up hope street that night to meet the clown i nearly fall i put my hand out to steady myself and realise i m drunk really though how could it be any other way he gives me a few hours notice and i was so nervously anticipating his text all day that i couldn t eat lunch then i have to rush home to get ready so there s no time for dinner and i m in such a trembling state at the thought of seeing him that i throw back a glass of rioja then another as i m putting my makeup on then a third glass vanishes too bah i don t have time to stop and carefully measure out the drinks i m shaking here it s 740 twenty minutes till i meet him i take my phone out and ring jenben my sister i need to speak to someone not involved in this circus panic she s wise she ll talk me down from my state of freewheeling madness when she answers i launch straight into clownramblings i m not sure how much of it translates across to jenben as she just keeps saying are you all right i want to say of course i m all right just tell me how to defeat the clown but through the red haze of the wine i know noone can pull me out of this except me and i don t want out of it my watch says 750 i need to go get up the hill to rose st where the ginger ogre lies in wait for me she makes me promise to text her when i get home but i ve forgotten the promise as soon as i give it i m feeling woozy as i cross sauchiehall st and i wonder horribly if i m going to vomit to do that on a date oh god no but as i enter rose st and see the art deco entrance to the theatre where he is quietly waiting the nausea vanishes to be replaced with a sharp dread any second now i ll be face to face with him my cruel ginger tormentor i approach the glass doors and see the foyer is jammed with people i can t go in how can i just walk up to him like a normal person so i pull out my phone and pretend to be on a call and patter about in the street for a few minutes to buy some time i can t go in eventually i come to realise how absurd i look i slip the phone into my bag and step into the dazzling foyer there is a crowd but i spot him right away there he is i d see him immediately anywhere we go into the bar for a drink and you have to walk down a few stairs to get there he seems to struggle with the steps and i notice he is limping furiously of course he said he d twisted his ankle and that was why he couldn t see me he hands me the house red in a plastic cup saying he s says he s not drinking as he s on medication for his ankle which was the excuse he d given for cancelling our last date he seems very curt with me tonight is it because i ve turned up drunk i sneak a glance at him he s frowning down at a leaflet of the coming attractions neither of us is speaking i sip my wine oh god this is bad maybe he s just in pain with his ankle or maybe he s just embarrassed about being seen with a drunken woman i drain my wine and then start crumpling the rim of the plastic cup he finishes reading the leaflet and looks down at the mangled plastic in my hand sighing he removes it from me and says we should get upstairs to the auditorium he turns and hobbles up the steps to the foyer and i follow him my face is so hot i m surprised the fire alarm isn t going off as he walks ahead of me down the hallway i start to feel defiant what s he being weird for it s his fault i m such a nervous wreck and it s his fault i couldn t eat today and it s his fault i had no time for dinner and it s his hot and cold attitude that has made me so nervous about seeing him that i had to resort to dutch courage then he looks down his snooty ginger nose at me and acts all superior my mind is galloping away with this when he turns at the foot of the staircase and takes my arm i immediately soften the poor lamb needs my help to climb the stairs oh clown how i adore you i relax and all my unease falls away and as it does my giddiness surges back oh yeah i m drunk and here was me forgetting i laugh as we go up and i suddenly trip over my shoes and manage to fall upstairs think what falling upstairs actually means and now think what it means when you re on the allimportant third date with a man you are crazy for he jerks me to my feet i just laugh these aren t even my shoes he s not amused well whose shoes are they i snort fiona s as though it s the most obvious thing in the world he manages to manoeuvre me into a seat and we wait for the film to start i don t want a repeat of the silence between us downstairs so i start up a conversation but all i remember is that i kept talking about ketamine mercifully the lights dim and the film starts i sink low into my seat and want to die i ve turned up drunk and i ve annoyed him i really have he s being very short with me maybe it s not so bad though but he s definitely annoyed i know that for certain as he starts poking me on the arm oh what have i done now i sit up and the lights are on everyone s leaving slowly oh so slowly i realise what has happened the show s over i have slept through the whole film he insists on walking me to central station to wait till my train arrives very gentlemanly especially as his limp is getting worse and he really seems to be struggling sounds ungrateful but i d rather he just left me i want nothing but to crawl under my bed and die of shame we wait at platform 7 and i am able to look at him talk to him see him as an actual man and not my evil ginger marauder all the silliness and nerves have been seared away by my embarrassment all that s left now is an urgent wish that he d leave me so i could rethink what i d done and see whether there was any way to salvage it when he tries to kiss me i cringe as i know i must taste of cheap wine and have that delightful justwokenupfromdrunkensleep look but if he s kissing me maybe all s not lost or maybe he s just too gallant to deposit me at the station and leave there are eight minutes till my train is due i m able to look at him and talk and am beginning to enjoy my lack of fear when he places his hands on either side of my waist under my coat and i m reminded in a flash of how big and aweinspiring he is that one simple gesture reduces me again to the simpering nervous girl ahhh back to square one i can t meet his eye and i fumble for something to say i go back to repeating how sorry i am for falling asleep and stress that i hadn t had time for much to eat today so the wine went straight to my head bla bla bla he interrupts me turning sarcastic well next time we go out maybe it should be for dinner oh that was a cheap shot i think but i deserve it i ve ruined this my train pulls in and as i walk down the platform i hear him laugh and say remember to get off at your stop i turn round to see if he s joking but he s already walking away my mind clears as i notice he isn t limping issue 3 julie mcdowall ', 0),
(47, 'node', ' scarecrow by richard biddle  i have come for my brains remarked the scarecrow uneasily my mouth was a painted grimace on a strawfilled potato sack i could not speak my words came from scraps and wasteland  rats feet over broken glass dust blew into my cracked eyes i could not cry sometimes i sagged on this pole like a stilled flag i was a windbeggar i could hold up my baghead if i chose but usually i stared down at my scuffed shoes one brown one black no laces pegged in place by bulldog clips they hang from my trousers like suicides empty glove hands flap no fingers what wouldn t i have given for a bone or a blackened tooth now my intestines itch madly were i human a tapeworm would be less irritating it s all kept inside with strong twine and a belt buckle these days i wish i d tear open let the crows peck me slack become a dishrag six weeks ago after i was given my reason they nailed me up here two sticks crossed and tied broken broom handles that s the biggest joke of all before when i was an earwig s nest these thoughts did not exist now i know what i am i m a sham a pest controller a bird scarer a dead man s sunday best and i m useless at it this is my last day on field duty they ve been building it for a week paper twigs unwanted furniture logs everything chopped and stacked piled up like a witch s hat it s all been dried out and dowsed in petrol sacrifice is too strong a word for it i m a device up there s a chair with three legs the coronation throne where later i ll receive my cardboard crown from tortured fool to murdered king in a flash oh how my new brains will burn issue 3 richard biddle ', 0),
(48, 'node', ' review of the novels of marianne wheelaghan marianne wheelaghan novelist and writing tutor has written two books  the blue suitcase and food of ghosts  and is currently writing sequels to both the blue suitcase was her first novel published in 2010 based on the wartime experiences of marianne s mother the novel uses diary fragments and letters to tell the story of antonia an ordinary german girl the novel opens with her diary as a child and we see her sulking hoping and wondering about perfectly normal things will she win the writing prize at school what will she get for her birthday suddenly a huge shadow is cast over her life as the nazis seize power and everything normal is shaken the diary is forced to abandon the pleasant childhood trivia her ambitious mother is forced out from her job as a doctor one brother who supports the communists is viciously beaten whereas the other is filled with an unsettling fervour and adoration for hitler antonia struggles with this as she is still young and centred on her own concerns and initially resents how the adult attention is wrested away from her however when war is declared she is forced to grow up and face the increasing horrors she moves fast from being a sulky teenager pinching cash from her parents and sneaking out to drink and becomes a wartime worker she is posted back to her city of birth breslau to work for the reich as the war gets bloodier and closer she ends up working amidst rubble unexploded mines the dying and the dead all the while utterly terrified of the approaching russians this book was a fascinating read as we sympathise with antonia how can we help but do otherwise when we ve been reading her diary having access to all her terrors hopes and worries but we are seeing the war from the opposite perspective to which we are accustomed it was odd to view it from the perspective of a young decent ordinary german girl who hopes her country and our lads will win so the book forced me to look at the war from this strange unnatural angle and it was an angle wholly removed from politics history and jingoism it was simply that of a young girl wishing she had a heavier coat wondering what she d eat tonight wishing her fingers weren t raw and bleeding how refreshing it was to see things from this new perspective the second novel  food of ghosts  is as far removed from the blue suitcase as it s possible to get and i admire marianne wheelaghan s literary confidence in making such a leap food of ghosts is a crime novel set on the sweltering pacific island of tarawa with the current fashion for tartan noir novels set in dark gothic edinburgh or tough gutsy glasgow it was pleasing to find one set in this most unusual location the novel tells the story of detective sergeant louisa townsend who has left edinburgh to take up a post on tarawa helping shake up the island police force amidst the glorious white beaches blazing sun and waving palm trees she soon finds herself dealing with some particularly gruesome murders made all the more horrifying because they are occurring in this seemingly innocent island paradise we feel louisa s frustration and impatience with the islanders who allow tradition and superstition to get in the way of her quick practiced police methodsmeanwhile the officers on tarawa don t take kindly to a woman and an outsider telling them how to operate louisa desperately needs to prove herself to the islanders and to her bosses and struggles under the sweltering sun although the novel is a good read and packed with luxurious description of the island i feel it would have benefited a great deal from some backstory we are told that louisa was born on the island so this explains why she may have applied for this unusual post but how did her island upbringing shape her does she consider herself tarawan or scottish what was her life in edinburgh before she left was she fleeing something we get hints that she has a strained relationship with her mother and we are told she slept with her boss which she regrets but tell us more why has she fled halfway across the world with both novels the main word which sprang to my mind was refreshing the first gives us a new perspective and the second gives us an unusual setting both are invigorating books and good reads which leave you keen to see where the author takes them next the blue suitcase and food of ghosts are published by pilrig press book review marianne wheelaghan archive w review of the novels of marianne wheelaghan permalink submitted by marianne wheelaghan not verified on march 16 2013 1338 hi i m delighted for my novels to be reviewed in the exciting puffin review a big big thanks regards food of ghosts i appreciate your point about more backstory on louisa but you ll be pleased to know all will be revealed in the follow up thanks again for such considered and insightful reviews marianne mwheelaghan wwwmariannewheelaghancouk reply ', 0),
