The Glad Rag | Issue 2 by Create Forty Eight

GLASGOW’s ART ‘ZINE, YA BAS

ISSUE NO.2 Featuring new work from

Kirsty Logan // Rachel Tennant // Sheila McLachlan // John McMillan // David Ward // Fran Baillie // FT Polis // Craig Smillie // Richie McCaffery // Kay Ritchie // Donna Campbell // Kate Tough // Margaret Callaghan // Vickie MacDonald // Martina Martin // Marie-Claire Lacey // Jon Burgerman // Mandy Maria // Jamie Mac // Michelle Campbell // Emma Lindsay // James Oconnell // Shirley Lochhead // Lynn Howarth // Mark Wilson

FROM THE GLAD CAFE

CONTENTS

Gentle Reader Welcome to the second edition of the Glad Rag! Our first edition was brought out in 2012, prior to the opening of the Glad Cafe in Pollokshaws Road, Glasgow. It presaged several exciting months that saw the refurbishment of an old pool hall and the start of the southside’s own venue, cafe and general arts hub. Now, with five months of trading under our belts, an excellent programme of music that has showcased great talent from our locality to much further afield, art exhibitions, film club, philosophical talks and discussion, delicious food … we thought it was high time to put together another zine. We have been amazed at the interest that has been shown in the Glad Rag. A wide range of people have contacted us to ask if they can submit and once again we are delighted with the quality of the contributions. Many thanks to our editors and all our writers and artists, including those whose work we have not had space to incorporate. Thanks too to our advertisers – their support has made it possible for us to give this edition of the Glad Rag away and ensure a wide distribution. We especially want to thank our mate Jamie Mac of Create Forty Eight who stepped in late on, to design the layout. What a great job he has done! So, please enjoy the Glad Rag! Come on down to the Glad Cafe, pick up your copy, read it over a breakfast of Turkish poached eggs with chilli butter and a cup of our excellent coffee. Or take it away with you after a gig in the venue. We look forward to seeing you.

Fingal’s Call Rachel Tennant The mathematics of waiting Kirsty Logan Evelyn Rachel Tennant Poems Richie McCaffery West Highland Return Sheila McLachlan ResolutioN! David Ward The Pinata-morphosis John McMillan Tranform-ation Kay Ritchie Big Fat Moon Donna Campbell Bunnychow FT Polis

Rachel

Gloria, me & the feathered serpent THE NEW MESTIZAS Craig Smillie La Petit Mort Fran Baillie

LITERARY EDITORS

Craig Smillie craig@thegladrag.co.uk

WITH THANKS TO

(no title) Kate Tough Girls in the hood Margaret Callahan

The contributors, advertisers, Craig Wallace, and the staff and volunteers of the Glad Cafe

Richard Elins richard@thegladrag.co.uk Submissions ART EDITOR

Jamie Mac jamie@thegladrag.co.uk

DESIGN

Create Forty Eight www.createfortyeight.com

Webmart alan.foster@webmartuk.com

The Glad Rag accepts submissions on a rolling basis. Our sole selection criterion is quality. Send submissions to: submissions@thegladrag.co.uk Alternatively submit hard copy at The Glad Cafe Remember to include name and contact details. hello@thegladrag.co.uk thegladrag.co.uk twitter.com/thegladragmag facebook.com/thegladragmag #thegladrag (instagram/twitter)

ISSN 2048-1349

For further info on gigs, exhibitions, menus etc visit thegladcafe.co.uk twitter.com/thegladcafe facebook.com/thegladcafe #thegladcafe (instagram/twitter)

In constant memory of Dan Bryant.

