Yorkshire Writers' Lunch

  Tookal always insists that he started it. He went into Bargis’s cave looking for trouble.             Bargis may have been a Troll but he had the ambition of a true entrepreneur. The cave wasn’t simply a cave as Tookal insisted: it was Bargis's Cavern Tavern, a local watering hole for Trolls like himself, waking up after decades of inactivity. Bargis understood just how throat-drying that stiff gritty experience was.             The business boomed and had seen its busiest week before Tookal arrived. Bargis steadily approached the door, eyeballing the little blue bastard. Wizards often meant trouble.             Tookal didn’t disappoint. As soon as he set slippered foot through the door, he ran his fingers through his straggly green goatee and summoned a Rummage Spirit. At least that was what he claimed it was. Bargis thought it had too many red and black bits to be a harmless summoning. Indeed these foreboding colours flew and thrashed about the Cavern Tavern, knocking ove

Bedroom curtains breathe in and out, in and out, in perfect rhythm with the cool, early morning breeze. Bathroom fan clatters discordantly in the same gusts of air. Enough hazy light to make out the shape of the sleeping man next to me, gently snoring. Magpies argue their way into the morning, and the kinder sound of blackbirds heartily greet the day, early spring heralds in their shiny black cloaks. A half-asleep child in the next room sneezes several times, and then settles. Cat leaps daintily onto my bed, picks her way through the hills and valleys of our limbs underneath the quilt; delicately and urgently pushes her cool nose under my hand, demanding attention. Child two out of bed, in the bathroom, water running and radio playing quietly - for him.  Pokes his head around my door, mumbles something that faintly resembles ‘morning’, and thumps downstairs in that half-awake, teenage-boy way. Early-rising neighbour over the road drives off to his postie job, and next door piles his do

Looking down from Castle Hill A beautiful world, perfect and still. The setting sun its crimson glow Casting shadows on the earth below. So many memories slowly unfold Kept close in my heart – stories untold.