(49, 'node', ' gone girl by gillian flynn a contender for the 2013 women s prize for fiction this is a quirky tangled thriller which speeds along at a cracking pace the story concerns the disappearance one morning of beautiful smiling allamerican amy the perfect wife the glamorous new yorker the blonde innocent suspicion turns on her husband nick who realises things don t look good for him he admits he s been sullen and distracted lately he admits he s been stressed since he lost his highflying manhattan career and had to pack up his new york life and new york wife and return to his missouri hometown he admits he s been cheating on amy with a local girl but did he kill her if not who did and is amy even dead well there s no body the chapters about nick s worry pressure and suspicion are interspersed with old diary entries from amy where she frets about why her husband stays out so late why he s lost the gleam in his eye why he doesn t get her cute little jokes anymore i was starting to get very tired of perfect prim applepieamy but then the novel bucked and reared and threw me and galloped off in a totally different direction it transforms in an instant from telling the story of a suspicious shifty husband and his irritatingly perfect wife and goes on a dazzling trajectory of shocks and twists and the ruthless overturning of any neat assumptions you d made however the price of this was that the plot became a bit unbelievable in places it jolted into such a massive complicated rollicking thriller that at times i felt like saying  oh come on   in disbelief but i soon shrugged off this cynicism and decided to just accept the novel for what it was daring ambitious and very cleverly plotted so what if it veers off into the unbelievable at times it also has to be said that i detested both amy and nick however as the novel is driven by plot rather than character this doesn t necessarily spoil the book it was a good read but sacrifices a lot for the sake of its wild plot there are far superior novels in contention for the women s prize gone girl is published by weidenfeld nicolson book review gillian flynn archive f ', 0),
(50, 'node', ' nothing gold can stay by ron rash if the purpose of a review is to assist the reader in selecting a good book then really all i need write here is read this book  read everything he has written scoop up all his books secrete yourself in a quiet room and then emerge pale shaken and amazed ron rash has written several novels and short story collections all set in the harsh small towns of the appalachians and nothing gold can stay is surely his finest the landscape is magnificent but has been brutalised by poverty and barbed wire the earth scarred by desperate farming brokendown trucks and withered crops it is a degraded environment which stamps itself on your psyche as you read in this setting are people some menacing some cruel some utterly driedup and hopeless but also some with a spark of ingenuity courage and humour and who battle to keep that spark burning even though his stories are set where the landscape and the poverty never change they leap tirelessly from theme to theme and from era to era in the opening story the trusty we are in familiar territory with a convict plotting his escape from a chain gang then we jump forward in time to the title story and see two highschool dropouts who ll do anything to fund their drug habit the dowry is a shocking civil war story about a young couple desperate to marry but the girl s father objects an appalling sacrifice is needed to compel him to finally relent then we skip in time to cherokee and follow a desperate young couple as they gamble their last dollars at the casino to fend off the threatened repossession of their truck the finest story in the collection is where the map ends we see two escaped slaves stumble across the farm of a white man who is raging and bitter at the loss of his son in the civil war this horrific story of misguided revenge had an understated power which stayed with me all day and refused to be shaken off ron rash has been compared to cormac mccarthy and raymond carver they share that same paredback strippedbare style which is quietly resonant and packs a solid punch it is no exaggeration to place him alongside these american greats i sum up this review in the only way i can read this book read this book nothing gold can stay is published by canongate book review nothing gold can stay ron rash archive r ', 0),
(51, 'node', ' the fine line between fiction and film by rachel macgregor i love film and literature whilst i don t always think film adaptations do their novels justice i appreciate seeing the director s vision of a narrative i ve previously imagined one of the best things about adaptation is just that seeing how others visualise characters sets and events and whether they bear any resemblance to your own personal opinion it s even more intriguing when the novelist is heavily involved in the creation of the adaptation i recently saw stephen chbosky s perks of being a wallflower and was astonished at how brilliantly it had been made chbosky not only wrote the novel but he adapted the screenplay and directed the film the book was first published in 1999 but chbosky was supposedly dubious to jump on the novel s success at first and only began writing the screenplay in late 2005 i always respect when authors are closely involved with an adaptation of their work but i can t help feeling that the line between novelist and scriptwriter is becoming quite blurred with the increase in writers optioning their novels before they re even written if we look at nicholas sparks novels i think his plots are always intriguing and his character development is brilliant but following the success of the adaptations of a walk to remember the notebook and dear john it came as no surprise that sparks wished to be involved with the script adaptation of his next novel  the last song with the screenplay optioned sparks completed the script with cowriter jeff van wie before he even began writing the novel whilst i m a fan of both the book and the film i feel cheated that the book is essentially an adaptation of the film rather than the other way around although sparks maintains that his writing of the novel wasn t influenced by the production of the film i was shocked to hear that it is becoming more frequent for novel writers to change aspects of their narratives to better meet the needs of film production an example of this supposedly happened during the creation of i am number four  the novel written by james frey and jobie hughes under the pseudonym of pittacus lore was still in the final stages of editing whilst the film adaptation went into development it is alleged that film producers asked frey to incorporate different settings and props into the novel as they would look better on screen these changes were made to the final edit of the book i love adaptation and think that it s great when authors are fortunate enough to get their books made into a film and want to be heavily involved in its production but i feel that the increase in the creation of these two types of texts clashing with each other is going to have a negative impact on both the fiction and the film whilst many feel it is important for adaptations to be faithful to their source texts when both are being made at the same time it feels like an obvious marketing ploy in the creation of the last song  sparks was obviously going to be influenced by the fact that the most popular teen star of the time miley cyrus was attached to the film project and with i am number four originally planned to be a franchise you can t help but think that the inclusion of more visual props was an excuse for more extensive merchandising more than anything i feel like the fine line between the production of literature and film is a kick in the teeth to the novelist even if it isn t their ambition for the novel to be adapted gone are the days when their writing was sacred and they had the final say on its creation with the two industries now seemingly working hand in hand it seems major literary agents will only be interested in publishing fiction which shows promise of being the foundation of a major movie franchise this is a sad prospect for the brilliant writers with no interest in the film industry issue 3 rachel macgregor ', 0),
(52, 'node', ' interlude by thomas simpson i pay little attention to the surrounding world a million different things happen to me as i walk down the street yet my focus is on none of them my eyes remain straight ahead and that s when i see him lying on the pavement i doubt very much he is sunbathing so my first thoughts are he s collapsed is he breathing i don t know he certainly isn t moving how did he come to be lying there on the grubby pavement he looks too young to have had a heart attack but these things happen perhaps he s had too much to drink and is having a lie down he doesn t strike me as the type to drink himself into oblivion on a tuesday morning though i presume this based on his presentable appearance no this man was on his way to work when his health deteriorated and now he lies on the ground being gawked at by strangers i approach closer paying particular attention to the people that walk on by it s not that they re not interested some look down while others look straight ahead pretending not to have seen no one stops to check on him someone else will do it they say to themselves i know this because the same thought goes through my own head as i get nearer i don t want the responsibility what if it turns out that he s violently drunk and attacks me what if it s some sort of caught on camera tv show i ve no wish to be involved in such predicaments i have my own business to attend to it s not my place to get involved so i pass him offering a sympathetic glance at least i acknowledged him he certainly is still i ve passed him and i wrestle with the thought of looking back my resilience caves to my curiosity and i turn i have no intention of going back i must make that clear i haven t even stopped walking but i have looked back to my surprise a young woman has stopped to offer him aid a man then offers further assistance closely followed by a third samaritan i stop now to watch the scene unfold the holy trinity roll the man into the recovery position and phone for an ambulance people continue to walk by but now they are paying more attention than before as am i yes i could have stopped to help but i knew someone else would i m as comforted by the thought as i am disgusted at myself issue 3 thomas simpson ', 0),
(53, 'node', ' the book reader of pokhara by f harvey anderson was it twelve or one i didn t wear a watch and my vintage mobile was dead i was walking home along lakeside the tourist strip in pokhara nepal the street lights had gone out hours ago the power cuts made sure of that the only illumination was from the flashing neon signs of the hellish dance clubs the trekking shops bookshops bars and the last remaining internet shops had all shuttered up or is that down for the night mohammed my kashmiri jeweler friend had probably been in bed for hours although he was worried about his eldest she s got a bad chest infection and sits her school leaving certificate soon in the standard chartered bank atm booth two streets kids and a dog were curled up asleep where you insert your bank card they had placed a piece of cardboard over the flashing yellow light up the street i could see the lights of the fast foods center it was still open or rather it is always open the fast foods center is a couple of planks on top of four bicycle wheels with glass on three sides and folded out ghee tin cans for a roof on a steel burner was a perfectly crafted mound of bright orange lentils the centre hollowed out where the lentils liquidized into dahl this was surrounded by deep fried samosas onion bhajees and sticky pointy sweets during the day he moves his cart up and down our street you know when he s coming because he rings a bell i don t think he s taken to me even when i read the nepali signs on the side of his cart that doesn t seem to impress him he beckoned me to sit down bas bas under the cart he keeps a number of blue and red plastic stools i was soon joined by four offduty barmen as they sat and relaxed i could see their shoulders shrink down two of them were giggling they told me they always get good tips from japanese women one winked at me it was probably best just to leave it at that we were handed small chrome saucers of dahl chickpeas and crushed red onions the sweet smell of the dahl reminded me of being a child back in glasgow and my mother s bright orange lentil soup why are you are always carrying a book i am learning about nepal is it making any sense not really in the middle of the street under the pipal tree three other barmen and a couple of cooks still with their tall white chefs hats on sat on the stone slabs of the chautara they were swinging their legs back and forward joking and slapping each other on the back no doubt glad another long day was over they flicked their cigarette butts into the gutter and ambled across to us ordering dahl and a side order of samosas our little gathering was turning into a convention for hospitality staff hey asked one of the new guys are you not fergoose rajiv s friend he s always asking about you and he s worried that he hadn t seen you for a couple of years fergoose that s why i prefer to be called fergie over here i told him i hadn t been able to come to nepal because my mother back in scotland had died earlier this year expired yeah i replied she left us back in march nepalese always say expired rather than died  we all fell silent only the hiss of the cart s hurricane lamp provided any sound then from the shadows just beyond the white glare of the lamp came a voice the circle is complete now your mother for a short time was a guest on this earth she s moved on  issue 3 f harvey anderson ', 0);
INSERT INTO `truesearch_dataset` VALUES
(54, 'node', ' signals by dj mac she had taken to her bed as they did in those days and there she lingered lace curtains kensitas and camay a dark wood dresser hairbrush and cold mirror these were her attendants a cottage flat but outside no rolling fields stiff stair rods creaking boards the smell of lavender tarnished tap dripping chime of the mantle clock marking the remaining hours she was thin of bone and spirit sharp in features speech her camberwick lay in folds like waves a burning cigarette in a stainless steel ashtray sending up signals but she waited in vain for rescue or redemption grandfather sat in the next room with a rack of pipes and cutty sark his slippers on the hard lip of the tiled fireplace white beard and rucked face brimming with sighs he winked now and then honouring happier times they say it was the illness her masklike face and tremor yet under leaden brows black eyes remembered her shaking hands smoothed ripples on the bedspread but the persevering past would not be stilled issue 3 dj mac mmm i can see her permalink submitted by kerry peterson not verified on march 31 2013 410 mmm i can see her artistic word choice that hits the mark thank you for sharing  reply ', 0),