THE GLAD RAG

Editorial Moments of Emergence Richard Elins, co-editor We best identify spaces of cultural importance by the words on the page that survive them. I did not ask my Nigerian colleagues about Onitsha Market because it is the largest market in West Africa. I did not ask because I needed shoes, or carvings, or tobacco. I asked about it because Ryszard Kapuściński once wrote of the storytellers, the plays, and the Onitsha Market literature. The place precipitates the art and, as if in return, the art immortalises the place. A few years ago, whilst browsing the heaped inventory of Otago Lane’s Voltaire and Rousseau, I found an ASLS New Writing Scotland volume from the early nineties. Inside was an extract from an untitled novel. The text was redolent of late eighties-early nineties Scotland and in its own way nostalgic, but more compelling was how the extract protruded from the rest of the volume. The author wrote with defiant confidence and in an unapologetic vernacular like nothing else in the volume. This was a moment of emergence, preserved forever by New Writing Scotland. The writer was Irvine Welsh. The extract would later be a chapter of Trainspotting. Recently, Gutter Magazine put Olufemi Terry into print. To read Terry’s prose in the context of a new writing publication was to feel that same chill. Something important had just happened. Something new; something magnificent. New writing publications capture these moments in a society’s cultural production. Consuming The Glad Rag, you are confronted now with a double curiosity. This is both at once the art between the pages and a cultural product of a unique cultural space; The Glad Cafe. Here in Issue

2 we publish poetry, flash fiction, shorts, theory, and illustration. Our criterion for contribution to The Glad Rag is quality. Specific themes, word counts, styles, formats, genres are unimportant in our editorial process. To this end, Issue 2 echoes the spirit of The Glad Cafe. Kirsty Logan is one of Issue 2’s conspicuous contributors. Her work appeared in Issue 1 and we have been following her fiction and poetry online and in print for some years now, so it is with excitement that we go to print with Logan’s The Mathematics of Waiting. Reminiscent of George Orwell’s Books v. cigarettes’, instead of the topic of reading, Logan’s short story charts the economics of writing. Explained is a world of trade-offs and writerly sacrifice in pursuit of time to create. ‘In The Mathematics of Waiting, there is a beautiful contradiction to be found in the balance sheet of x hours subjugated toil = y hours of writing: A winter sunrise that staggers me so much that I forget how to walk; I stumble off the pavement, my shoes too big and my brain too small because I can’t take it all in. The sky is the color of bluebells, of marigolds, of ice-capped hills, of the insides of fruit, of pigs’ tails, of hunger and satiation and solitude, of joy burning through me from my scalp to my heels. It makes me ten minutes late for work. Here is tacit recognition that without the experience, without the toil, without the waiting, the art would not come into being. Despite the speaker’s desire to be rid of the manacles of employment, it is the employment that places the speaker before the winter sunrise. We await the novel.

THE GLAD RAG

Fingal’s Call Rachel Tennant is a landscape architect and photographer with an award winning design practice based in the UK and Hong Kong. Rachel’s writing aims to distil a physical and emotional response to a location that captures and renders the ‘spirit of a place’.

A moody day harried by gannets and guillemots white seabird spatters against a damson sky. Chased by the sun’s scorch path we slice and spume through agitated waters plucked from fingers of the drowned. Beyond the Corryvreckan’s slicked and oily pools tide and wind tussle boat and sea into skyscrapers. Each laboured ascent followed by pitch forward freefall and head that resonates with hull on impact. Black brooding basalt interrupts the horizons rolling framed between sacred Iona and a Dutchman’s Cap. Erupting from the bedrock of ancient lava flows a sea bed walkway of columnar stepping stones left gaping. Echo of guttural utterance sucked and spat from your organ pipe gullet your cave song calls to Ireland only a giant’s stride away

THE GLAD RAG

Martina Martin twitter.com/thisisme

THE GLAD RAG

The Mathematics of Waiting

Kirsty Logan writes fiction about islands, fairytales, and sex (and often all three). She is currently a writer, editor and reviewer, while working on a novel and a short story collection. Her work has been published in many places, from the prestigious to the preposterous. Say hello at kirstylogan.com

1. Landscape

4. Monologue

6. Dialogue

At five to nine we take the metal grilles off the windowframes. When we lift, our arm muscles tense to the size of garlic cloves. We already have crumbs in our hair. Clouds reflect on the spilled liquid on the table. A baby throws chewed raisins on the floor. Children thumb grease onto the cake cabinet. The music changes; the CD skips; it’s changed back. The roots of our hair grow in the same color as the coffee grounds.

