Colin Reed
Author
Language
English
Description
When Chas goes to see Santa Claus to ask him why he has taken back all the presents from every house worldwide, he is surprised to find that he is offered the dream job of Ingerland national football team manager, in answer to his drunken, postal request.He returns home to a hero's welcome as all the presents are miraculously returned, but learns to his dismay, that the internal politics of human survival never change.
2) Masterpiece
Author
Language
English
Description
When Ercolina, a music teacher, finds out that her husband Nigel has been cheating on her, she needs to regain his attentions,and hopes she has a found a way of doing so when he asks her to compose his own personal music for the industrial awards ceremony,in which he is being presented for his design of a techo-suit. The suit can be programmed with remedial properties and when worn,can influence a variety of emotional states. On the day, Ercolina...
3) Skipdoll
Author
Language
English
Description
Jade Marie lives on a farm with her mother and father. Tom, the farmhand, is the only other, almost permanent, person who is usually around. She is in her last year at school, and the future doesn't hold much hope for her. Relationships have become increasingly strained, and her father, especially, had begun to have little to do with her. She loves the outdoors where she can escape into the fields, with only the animals as her companions, and spends...
Author
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English
Description
A straightforward anecdote about the imminent closure of a care home for the elderly, which had been founded by the indomitable Myra Thorndyke. Old age and its frequent accompanying states of dementia and diminishing ability of judgement, is both sad and humorous at the same time. Myra's difficult, early adulthood, which she had had the strength of character to overcome, was her insurance for the old age of those in her care, and the innocence of...
Author
Language
English
Description
Herman, having recently been made redundant, is being fussily groomed by his wife as she perfects the state of his suit he is obliged to wear for a job interview that morning. He is used to wearing overalls for work, and being generally casual or careless in his ordinary, everyday, dress sense.To walk the streets like a tailor's dummy is completely uncharacteristic of him, but he has to do it because he needs to work. He would have preferred not to...
6) Coming Clean
Author
Language
English
Description
Breezy McCready's habitual weekly visit to the launderette on the high street did not go to plan for the first time ever. However, from out of the depths of despair, a new opportunity arose to make him ten times the man that, for a lifetime, he never thought he ever could be.
Author
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English
Description
Dez is a social alien living on the outside of convention, and has no care for the world about him. Silas lives rigidly within the system and regards it his duty to give assistance to those who have fallen foul of convention, generally through no fault of their own. They only ever meet once, when Dez mugs and robs a stranger, Silas. Circumstance however can be influential in creating an entirely different person out of the briefest of moments and...
Author
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English
Description
Blackpool was a Royal Army Medical Corps centre during WW1, with 10,000 RAMC personnel in the town. When war broke out on August 4th 1914 the holiday season in the popular holiday resort was in full swing…and then the soldiers began arriving. First the regional regiments to train on the wide beaches and stay in the plentiful accommodation available. Then the munition workers and then the medics and along with the growing numbers of injured soldiers...
Author
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English
Description
Two lifelong friends, Phoebe-Rose and Imogen, find themselves in bed together, but not through sexual need or physical attraction. Their names have been changed to hide their true identities. Unlike their recent and unexpected guest, in the bed and breakfast accommodation that they ran together and whose identity change is a little more drastic.
Author
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English
Description
The title is based on the classic line from Aristophanes. In the needs of relationship and partnership, Ottilia is confident about what she wants, but Hayley and her husband Trent, in their own particular ways, are not. Hayley and Trent have grown apart and both have been easily convinced by different agents on how to change things, though the consequences of that change have not been added to the equation.
Author
Language
English
Description
Within the exaggerated isolation of his home life, the young Jimmy Bucklesmith is suddenly aware of the compromises that his parents have made in order to fit comfortably into the life around them. He becomes restless and, after an incident at school, in which the focus of the playground is kind to him, he is invited to do a day's work by one of the more influential students in the school.The following morning, he nervously leaves his apartment and...
Author
Language
English
Description
The social worlds represented by Dog Merdo and the Crumpsall-Dandys are in direct contrast, the one to the other. Such is the great rift valley of contempt between the two, that they can only ever meet on equal terms in death. The Crumpsall-Dandys lead a rich and privileged life, while Dog Merdo belongs to the proletarian level of society of poverty and unemployment. Uncle Arthur had died and his body has been kept in deep freeze for some years. Dog...