(55, 'node', ' the lucky butchery by philippa wilkinson i told a lie today when the butcher asked me if i was on facebook i said i wasn t earlier in the day i invited some friends over for dinner when they accepted the invite i realised i had nothing to feed them no bother a quick stop at the lucky butchery on the way home the short walk from the office was hot and dusty and stepping inside the butchers i was hit by the strong smell of raw meat and blood the butcher was sitting back in his plastic chair his feet resting against the counter he was chewing a mango fingers sticky his white coat was clean except for a small splattering of red on the front and the juice of mango near the collar where it had run from his chin down to mark its presence on his coat he looked up took one more bite from the mango and lay it down on the work surface before standing up to greet me once the greetings had been made i said 500g of steak please he lifted a hunk of meat from the counter and slapped it down on the scales carefully measuring the exact amount hacking off pieces here and there i looked around swatting at the flies buzzing around my ear half a goat was hanging in the window skinned except for the little bit of fluff at the end of its tail on the meat counter lay slabs of red lukewarm meat in plastic trays encrusted with blood another tray held a large squishy piece of cowliver i wanted to sink my fingers into it it looked smooth and jellylike once the precision of weighing the meat was finished the butcher asked if i would like the meat cut yes please i replied while finishing his task there was small conversation do you like the weather yes i replied it s nice today so you are married here in kenya and i thought how strange it was that the topic of conversation could jump from the weather to marriage in one fluid sentence no i m not oh he said how long are you in kenya for i replied that i didn t know i said i d just been home for christmas and i don t know when i ll next go back oh he said again as his metal of his knife cut neatly through the meat leaving imprints on his wooden chopping board but your husband he is in england no i replied your boyfriend do you have a boyfriend no i replied again there was a pause in conversation his colleague came into the room and picked a piece of paper from the side she left the room and that s when the lie began i m going to search you on facebook the butcher told me i thought that it would ve been nice if he d asked rather than told me you won t find me i said oh why that s when i lied i m not there it worked he didn t say anymore he just passed me the meat in a small black plastic bag and said nice time i left the lucky butchery and continued on my walk home pondering the choice of name lucky lucky butchery i wonder who decided on that name and why issue 3 philippa wilkinson lucky butchery permalink submitted by heather hall not verified on march 26 2013 1615 i really enjoyed your description of the lucky butchery and the wanting to be friend on facebook took me back to our days in uganda i ll never forget the expressions on my visiting kids faces at a marketplace a few miles from where we lived where meat was being hacked off a carcass with a panga  reply ', 0),
(56, 'node', ' bernie by verity holloway you will have seen bernie from the window of your citi2 bus as it circuits through the cambridge suburb of chesterton bernie is the old man standing at the bus shelter opposite abacus nursery he is always at the bus shelter though your eyes pass over countless people as you rest your head against the greasy glass you will have noticed bernie he is the old man in the pyjama jacket and as usual the buttons are undone undaunted by the freezing fog of february or the concrete heat of august bernie displays his hard weatherdarkened hide to the traffic passing him by he has remembered to don his slippers today and this is just as well considering the shattered corona bottle waiting to be dealt with by the council sweepers for you on your way to work or on your way home always one of the two never anything different bernie is a landmark the bus never stops for bernie once in a while a new driver will make the mistake of slowing down as they approach the shelter with its covering of scaly blue paint and flyers for last summer s church fete as the doors swing open the new driver will have a moment to take in bernie s unusual appearance as he stands on the wet concrete the tough grey hairs of his chest like an old cat s whiskers the blue pyjama top vaguely reminiscent of longabolished institutions and the rumpled beige safari jacket on top slipping slightly from one hunched shoulder in his hand is a coop carrier bag heavy with browning fruit his pale eyes contrast pleasantly with his outdoorsman s skin as he stares impassively up at the driver he says here it comes again in these awkward moments some passengers will glance at bernie and judge him to be a 65 yearold with a hard life behind him his elephantine ears give the impression of great age although noone has ever concentrated on bernie long enough to make an accurate estimation some will think he is a youngish eighty and hope he remembers how to get home he may have taken part in the second world war the blue pyjama jacket with a bit of work could be an raf blazer others try to see bernie as he may once have been a young man with a pitchfork in his hand hefting hay out in madingley where all those american servicemen were yet to be buried with a little imagination bernie could be inserted into a nineteenthcentury novel the goodnatured old fool maybe or the vagabond father of the hero because he does carry a certain dignity in a shabby way most simply think old  bernie never gets on the bus irritated and embarrassed the new driver shuts the doors and remembers not to stop for that old git again sometimes you will notice another person waiting at the shelter alongside bernie on monday mornings a lone young man in a sainsbury s uniform on thursday evenings a woman with a toddler in a pram here it comes again bernie will say as the bus appears and the young man will raise eyebrows wipe nose check phone the mother will look steadily ahead while her daughter considers this grandfather figure this strange earthysmelling father christmas bernie likes to watch the buses he knows that the singledecker citi2 your bus begins its day in the depot halfway between the village of milton and the council houses of chesterton he knows it swings into the science park picking up all the people who had hoped their lives would be more exciting than this including you don t deny it and then takes them on a circuit up to addenbrookes hospital which bernie for all his difficulty with old wounds in the cold months has never been to at least not under that name during the journey the bus will snake across the river cam and through the pretty centre of town where the famous colleges preside it is their eighthundredth birthday this year bernie does not care it is the circle that pleases him bernie knows that your bus will travel over the railway bridge past the old mill road workhouse that frightened him years ago then on towards cherry hinton the dreary parish built on layers of chalk fossils that once attracted men in strange tall hats the bus will then return in a wide circle via the noisy epicenter of drummer street bus station through which all the other public conveyances pass like satellites on their own regular unchanging beats one is coming now he registers its arrival with a mumble of satisfaction here it comes again a citi2 bus passes bernie every ten minutes unless it is late which it often is because as bernie could tell you the narrow streets of cambridge were designed for horses and carts not fourteentonne monsters of steel and glass he sometimes finds the buses upsetting their unsuitable size their solidity fill him with faint and puzzling distress it will take a long time for them to crumble into nothing and when they do they ll be of little use to the earth compounds of metal hard to digest windows and chassis which is a silly shortlived modern word bernie thinks like chardonnay or exfactor and wheels and handrails and upholstery and petrol made of crushed ancient sea creatures like whelks and cockles bernie doesn t know much about those his place is on land this was all fields once was something he used to say very often but not any more bernie has one of those rich fenland accents crumbly and dark another ten minutes has gone by and the bus is passing his stop here it comes again does he not have a home to go to the passengers around you wonder a wife he is always standing at that stop whitefriars old folk s home is just a few minutes up the road on the bus route in fact and surely the staff have noticed him loitering he isn t a tramp the guardian readers onboard are aware that the average life expectancy of a homeless man in britain is fortyseven years bernie is not thin or brittle nor does he appear drunk despite his passive watchful look he appears strong even tough alzheimer s most of the passengers suspect and are glad when the bus turns the corner in the breeze whipped up by the acceleration bernie s coop carrier bag rustles like reeds on a riverbank it is a new invention a biodegradeable plastic with the texture of skin that flakes into pieces after eighteen months before his current bag the older plastic variety lasted a few summers and before that he had a mesh bag like a fishing net and before that he can t recall at one point there was something made of hessian it scratched he can remember that much bernie is glad his coop bag will not last long before surrendering to decay but less happy that this usually results in losing his fruit all over the pavement when it finally splits bouncing apples and plums roll into the road where he will watch them being squashed into pulp at tenminute intervals bus bus bus no one notices bernie shuffling to the plum tree in the front garden beside his bus shelter the plums are small but plentiful and he likes the gripe they put in his stomach when he eats more than two it is a regular september sensation whoever lives in the house with the tree has never complained at having their fruit stolen most of it ends up in the grass for this is a wasteful generation a front garden on the other side of the road boasts a mulberry tree bernie avails himself of this every august when the fruit is ripe and once spied a small polyester union jack in the front room on top of the television this still makes bernie chuckle plums and mulberries were brought to the british isles by the romans who had a big gold bird not a flag no englishman would uproot a tree and drag it back to his house for amusement a tree s place is wherever it pleases they pick a spot and they stick with it like bernie just as the fruit trees are foreign invaders each year brings a new crop of students to cambridge there have almost always been students but not this kind flying in from far eastern countries and leaving again with impressive letters after their names some of the bus drivers are polish or nigerian bernie remembers a time when people stayed put one house one parish one church a room in which to congregate a space his roots are tangled in a time when a fellow was a cambridge man or a grantchester man or a royston man and that was what he would remain catevellauni icini pict bernie is concerned for a moment these days he finds nonsense words creeping into his head like doodlebug and andalucia and deefessale and he doesn t like it it is nearly ten o clock at night and soon the last bus will thrum by it will be empty bernie s pyjama jacket is letting in the cold and the old flesh puckers where it hangs loose on the bones bernie stands firm it is only a pause in the timetable tomorrow at six the fleet of citi2s will emerge again from the depot and bernie s watch will go on his coop bag has a pigeon in it a wild city pigeon well dead some boys in a small car had come careening around the corner from the chip shop and hit it as it dithered in the road thunk feathers and flapping and dead bernie would once have plucked out the feathers and done something useful with the carcass but ten minutes has passed since the last bus and he can feel the final one advancing steadily in the distance here it comes again he says the pigeon sits in the bag with the plums for later the weather was warm a while ago and now it is cold the polish bus drivers will start to wear their uniform fleeces and you as a passenger will have difficulty seeing out of the windows as the bodies around you perspire in plastic anoraks and thermal vests bernie is unmoved here it comes again says bernie bernard bernhard bearnárd berinhard bernd issue 3 verity holloway bernie permalink submitted by emma hollingsworth not verified on march 26 2013 1809 beautiful reply bernie permalink submitted by brian carr not verified on april 6 2013 2120 lovely and contemplative reply ', 0),
(57, 'node', ' bursting with love by daniel gothard lawrence weller a chronic asthmatic died on the floor of his parents bathroom it was the day of the party celebrating their twentyfifth wedding anniversary he was found by his fiancee amy she screamed until her throat was too sore to go on and then fell to the floor next to him sobbing into his still chest he was lying on his back wideeyed as if he had been asked a perplexing question his blue lips slightly parted as if he had one last thing to say the bathroom door was nearly taken off its hinges as lawrence s brother and father ran in to see the horror they had halfexpected since lawrence had nearly died of pneumonia when he was four years old and there it was next to the shower unit the dead son everyone loved the boy they had watched grow in to a man so many years of always triplechecking they had packed his inhalers whenever they travelled outside the house and now he was a grownup they had hoped and prayed he was over the worst of the asthma attacks but fate had decreed that the biggest tragedy of their lives would happen on a day when the family home had never looked happier plastic banners of happy anniversary festooned the lounge and dining room balloons of every colour and shape adorned every ceiling corner music filled the place love and life were supposed to be in the air not the chilly claw of the reaper someone call a bloody ambulance now now lawrence s father shouted he moved amy to one side his other son cradled her and then he tried mouthtomouth resuscitation he had learned first aid to try and add another skill to the family health arsenal in case a day like this one came along but he had always assumed he would never need the skill never feel his child s cold lips beneath his his child was gone and he knew it even as he blew deep and added compressions to the chest area my poor boy he wanted to say my poor poor boy but he kept trying to breathe his life in to his son the paramedics arrived a few minutes later and took over the job of attempted revival but it was futile and after approximately fifteen minutes one of them looked at his watch wrote the time of death on a pad and turned to lawrence s parents i m so very sorry he said lawrence s father hugged his wife and felt her tears soak his shoulder he looked at his son s face he interpreted the wide eyes as desperation and was suddenly drenched in guilt assuming his boy had died silently hoping his dad would find him and save him wasn t that a father s duty to protect his children and then he looked at the blue salbutamol inhaler in lawrence s left hand the lid was still on he wondered whether his poor boy had been too overcome to even take a single breath of the vital steroids the paramedics insisted the family and friends leave them to take care of lawrence s body the house emptied reasonably quickly lots of tears and hugs were exchanged amy was taken by her best friend louise to the spare bedroom where she and lawrence had been due to spend the night and after an hour or so when the body had been taken away lawrence s parents followed the ambulance to the hospital the house fell in to complete silence michael lawrence s brother and sam lawrence s best friend drank copius amounts of brandy and stared in to space michael could hear louise and amy upstairs talking and crying and he wondered if he should offer them some of the alcohol too but he couldn t move his arms and legs felt something other than numb they felt disappeared his body felt gone just his eyes left how would life go on now he thought sam wanted to do something say something he was a teacher used to giving information and solving issues he wanted to believe he could offer a shred of detail that might be remembered as a defining point of hope in this hellish scene but instead he sipped more and more brandy and kept thinking of lawrence s last words to him just a couple of hours ago i need to talk to you in a minute or two i really need your advice what had been so important nothing was now what ever he needed to say was lost for ever his best friend the boy with the frail lungs but the biggest heart was dead he felt alone he had never even told lawrence how much he cared for him why didn t men ever do that he thought i must tell my friends i love them and soon i must he drank more brandy leaned across the arm of his chair and patted michael s arm gently smiling and nodding michael looked back at him and tried to return the smile upstairs in the spare bedroom amy and her best friend louise lay next to each other holding hands one moment silent and the next clutching each other as emotion and shock poured out in violent sobs we had just we had just decided on a wedding date amy said i am so sorry amy so sorry he loved you so much you were lucky to have him we all were louise whispered later that day when lawrence s parents had returned from the hospital his mother had been prescribed a sedative which she shared with amy michael sam and louise began to take down the anniversary decorations quickly filling bin bags with the remnants of the shortlived celebration sam began cutting the necks of the balloons with kitchen scissors gently allowing the air to leave rather than loudly popping them no no sam stop amy said not that one that was the last one lawrence blew up i want to keep it sam handed the silver balloon to amy and hugged her taking care not to crush the prized possession she took the balloon up to the spare bedroom carefully wedged it between a chair leg and the wardrobe and put on lawrence s pyjama top and took a deep breath of his natural aroma from the sleeve the scent triggered a sudden vision of him struggling to catch his breath pulling at his collar perhaps and trying to call out for help she clenched her eyes shut and reordered her thoughts to the sight of him smiling above her kissing her forehead and handing her a cup of tea in bed as he had done on that very morning and then she crawled under the duvet and stroked the pillow where his head should have been shortly after louise looked in on her said she would see her tomorrow and left the following week was like a fever dream to amy michael called her every day as did louise and sam she tried to find things to distract her to avoid thinking about the look on her lover s face as he lay dead on a bathroom floor the nights were the worst alone in their bed in their home wallmounted sketches by lawrence they had framed he had been an architect and various holiday photographs they only served as painful reminders of how there was no future to come do you feel able to write a eulogy michael asked her two days before the funeral it wouldn t have to be much i just thought it might be a chance for us all to talk about how much he meant to us of course i want to tell him about you know where ever he is michael smiled and nodded and stroked her hand amy barely slept over the next 48 hours trying to think about what to say how she could verbalise the depth of her love throughout each day since lawrence had died she found herself returning to the hatbox under their bed where she had placed the silver balloon for safekeeping it was beginning to look a little diminished slight crinkles were slowly appearing around the tied neck and she wanted to find a way to preserve it not just for a little while longer for as long as she lived the balloon held what might have been lawrence s last breath amy spent some hours looking up preservation techniques online formaldehyde dry ice some form of jelly she eventually dismissed each one as either unworkable or ridiculous and concentrated on the eulogy she began with a poem by ee cummings a favourite of lawrence s and the one they had talked about using at their wedding i carry your heart with me i carry it in my heart she cried as she wrote down the poem and glanced at a desk photograph of the two of the them hugging by a christmas tree taken by louise two years before eventually at two o clock in the morning on the day of lawrence s funeral she was finished she reread the words one last time before falling asleep and was woken by the radio clock alarm in what felt like minutes later amy dressed in the black clothing she had bought for this awful day she wanted to cover herself in darkness let what ever celestial being s might be out there know how crushed she felt how much she blamed it them for ruining her life michael and louise called to confirm the time their car would be collecting her and then she sat and stared at the sketch lawrence had finished fairly recently a selfportrait bright eyes and a sweet smile amy had asked him for it as an anniversary present she hadn t eaten that morning but instead made a third cup of coffee and sat on the bed she pulled the hatbox on to the duvet and opened the lid the balloon was sagging and now looked about halfempty she cried again there was no way to preserve a balloon and even if she knew how it was too late for this special gift she knew what she had to do she went to the kitchen and brought some scissors back to the bed she had watched sam gently cutting the tops of the other balloons during the wedding anniversary clearup the air from each one had flown out some of it making sam s fringe rise up amy lifted the silver balloon out of the hatbox with the care of someone holding a newborn baby she pressed it against her cheek and then kissed it i will always love you lawrence i carry you in my heart she whispered her mouth against the balloon skin then she picked up the scissors pinched the tied neck and made a delicate cut air started to leak out amy held the balloon near her face and closed her eyes to allow lawrence s breath to wash over her and then she heard words in the breath lawrence s voice like a recording she squeezed the leak shut swallowed hard and stared around the room what the hell was going on amy ran around the flat checked the answer phone and the computers where had that come from then she sat on the sofa and held the balloon up again she was shaking as she let the last of the air dash across her face and there were his last words his last breath i m in love with louise  issue 3 daniel gothard bursting with love by daniel gothard permalink submitted by mark mayes not verified on march 28 2013 841 great story the ending was a real shock never saw it coming felt so bad for amy i hope you can publish more from this talented writer reply bursting with love by daniel gothard permalink submitted by peter hamilton not verified on march 30 2013 2154 i agree that it is a great story the beginning is a shock and beautifully described the rest achieves a good balance between the horror of sudden and premature death and the feelings of shock for the close family and distraught fiancee on the one hand and on the other the mundane detail of dealing with death by the ambulance crew masterly reply great story permalink submitted by ananda not verified on april 1 2013 2211 loved the twist couldn t have been more tragic pain on pain great story more please reply ', 0),
(58, 'node', ' jumping frenchmen of maine by michelle honey mullet the felled death of another hickory tree signaled the end of one more logging day in moose lake maine philippe du monde inhaled a lungful of sawdustseasoned air the taut muscles across his back and shoulders ached stretching like visceral mizzenmasts across some lost weathered ship all 16 men on the frenchcanadian crew gathered their tools and pulled their ragged bodies towards the bunkhouse philippe saw his 20th birthday fly past him just a few weeks prior that night of debauchery had ended with a broken front tooth a strange burn on his calf and a patch of hair missing behind his left ear whittaker flack led the men back towards their living quarters the welltrodden path between the work site and the camp site swiveled a muddied line a heavy wet snow began to descend whittaker s mushroom cap ears stuck out beneath his grey felt hat the crisp staccato sound of axes still played inside his exhausted skull most of the men on the crew built the main camp bunkhouse themselves the year was 1880 thick notched spruce trees were logged shaped and filled in with deliberate handfuls of soft moss and ubiquitous mud an entire camp could be built without a single tapped nail the men handled axes and froes like butchers wielded cleavers and mallets sixteen men slept in one open room measuring 20x20 feet inside the acrid smell of wet woolen socks pickled bully beef boiled codfish and deficient bodily hygiene could hit you like joe louis fists if you weren t inoculated warren jackson loaded firewood into the dusty castiron stove the sharp crack of splintering knotted wood made jack cloche jump while removing his boots what sa matter jackie afraid of a little fire warren said his overgrown mustache trembling while he continued his task hey why don t you keep working while i start drinkin jack snapped his calloused fingers and headed for the keg sounds good brother sounds good warren rubbed his forehead a leathered patch of skin lined with a week s worth of filth several men removed their steadfast black work boots some used one as a pillow in their designated spot on the community bed one long bed with one abrasive blanket engulfed the entire low side of the camp at moose lake small boughs of balsam fir lined the makeshift mattress while damp thick socks and washed underwear hung above their heads like laundered ghosts an uncompromising grindstone sat in the corner simply to keep all the axes murderously sharp unbridled snow entered the lodging through a half inch of space beneath the wooden entryway the wind brushed the sides of the structure like an arctic refugee shivering for asylum though the bunkhouse had no windows there was nothing to see but willow and tupelo trees covered in blue snow for many lonely miles whittaker slouched into a corner chair drinking a stiff wood alcohol concoction he stared into oblivion raking his right hand across his greasy black head of hair he steadily pulled out one stringy hair at a time he would surely go bald in a few months with such an obsessive habit warren enjoyed irritating whittaker and set about the evening shooting spitballs from his hairy upper lip whittaker seemed immune to the oppressor warren drank three mason jars full of alcohol to whittaker s one the night dragged its cloak across moose lake like a surgeon draping the dead a turgid twilight of bruised northern lights slid into night as the weary men indulged in drink after drink the slurred conversations dwelled on visions of loose women and hot homemade biscuits soaked in clover honey philippe and jack locked left hands in an arm wrestling contest the long picnic bench they used as a dining room table shook with splinters and ash from the fire jack s unkempt and lousy brown hair stood straight up in the back distracting philippe from the fight philippe s small intense grey eyes locked onto jack s twitching handlebar mustache jack added pressure to his grip squeezing philippe s wide clammy hand like a pale moray eel trying to escape sensing his impending defeat philippe leaned into that irresistible mustache and looked for a fuzzy barley wheat kiss jack lost his grip to push philippe away forfeiting all the glory of a backwoods arm wrestling match a roar of laughter filled the bunkhouse with masculine levity as the men bumped into each other and smashed glasses jack smiled at philippe and then swiftly broke his friend s nose with one stiff jab philippe fell back stunned from the blow but still conscious warren jumped from his grindstone shenanigans and put jack into a chokehold jack s amber eyes rolled back in their soft sockets as he slipped into an episode of syncope warren let the lumberjack hit the ground and headed straight for whittaker within thirty seconds every single crew member including the kitchen help had jumped into the freeforall of drunken fisticuffs heavy leather boots hit unsuspecting glass eyes dirty socks landed into stale cups of barley the taste of boiled blood and sourdough lingered in the mouths of these belligerent men the walls of the bunkhouse swelled with heat and pressure as bones were broken lips were busted and spleens were punctured warren pulled the denim shoulder straps of his coveralls back up and wiped a blood clot from the lobe of his outer ear he looked detached and deformed as he made a beeline for the wiry and gullible whittaker warren lunged at whittaker with the force of an unmanned locomotive a drunk across the room started whistling and making an awfully strong pot of chicory coffee whittaker continued to pull at his own scalp as warren strangled him with a steady pulsing death grip the young whittaker s face flushed with crimson then swelled with a grey sickly pallor warren s repulsive act left whittaker lifeless without a whisper to his last helpless breath no one noticed warren as he slipped on an old greasy piece of salt pork a fellow lumberman grabbed warren by the coveralls and handed him another drink warren blinked away any blurred recollections of guilt and hopped back onto the back of total annihilation the threadbare cuffs of whittaker s work pants soaked up the froth of ongoing inebriation a plain aluminum can of butter beans exploded from its contents of botulism and startled several men in the room philippe flailed his arms in a ridiculous undulation that lingered somewhere between a curious octopus and a drowning boy he looked terrified and stricken to the core by some unseen and unholy ghost none of the men noticed him until a whip of winter air licked the sour innards of the bunkhouse philippe sunk into the thick black ink of night with just one boot and his long johns one of the cooks closed the door and shrugged as he returned to his tall glass of golden oblivion as philippe approached the lip of the lake he spied a dark figure struggling across the open body of water blocks of ice floated around the electric animal frightened by its slippery circumstances a few seconds passed as philippe kept vigil the fragile animal disappeared beneath the glimmering silent surface philippe nodded shivering from the subzero surroundings gently he murmured a harrowing lupine howl filled the night with a velveteen yearning the feathery dawn lulled the jumping frenchmen of maine into slumber back at the bunkhouse one red wolf found philippe curled up in the snow the last thing he heard was a rough brisk exhalation from the wolf s moist muzzle issue 3 michelle honey mullet ', 0),
(59, 'node', ' hotel prometheus by chris markwell the third time i returned to the hotel prometheus i finally got to talk to the receptionist until then all i had ever seen of her was a silhouette behind that weird screen or her pale hand as she passed me my room keys through the slot tonight there was no screen and the receptionist was sitting there her head turned to the left as if listening to something only she could hear she held a cigarette blithely in her left hand as though it were an ornament made solely to adorn her long fingers i moved closer to her desk at this time of the evening the reception area was always deserted the regular patrons of the hotel were either drinking at the bar down the hallway or safely tucked away in their little rooms right now the place belonged to us i looked at her she was wearing a business suit cut into a very retro 1940s style that accentuated her very fine figure her lips were colored a deep striking scarlet an alluring focus away from her otherwise completely monochrome appearance i suddenly felt i had been flung into the role of a film noir detective and right then i d found the femme fatale she cut me a look that said she knew about money and i wasn t it she put her blonde cigarette to her lips and then let a long languid plume of grey smoke rise up the side of her face that was visible to me i padded up to the desk smiling with a row full of insecurities showing hello there at last miss you re back again mister ketch she interrupted without looking at me the hotel prometheus is certainly becoming quite the haunt for you isn t it i recovered as gracefully as a drowning man would when faced with the prospect of niagara falls um yes well i er don t really have anywhere else to go i guess i m er kinda lost right now the receptionist let out a low purring chuckle that sent a pleasant whisper through my body oh honey that s what delivers all of us here you know i was a pretty good singer once upon a time rising up through the usual circuits getting attention in all the right places and fun from all the wrong kinds of people and lemme tell you it was a blast mister ketch a real blast so anyways one day i m singing in some hotel dining hall joint doing my usual stuff getting the crowd nice and hot on a cold day i m making them forget about their worries you know how it is when music can make bad things disappear that s what s happening back in the day i don t mind telling ya i had real talent and people could see it feel that certain spark that electrifies every nerve just like having sex with a brand new partner who s got the skills to really open your eyes things were getting hotter in the room especially with the receptionist looking at me with her green eye full of emerald fire i cleared my throat and she flashed half a smile now this gig itself wasn t that important pretty standard as far as any gig is concerned but what happened afterwards well that was so much more stimulating really my throat had gotten awfully dry all of a sudden oh yes very you want to know what happened to a young slightly mischievous girl on that hot dark night mister ketch another deep inhalation another slow plume of smoke the glitter from her single visible eye smoldering into me i was hooked please she smiled her half a smile at me a professional to her mark late into the evening after the encores had been performed and the guests were all neatly tucked up in their beds there i was in my dressing room enjoying some of life s nasty little habits when a knock happened at my door it was late usually by this time my manager had gone to bed with larry my pianist and i d specifically told the hotel staff i was not to be disturbed this was someone entirely different i cleaned myself up as best i could then answered the door a tall thinlooking guy a regular scarecrow to my dorothy greeted me on the other side i loved your show tonight he told me in a voice that just oozed confidence and i just couldn t resist being a little bit bad and coming backstage to see you i hope you don t mind well i m usually all for being bad mister generally people call me nick my dear lady i d very much like for you to do the same i ask you what s a showgirl to do mister ketch i d already been quite a naughty girl and mister nick was downright bad it only took one look into his eyes and things went completely out of control i don t mind telling you mister ketch the gig was good but this was so much better afterwards he went and got himself dressed then went into his coat pocket i thought to myself after that he s going to pay me like some twobit hooker hey nick what re you doing just tying up some loose ends sweetheart you got some potential in ya i gotta say more than i ever saw in anyone before all the while his back s turned to me coward won t look me in the eye i get up saying the usual stupid angry things you say in the heat of the moment that you always mean and consistently regret saying afterwards but hell i was the rising star and this backstage jumper was talking to me like i was hardly nothing by god i d make sure he d face me and look me square in the eyes i grabbed him by the arm pulled him round suddenly silence fell the air around us had become so much colder my breath quickened began to fog the hallway had darkened shadows lengthened i had never felt more uncomfortable all of a sudden i couldn t help but move in closer what happened then i asked in a voice that was barely above a whisper she laughed but that purr it had previously had vanished it felt hot you know like being burned with a branding iron kinda hot then it was all cold as cold as a winter alone i suppose it musta hurt when it happened way back then but then again that was the forties and this most definitely isn t hell time can make fools of us all can t it mister ketch i felt my skin whiten the forties but that s impossible you re still so young she must have ignored me continuing her story unabated by my outburst all i wanted was for him to face me jack can you face me jack i wonder if you can what do y that was all i could get out as she finally turned her hidden half of her face towards me first i looked at the ragged socket where her eye pulped and mashed looked back at me her left temple the right side fair and pale was instead torn apart by some incredibly violent force mauling the top half of her face into a vile effigy of destruction the still fresh and glistening gunshot was still leaking blood ichors and pieces of dried bone traces horrifying lines down past her cheek to her ruby red lips i couldn t even scream as i gazed at the corpse receptionist being shot only hurts for a second jack but still being on this earth when i should rightfully be six feet under it well that s a pain that sticks  issue 3 chris markwell ', 0),
(60, 'node', ' she s not there by alan crossan he s the last see to him and then it s over is there anything else for you sir he holds a finger to his lips then continues talking to the phone clamped to his ear just getting served i won t be long now with his free hand he fumbles for change and slams it on the counter without a word he grabs the bag and heads for the exit there s a beep as the automatic doors usher him out into the street thank you sir i say to his back alone in the shop it s past closing time but i m in no rush i ve places to go but nowhere i want to be i lock the till take my coat from behind the pharmacy door and tour the aisles i inspect the shampoo bottles shaving foam and razors the packets of paracetemol contact lens solution and athlete s foot cream everything is where it should be the new parttime girl has done a good job she ll be home by now getting ready for her party with her hair straihteners and her glass of white wine she ll be making her plans wanting to look just right for someone i m past all that i turn off the lights and lock up won t be back for a few days it s started to snow a thin layer of white on the pavement snowflakes fall illuminated by coloured lights weaved through the leafless limbs of trees perhaps they ll be right about a white christmas after all at my doorway i peel a glove off with my teeth the light above flickers and dies bloody factor it will be the new year now inside i bang my boots on the steps to kick off the snow the noise echoes up the staircase and back again i answer with hello nothing up to the penthouse suite as mum used to call it i open the door and stoop for the mail flyers for takeaways a gas bill the local paper and an envelope with a handwritten address my spine cracks as i straighten up i pad my stockingsoled feet along our my faded carpet towards the kitchen i fill the kettle and spread out the paper on the work surface standing in the dark reading by streetlight reflected on snow i wait for the kettle to boil there s nothing much in the paper there never is thieves steal main street xmas baubles accompanied by a photo of a councillor standing arms folded by a bare tree there s a voucher for a free gregg s sausage roll  a christmas gift for all our readers i pick up the envelope a london postmark addressed to the mcguigan family it looks strange written down like that i can t think of anyone i know in london it s a christmas card a robin sitting on a branch with christmas wishes in corner it s really him i have to read it again just to be sure peter thomson what did he expect after all these years middleaged nostalgia maybe i m daft seeing more than is there he does say it would be nice to catch up with us all but then especially jane the idea was enough to know that he had thought of me perhaps even no that was enough and yet especially i take a pair of scissors to the newspaper and cut around the voucher the rest goes in the bin on top of the junk mail and empty soup tins i place the card and voucher on the mantelpiece beside mum s china i finish my tea and rinse the mug in the sink i walk to the bigger bedroom to change their room even now it feels like an intrusion same floral wallpaper duvet and curtains i never got around to redecorating an old woman stares back at me from the dressing table mirror as i brush my hair i take a lipstick from mum s makeup box and draw on the glass the silver turns a deep red but she still looks her age you can t hide the crow s feet dressed to go out again i make my way back to the close past the thomson s door and down the stairs outside its heavier now virgin snow cracks under my boots as i leave my mark on the blank street when i arrive she s sitting in front of the tv eyes closed and chin slumped against her chest paper chains droop from the ceiling and a fake fir tree slopes half dressed in the corner fat women in blue overalls and santa hats sip cups of coffee ignoring moans from the grey chairdwellers of the tv circle i tut the blue women don t hear i pull up a chair and sit at a right angle to her hi margaret how are you feeling today she lifts her head and looks at me only briefly before her gaze moves to the back of the room a smile slowly forms amongst the wrinkles and grey whiskers around her mouth but the eyes are blank oh hello eh jane just finished work for christmas thought i d pop in that s nice when s christmas tomorrow margaret oh but i haven t got any presents for anyone that s ok but my daughter it s all fine margaret i m telling you not to worry she ll be so upset if santa doesn t come i look out the window and see the lights of cars circling the roundabout i imagine the people in those cars driving home to their bright warm houses with presents in the boot and their families waiting for them it feels like a memory beyond the roundabout the chapel is lit up in preparation for midnight mass the congregation will sing the carols we used to the family huddled around one hymn book it was always so cold in that chapel stealing glances at peter a few rows in front a young beatle with his boots his haircut and roll neck sweater how i hoped he would notice me i was pretty then do you remember your old neighbours the thomsons she frowns i can almost hear the rusty gears clank then the smile again the thomsons yes of course they lived across the landing good pals i know my memories no what it was but still she laughs and just for a moment she s back peter mary and young peter a lovely family she says mary and i were in the maternity at the same time when i had jane we always said those two would get married one day that s right i remember you saying that saying what what you just said you and mary she sighs and leans her head against the high back of the chair the remembering taking its toll i reach behind to plump the pillows that are keeping her upright i saw my mother earlier doing the rounds she whispers i don t think it would have been her margaret no one comes to see her well i m here i hold her hand in mine it doesn t shake like it used to when she was the responsible adult and i was fixing her first drink before the walk to school maybe she s forgotten that too we sit in silence watching jimmy stewart run down a snowfilled american main street after a while i lean over and kiss her forehead she shrinks away as though it s a slap merry christmas mum i get up to go i turn back only once but she s not looking jimmy stewart hugs his wife his daughter in his arms and his friends singing auld lang syne she stares through the tv i think of dad under soil and snow mum in her way no longer here i think of the cold empty flat and the card on the mantelpiece what would peter think of me now what would he find if he showed up at the door not the girl he left behind the kohllined girl with her plans for the art school and the sketches she never showed portraits of children with his eyes he won t find her now downstairs in the entrance hall i squirt alcohol solution into my palms and rub them together i push the release button the door clicks and i m out in the cold it has started to rain crisp snow has turned to slush taking the footprints and the white christmas with it issue 3 alan crossan ', 0),
(61, 'node', ' issue 3 is here read issue 3 here this month we invite you to step into blackest noir with the hotel prometheus  feel the wither of time in the poetry of signals or wonder who that odd character is at the bus stop in bernie  we also welcome back f harvey anderson from last month with another article on the quirks and colour of life in nepal we another extract from our editor s blog about online dating this month she goes on a date with a sinister clown and we have more an embarassment of riches so dip in enjoy and leave a comment if you want to let our writers know what you think ', 0);
INSERT INTO `truesearch_dataset` VALUES
(62, 'node', ' flight behaviour by barbara kingsolver dellarobbia an ethereal beautiful name a woman of this unworldly moniker surely sits in a florentine palazzo plucking a harp or eating a grape not in this novel dellarobbia lives in grim poverty in the appalachians her days spent wiping her children s noses pouring coffee for her dim husband getting filthy and worn in the endless grind of farm work she is still young and pretty and is desperate to be lifted out of this world and so she indulges in a flirtation with a local man they agree to meet in a cabin high in the woods and this is where the novel opens with dellarobbia climbing the hill fiercely ready to cast off her roles as wife mother daughterinlaw farmhand and throw herself into an affair something stops her a shimmering lake of fire on the mountain she is astonished this is surely a vision sent from god to make her return to her family she luxuriates in the beautiful sight and then retreats down the mountain to her family but everything has changed this was not a vision but a phenomenon caused by climate change masses upon masses of delicate orange butterflies have been driven north from mexico by the changing weather they chose to alight on dellarobia s farm and they flit and wink and shimmer in their countless millions upon her hillside soon her tiny backwater is jammed with scientists reporters campaigners and tourists and they all want to meet the flamehaired dellarobbia who discovered the phenomenon a novel about climate change don t let that put you off the story of how the fragile butterflies have been cast out of their environment runs alongside that of dellarobia with her unusual name and her unusual colouring equally beautiful and exotic who has found herself grounded in a life of damp dishcloths muddy fields and making a few dollars last all week the coming of this phenomenon offers her a glorious chance to switch her life onto a different track the lead scientist dr byron is equally as exotic as dellarobia or the butterflies together they form a triangle of beautiful difference in the grey dilapidated town he shows dellarobbia a new way of life and soon has her working in his makeshift lab on the hillside she is thrown open to new experiences far more exhilarating than her liaison in the cabin would have been we read that each morning she rose and rose to the occasion of this man dellarobbia changes her spirit unfurls from its poverty and she takes wing she refuses to be a drudge or a dutiful daughterinlaw and soon the arguments she d always swallowed like a daily ration of pebbles had begun coming into her mouth and leaping out like frogs but just as the butterflies could no longer exist in their changed environment can this new dellarobbia flourish in a smalltown which will never change this is a beautiful novel with poetic prose and sparkling imagery to match the glinting butterflies on the hill at times kingsolver does overindulge in science there are pages where dr byron is explaining about the migration and breeding habits of the butterflies and these convoluted sections are simply not necessary likewise dellarobia s poverty is similiarly overemphaised there is one scene where she wanders along the aisles of a thrift store and seemingly picks up and assesses each item only to place them sadly back on the shelf she s poor we get it so i think the novel would benefit from being trimmed back significantly it is at times quite flabby with science but this aside it is a beautiful and exhilirating story with a most unusual premise and will surely be a frontrunner for the womens prize flight behaviour is published by faber and faber book review barbara kingsolver archive k ', 0),
(63, 'node', ' interview with rachel connor describe your typical writing day i always write best in the mornings so i try to clock up the words in the first part of the day i never used to be a morning person so it s amazing to me now that it has become my most productive time the best feeling is when i can get the writing in early before the rest of the house has woken up i gave up weekend lieins long ago when this happens it feels like a minor victory getting the words on the page before any potential disruptions can derail me i tend to break up my working day with a run or a walk with the dog around lunchtime not only does this give me fresh air and get me away from my desk it allows me to brew any ideas about the project i m working on or to get away from it depending how it s going i juggle writing with lots of other things teaching creative writing workshops freelance editing for the consultancy cornerstones and hosting residential courses for the creative writing charity arvon so i m often squeezing it in around other activities if i have only half a day to write i ll always prioritise the writing to get it done when my energy is at its highest writing can be such an intangible thing it s the first thing that disappears when other things crowd in and take on more immediacy like sick children or domestic disasters the main thing i ve learned over the years is to try to protect that time it doesn t always work but the moment i considered myself to be a writer was the moment i realised that i d never do any unless i actively set that time aside my writing space is in an outbuilding at the back of our house so when i m at my desk i m away from the phone and the doorbell and there s no temptation to get sidetracked doing laundry or washing up i even have a closed sign so the rest of the family know not to disturb me that said i also like to write in cafes and sitting up in bed it s good not to be too attached to the desk rachel s desk do you set yourself targets such as a daily word count to be achieved  i don t aim for a daily word count but i do find it useful to break down the writing into scenes so depending on the amount of time i have to write that day i aim for a whole scene or half a scene i m quite a slow writer for years i beat myself up about it thinking that everyone else seemed so much more prolific than me i ve since learned that a everyone has different writing speeds and the only marker of success is if i feel happy with what i ve achieved that day and b comparison to other writers is pointless destructive and definitely to be avoided we know writing can t always be enjoyable for those times when it s not how do you muster the energy or motivation to keep going till you ve crested the hill  first draft writing is agony i feel i m constantly trying to cut out that little voice in my head that tells me it s boring or not good enough then there s that mismatch between the ideal conception of the idea and the messy reality on paper getting the words down on the page feels like wrestling with an octopus sometimes i wonder about why i have such a drive to do something so difficult on such a regular basis it s quite perverse when i think about it but that said when everything comes together there is no feeling like it once the first draft is done and i reach the revision stage i enjoy that so much more i love that process of cutting and pasting and getting a sense of the whole thing and how it hangs together even better at the very end is the polishing and getting the linebyline writing just right i love that bit i think what keeps me going is trying not to think about or analyse what i m writing in terms of value see above it s about cutting out that critical voice it s just about getting a rough shape for the scene or the chapter to make it workable the best strategy i ve found for getting the first draft down is to write in specific chunks of time what works for me is to write for no more than 90 minutes in any one session and to schedule short five minute breaks each half hour it s my own variation on the pomodoro technique which is a brilliant time management tool  http wwwpomodorotechniquecom   incentives are good too especially when they involve chocolate or cake the other thing that keeps me going is thinking about the audience at the end of it that s something that has changed since i was published and one of the best things i love meeting readers and talking about the book and the ideas in it it feels like a sort of reward for all those months years of isolation and sheer hard graft how do you begin a new writing project do you plan every detail carefully or do you freewheel and see what happens  i definitely need a plan i wouldn t last long at all if i just tried to wing it at the same time though i know i need to allow for the writing to take its own shape i learned a lot from my mentor sara maitland who talked about structure and plot as a sort of jelly mould with a definite shape but flexible and able to change i find it useful to plan each scene before i start writing jotting down details about the setting and so on often the writing surprises me and moves in a different direction from the plan but the little plans on index cards help me make a start if i ve thought ahead and jotted down some snippets of dialogue or objects i can weave in to make the story world feel authentic plus index cards are brilliantly portable your novel sisterwives is your first how difficult was it to find an an agent publisher given that it was your debut  my story is different from most in that i won a competition with a writing development organisation  http wwwculturewordorguk   who published my novel with their imprint press this has been a brilliant thing and allowed me to get my work out there i still don t have an agent i ll probably look for one once i ve finished the next novel what advice would you offer a new writer who is seeking publication  a good agentwriter relationship can be a wonderful thing and certainly in the run up to sisterwives being published i longed for someone else to share the burden of getting it out there particularly when it came to promotion but my main advice would be stay open to the idea that you could do without one there are so many opportunities for writers now through epublishing and small presses i don t think having an agent now is as crucial now as it was say five or six years ago when that was the only route open to emerging writers it s great that these days you can be enterprising about how and where your stuff is published i think it gives writers a lot of possibility and allows a lot more creative control what do you have in progress at the moment  i ve always got small projects on the go whether that s blogging my website is at wwwrachelconnorwritercom  writing short non fiction articles or short stories i don t have a great track record with finishing short stories there are lots of rough first drafts languishing on my hard drive as far as major projects go i ve got two on the boil at the moment the first is a commissioned afternoon drama for radio 4 called the cloistered soul  which is set in an enclosed order of nuns i ve almost finished the first draft it will be recorded in november and broadcast in early 2014 i m also deep into the first draft of my next novel provisionally called the long path to desire  it s set mainly in glasgow and is partly an imaginative reconstruction of the charles rennie mackintosh story and the history of the glasgow school of art after sisterwives  which flips between multiple voices and different time frames i swore i d keep the next one simple it started off that way but now i have three main characters in different eras whose stories are all interconnected it seems i can t escape complexity  interviews rachel connor ', 0),
(64, 'node', ' the testimony by james smythe the idea behind this book is startling the world is having another ordinary day when suddenly there is a crackle of static a voice breaks through the hiss telling everyone not to be afraid the world is stricken whose voice was that some are ecstatic convinced they are hearing god some suspect a terrorist plot others fear an alien attack some say it s a prank a small number don t hear it at all and are fearful why have they been singled out the book is narrated by a range of different characters i d say there are about 25 different voices and they are scattered across the globe we have a white house adviser a johannesburg drug dealer a barcelona housewife a florida teenager a vatican nun and the list goes on each gives their own experience of hearing this voice and what they think it is so the novel is composed of tiny chapters each from the point of view of the many narrators and it skips between them all often at a breakneck pace although we have a unique approach and a bold and unsettling scenario the multiple narrators weaken the novel there is huge inconsistency amongst them for example the white house insider has obviously much to say about the broadcast as it comes to be known he is at the frenzied heart of the white house advising the president on how to keep the population calm and urging their finest scientists to track where the voice is coming from then he must deal with terrorist attacks as a jihadist group thinks the broadcast is the west trying to impose its god on the world naturally then his chapters are developed detailed and lengthy however we then skip to the blander shorter or meaningless chapters as we hear from characters who have little to say it was irritating to be caught up in the white house terrorist drama only to leap to a computer nerd in shanghai who grumbles that noone is logging on to play games any more i feel the book would have been stronger if the author had focused on fewer narrators he d then have had the time and space to beef them up whilst trimming the fat elsewhere if there was a narrative need to gather in worldwide stories and experiences then there could have been a section devoted to vox pops from the frightened populace or we could have been given newspaper reportage there are many alternatives besides devoting space to these noncontributors finally although i favour character over plot a novel like this is clearly driven by events so we wait to find out whose voice it was god aliens terrorists garbled radiation from the big bang a prank i won t give away the ending obviously but it was rather a damp squib if we aren t to be blown away by the plot then we need strong characterisation instead to prop up the story but we don t get that as the narrative is fractured into a thousand different voices the testimony is published by blue door book review james smythe archive s ', 0),
(65, 'node', ' heading out to wonderful by robert goolrick this novel has left me feeling quite conflicted set in the small town of brownsburg virginia the story begins in a slow dreamy pace which matches the peaceful uneventful life of the townsfolk it s postwar america and the country is blooming with wealth progress and energy but life in brownsburg floats by as always ladies attend church in their smart hats and dazzling white gloves shopkeepers know your name and always smile every day is happily the same fading into warm lazy evenings on the porch and of course noone locks their door at night into this smalltown paradise enters a stranger charlie beale the residents are politely wary of him but he charms them gets a job buys some land and settles into a home of his own all is far too relaxed and warm and fuzzy is anything going to jolt us out of this idyll then we remember the opening pages of the book where the narrator sam warns us he has a story to tell a story which people say must have left him damaged what could possibly enter into this serene sleepy town to inflict damage  lust charlie beale develops an infatuation with sylvan she is married to the arrogant hideous and filthyrich boaty glass it is a loveless union and she is all too ready for the thrill of taking a lover once the affair begins the novel crackles to life until then it had threatened to become a repetition of chocolatebox scenes from smalltown life the story stumbles upon lust lies intrigue and abuse and the readers surely revel in it with a sense of gratitude however the sudden introduction of this fierce affair and its consequences does make the novel rather lopsided there is the feeling that the author spends too long in setting the scene and is then forced to cram all the action into the latter half of the novel there is also a narrative inconsistency the story is told by sam who witnessed most of the events as a child he is telling the story now as an adult however he ventures to tell us how sylvan felt about the affair but he can t possibly have known he was only a sixyear old at the time and can have had no insight into sylvan s emotions and she certainly didn t confide in a child so the passages where sam tells us precisely how sylvan and charlie felt are frustrating sam tells us that charlie hoped so secretly that he couldn t even say it to himself or even write it in his diary well how can sam know it then he awards himself a narrative omnsiscienece yet at other times he says things like you may wonder why and i m telling you i don t know this inconsistency was jarring and frustrating sometime he claims to know the innermost thoughts of these adults and at other times he throws up his hands and reminds us he was only six and can t possibly have known what was going on if you can overlook the glitches in the narration then this is an entertaining read and evokes very well the cosiness and claustrophobia of smalltown life heading out to wonderful is published by hutchinson book review robert goolrick archive g ', 0),
(66, 'node', ' interview with james higgerson can you summarise your novel the almost lizard for us where did the idea come from  the almost lizard is the fictional autobiography of daniel lizar completed in the weeks leading up to his 21st birthday which is also the day he will kill himself it charts the story of his parents from their births and runs right through to daniel s 21st birthday influenced by a childhood infatuation with soap operas daniel starts living his life as if it were one of those programmes it s a story about the influence of television on a developing mind but also manipulation the constantly blurring lines between fact and fiction and also about growing up i hope it s both funny and sad when did you decide to become a writer do you write fulltime or is there a day job in the background  when i finished my degree and moved to manchester nearly 10 years ago i lived with two musicians they were quite inspirational in getting me started because i wasn t musical but i had enjoyed writing in my teens i wrote a novel and it just followed from there that i wanted to write another and start writing projects it became my ambition but i could never have been certain that i d be published i ve worked full time since leaving uni i work as a public health researcher at manchester university and submitted my phd at the end of last year as well i write at lunchtimes and in the evenings and weekends i like the variety and i find being pushed for time encourages me to write whenever i get the chance have you ever formally studied creative writing do you think it s valuable to a new writer  i ducked out of studying english after alevel which killed the fun in literature for me for a good while i can t really comment on the value of it having not experienced it i certainly don t think it s essential but then perhaps i would have been published sooner with formal education in the subject a lot of authors have studied creative writing and i assume that s helped them in some way there s a lot to be said for being in an environment with likeminded folk which is one of the benefits the scary thing is the cost of a degree these days what is your daily writing routine  i don t have a daily routine in place i m a bit too chaotic for that if i don t have plans at lunchtime i go to a bar near work and drink coffee whilst writing frantically other than that it s at home in my spare time i ve travelled a lot with work in the past and usually that gives me lots of time to write in notepads on flights and when i m not working it really is when i can but sundays tend to be my most productive days which do you find most enjoyable the first draft or the editing  the first draft because it s all about getting the story out it s the most consistently creative and therefore rewarding part the second draft is the least enjoyable because in my heart i just wish it was perfected by that stage but all i can see is what s wrong with it i think that s the time when i have the least confidence in the story the later drafts are good as well because it s just tweaks here and there more positive because you know that each one is a small improvement james s desk did you plot and plan your novel carefully before you began writing it  for the almost lizard  and the one i m writing now i had numerous false starts that were only resolved when i mapped out the whole story on walls in my old house i had coloured card running around the top of all my walls but we re not allowed blutac in my current flat so the coloured card is hanging from pieces of string instead i have a detailed outlined that i m always prepared to shift away from as and when it seems necessary new ideas crop up all the time and sometimes the planned ones just don t turn out when i get to writing it up having that general idea is enough to keep things together though how do you stay motivated on those days where any creative endeavour seems impossible  i don t beat myself up about it i used to sitting in my chair getting frustrated and not producing anything worthwhile but some days just i m just not up to it so i step away from it for that day first and foremost i enjoy writing so forcing myself to do so goes against that a little in those situations i just do something else can you tell us how you got your book published did you secure an agent firstly  i entered a competition run by legend press in 2008  the luke bitmead bursary award  and was awarded runnerup with a book i had written called shot down  i tried to reenter the competition with the almost lizard in 2010 but as a previous beneficiary of the bursary i wasn t eligible but they said they d consider me for their general list i got the email offering me a contract on the day that the riots kicked off in manchester it was quite out of synch with the rest of the city to be celebrating in a beer garden just down the road from where it was all going on but that s what we did i didn t secure an agent and i still don t have one whether or not i should i still can t decide i should really be asking people for advice on that one perhaps your readers could offer me their views on the matter i need to be sure that if i m going to give someone a cut of whatever i earn from writing it has to be worth it which writers have you learned most from and which do you read simply for pleasure  for the almost lizard  john irving was an influence in terms of the scope of the stories he tells i always read simply for pleasure but that s not to say i m not learning at the same time mainly it s learning what i like and don t in a story and hopefully taking lessons from that absorbing good storytelling rather than trying to emulate something i ve read elsewhere when i ve not enjoyed a book i probably learn more from that because first and foremost i need to entertain myself interviews james higgerson ', 0),
(67, 'node', ' dear lucy by julie sarkissian this novel is odd quirky and utterly charming when i read the publicity online i was wary of it thinking this kind of story really isn t my cup of tea it seemed rather offbeat and surreal and not to my taste how wrong i was this strange novel has won me over completely the story is narrated by lucy and we are taken under her wing and made to see the world from her own point of view where everything is slightly askew and we are forced gladly to reevaluate the world around us lucy has been cast off by her mother and sent to a strange farm to live she is nervous and afraid worried that if she ever leaves the farm then her mother will never find her again amidst this confusion and upset she forms a friendship with samantha and when samantha s baby vanishes lucy casts off her own fears to try and unite mother and child an unusual story indeed told by an even more unusual narrator but the plot and narrative voice are secondary to the quality of the writing sarkissian s prose is keen and rich and filled with light it was a sheer pleasure to read it she makes us stop and think yes that is how sunlight feels when it touches your skin yes that is what the press of damp soil against your cheek would feel like ordinary sensations are filtered through lucy s consciousness and are delivered to us fresh and startling you can crack the book open at random and point to any sentence guaranteed you will alight on something lyrical and fine it was sometimes hard to believe this is the work of a debut novelist as she is so confident and brave in her prose so the plot the twists in the story and the point of view are all bold and memorable and will leave reviewers and booklovers chattering about them for a long time to come but for me these things all come second albeit a close second to the sheer beauty of the writing dear lucy is released on 25th april by hodder and stoughton book review julie sarkissian archive s ', 0),
(68, 'node', ' interview with fc malby what is your daily writing routine  i begin the day as soon as i can and before i check emails read the news or use any social media sites hilary mantel once said that writing first thing in the day could be the best thing that you ever do as a writer and i agree if you write while your mind is fresh and is not persuaded by the thoughts of others then your writing will generally be easier and your time more effective it is best to write with no distractions so i only use the internet during writing breaks unless i am researching do you have a set word count you feel must be achieved each day  i think for most writers this varies and i can write anywhere between 500 words and 1500 but i aim for around 8001000 per day if i can the longest piece of writing in one day was somewhere around 2000 i don t tend to write at weekends as much but during the week i also work in the evenings writing ebbs and flows but the most important advice is to write every day and i treat the every day rule as monday to friday at the very least fc malby s desk is there a specific time of day when you feel you function best as a writer  yes mornings and evenings most people have an afternoon lag and that is when i will write blog posts guest blog posts and catch up with admin you need a break from writing at least every ninety minutes if you want to make the most effective use of your time would you agree with hemingway s advice that you should stop your day s writing whilst you are still raring to go on  although i can understand his thinking i don t agree purely from the perspective that there are days when you are not raring to go but you still need to write as a creative persuit writing can be inspiring but it can also be incredibly hard work when you get to a difficult section of the plot or particularly when you are editing your work i haven t yet met a writer who is raring to go every moment of their writing day in those periods where writing feels dry or difficult how do you stay motivated to continue  i read and i believe every writer needs to read widely ian mcewan reads for as many hours each day as he writes and it shows in his writing every writer should be well read and i find when i enter the dry periods as every writer will at some point it helps to read books in my genre at the moment i tend to read and write mainly literary fiction but i do read in other genres as much as i can i also watch a lot of films and i think when you write it is important to be able to visualise your scenes watching films can really aid the writing process and inspire new ideas having a word count and writing goals can also be helpful i am also a photographer and because i am a very visual person i find it helps to photograph people and places to inspire ideas especially for short stories when you begin a writing project do you plan it out precisely or do you tend to freewheel and see where it takes you  although i am not keen on planning i know that it speeds up the writing process and helps with structure i am naturally someone who likes to let my writing take its own course so i use a bit of both methods with my last book my writing was linear with some necessary flashbacks added later with my current novel i am trying something new and am writing in a nonlinear style i have been writing out key scenes and will thread them together when i am ready writing style despite the rule books is very personal to each author and very few people work in the same way there is constant debate about the value of creative writing courses what is your opinion on them  i think that they can be really helpful i don t believe they can teach everybody to write but if you have a flare for writing within you then a course can help to free your ideas and develop your style interviews fc malby marianne wheelaghan not verified april 11 2013 1215 permalink interview with fc malby great interview as ever love your desk fiona i wish my desk was uncluttered like this  reply ', 0),
(69, 'node', ' the manet girl by charles boyle this is an eclectic batch of short stories moving confidently from a greasy spoon to a dinner party and from bond street to budapest the theme uniting these disparate tales is the frantic drive and push of desire and how when it alights on the heart reason and logic often flee the author has taken manet as an inspiration it seems that they both seize upon one frozen moment and use that to illustrate wider themes just as manet s famous paintings portray seemingly ordinary life enjoying lunch sipping beer so they reveal a thousand tiny details and provoke many interpretations likewise with charles boyle s tales in the title story robert becomes enchanted with the girl serving coffee when he learns she is an artist he becomes madly keen to help her throw off drudgery in the steamy café and get back to her canvas however she soon moves far beyond the help he offered her and vanishes though not in the way he had imagined his helplessness in the face of her ambition and his own inability to act are all delivered to us via the small details such as the bandage on her wrist she wears due to the rsi she has incurred from endless pouring dicing and cleaning this one image a tatty simple bandage contains so much the degradation of her artistic hopes the healing and reemergence of her ambition and the constriction in which robert soon finds himself as with the everchanging settings and subjects charles boyle s narrative style changes with lightning speed too in one story he is philosophical and poetic telling us his heart wandered off looking for other places to graze then he veers off to the simple and direct he just wanted to get her into bed however his chameleon style did leave me often unsatisfied there is sometimes the feeling that each story spent too much time skimming the surface in a brave attempt to gather in as much detail and surface as possible he wants to paint on a vast canvas i would have preferred the author to try being a minituarist and calmly and slowly take us to the heart of the matter the manet girl is published by salt book review charles boyle archive b ', 0),
(70, 'node', ' interview with julie sarkissian can you describe your typical writing day is there a particular time of day when you feel you write best  a typical day for me begins with making coffee then i sit down at the couch if i m in a purely creative stage or my desk if i am trying to work on analytic or editing issue i love working on the couch with my laptop perched on the arm of the couch but i am trying to wean myself off of that i write for a few hours in the morning then break to take a yoga class at my local yoga studio then it s back home for lunch i usually eat leftovers or peanut butter and jelly and a few more hours of writing once or twice a week i work a dinner waitressing shift at the café where i have worked for years which do you enjoy most the first draft or the editing  hands down first draft i love feeling uninhibited not hemmed in creatively i love having language guide me rather than rising action or plot it is a struggle for me to analyze my own work in order to see what necessary details are missing where tension needs to be heightened where i need to pull back and be more subtle i think i have a decent ear and can hear where my language doesn t ring true and i enjoy polishing language but working on structural editing putting all the pieces of a story in just the right order ties my brain in knots i found your prose in dear lucy to be very rich and poetic are you a keen reader of poetry do you think there s value for a prose writer in learning and committing poetry to memory  thank you i love poetry reading it and writing it the first creative writing i ever did was poetry and actually won a big regional writing award for my poetry when i as thirteen during middle school and high school i thought of myself as a poet first my first short stories were extensions of my poetry and it means a lot to me to have my writing called poetic i love many poets ts eliot sylvia plath wallace stevens robert frost i learned a lot from studying the theory of gertrude stein the importance of putting one word next to another even if semantically the significance is hard to understand i am so grateful i got to study these amazing poets in college because certainly much of the meaning of their words would have been lost on me without reading it in the classroom setting my parents are big lovers of poetry and my mother said one of the reasons she fell in love with my dad was because he could recite all his favorite poems i absolutely believe there is value in prose writers reading poetry i believe there is value in all humans reading poetry i am perhaps biased because language is my first love as a writer and a reader and i do believe that the emphasis on word choice is more underscored in poetry than in prose what s your approach to beginning a new writing project do you plan each aspect scrupulously or are you content to jump in and see what happens  i certainly jump in make a big mess and then try to clean up the mess once i tried outlining and planning at the onset of a project and it blocked my creativity i was very disappointed because intellectually i was inspired by the project but i found when i was leading with plot and structure i had no voice so it was rather excruciating trying to get words on the page without an inspiring voice but i still feel that particular book is in me but that it wasn t the right time to work on it i m still waiting for the right voice to introduce herself to me is there anyone to whom you show your work when it s in progress or do you prefer to wait till you have a polished manuscript  there are a few people i will show an early draft of my work to i share a lot with my dad he is a very open optimistic and nurturing person to share my work with i trust him but he is sensitive to my vulnerability and i love sharing things with my mom but she has a masters in linguistics and literature so she can be a bit analytical to show an early draft to though in terms of analyzing plot and structure she is incredibly shrewd nothing gets past her i share things with my fiancé but i m a little more neurotic about that because he is so eager to help that sometimes i can t hear all his advice because i get too defensive i also have a girlfriend who is an avid reader has a brilliant mind and is an actress and she strikes that wonderful balance of being honest but supportive helpful but gentle how did dear lucy get published did you have an agent  i do have a wonderful agent judy heiblum at sterling lord literistic who took on the project many years ago when it was essentially a version of my mfa thesis we edited the book together for about a year and a half then we sold it to simon schuster and edited it for another year and a half the book received notice from great writers like joyce carol oates and ron rash which authors have influenced you in your writing which do you read simply for pleasure  thank you for many years it has been hard for me to separate the anxiety of influence from reading for pleasure i am always conscious of how what i am reading could influence my writing that doesn t make what i read any less meaningful it just means i am conscious of what i am reading in a way that sometimes makes it hard to read with abandon my favorite authors and greatest influences are faulkner toni morrison and flannery o connor gabriel garcia marquez i love the modernists i have always loved joyce carol oates and she was a beloved professor of mine at princeton so her blurb about my book meant so much to me what advice would you offer a new writer who is seeking publication of their novel  my advice would be to get the manuscript in the absolutely best place possibly before seeking out an agent don t jump the gun because you want the external validation of an agent or publisher there is no such thing as perfect but work to get your manuscript as close to what you see as its perfection as possible you pay in spades for all the problems you choose not to address before sending out your work i know this from experience  what do you have in progress at the moment  i am at work on a manuscript the working title is the pirate carnival  which is about a fair on an old pirate ship run by a band of gypsies that travels the united states making money off selling whatever it is that the ego wants more than anything but has always been too afraid to ask for when the carnival docks in a sleepy new england town a young woman must chose between the life she thought she wanted and a life where pleasure passion and beauty are valued above all else it s a bit of a mess right now but i m still in the early purely creative stages so we will see if i can hammer it into workable shape interviews julie sarkissian ', 0);

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