A skinny cappuccino doesn’t negate the fat in a cheesecake. I can tell she’s been crying. Every day he orders a black coffee, adds three sugars, and then doesn’t drink it. I hate when people stub out cigarettes in their cups. Chin up, back straight. Keep your tattoos covered. I hope he doesn’t try to bring that dog inside. Put this check on make this coffee put through this bill yes sir what can I get you refill the salt shakers get fresh butter I’ll be right with you madam go downstairs for more pudding plates get ice-cream while you’re there sorry about that, sir, I’ll get you another smile smile I know you’re tired I know you ache but it’s midnight and it’s almost over so just.

Things I want to talk to the other waitresses about:

2. Commerce

I waitress to buy the time I need to write. One day of waitressing is equal to two days of writing, because I share rent with my girlfriend and quit smoking and mostly eat rice and vegetables. Waitressing saves money because I walk to work (+£2.50 on bus fare), get my lunch for free (+£5 on food), get as much coffee as I need to stay awake (+£4 on double macchiatos), and get paid in cash (+£200 p/a tax). Waitressing turns every purchase into a trade-off: is this thing worth the hours of my life I wasted making lattes? A dress (–5 hours), a DVD (–2 hours), going out with my girlfriend for dinner and drinks and a film (–8 hours). I don’t buy much because not much is worth those hours of work. Not much is worth wasting my life. 3. The Mathematics of Tips

being aloof ≠ more tips being slutty ≠ more tips being friendly ≠ more tips wearing blue = more tips rainy days = more tips Marvin Gaye on the stereo = more tips more tips = fewer hours spent waitressing = more hours spent writing = a better writer

5. British Weather

>> Sex politics >> Sentence structure >> Feminism >> Whether it’s better to work on short stories and build a name or just try to write an amazing novel and hope it gets picked up by a big publisher >> Suicide Girls >> Vincent Van Gogh >> Metaphors Things the other waitresses want to talk to me about:

Some days I am snowblown and shivering, steaming milk even when there are no new checks on just so I can wrap my hands around the jug to un-numb my fingertips. Every new customer is heralded by a faceful of frigid air. The windows don’t steam up until lunchtime; it takes all morning for the room to be heated by the bodies. My shoulders ache from being constantly hunched and my toes sting from cold. I worry that I will get fewer tips because people will order less: the jumpers make me bulky and no one wants to eat cake from a fat waitress.

>> Screen-printing

Other days I am sunbleached and flapping, sweat in the small of my back. I wear a vest even though it shows all my tattoos and then I have to hear the question ‘what is that on your wrist?’ and I have said ‘it’s a book’ so many times that I can’t even smile when I say it any more. My feet slide in my pumps and when we bring ice up from the machine it melts within minutes. I pass plates with my elbows to my sides just in case I smell of sweat; waitresses must always be clean and fresh, to match the food we are serving.

Things we actually end up talking about:

>> The morality of Catholicism >> Teaching methods >> How to get an Arts grant to design fabric >> Greek islands >> Open-source software >> Spanish politics

>> Eyebrow-waxing >> Mortgage rates >> Nail polish colors >> T in the Park >> Calories >> Floor tiles >> Indie bands

THE GLAD RAG

The Mathematics of Tips being aloof ≠ more tips being slutty ≠ more tips being friendly ≠ more tips

Vickie MacDonald http://vickiemcdonald.org

7. The Mechanics of Writing

8. More Mathematics

9. Observations On My Way To Work

Every story I’ve ever written began on a check pad. I write each story over three evening shifts, lurking behind the coffee machine, serving up G&Ts and meringues with strawberries. Sometimes my imagination will not rise above my burned fingertips and I write about pissed-off girls with shitty jobs, girls who paste on smiles, girls who never get to make their own mess because they’re too busy cleaning up after other people. But if the checks are spaced out enough, I can forget where I am and go somewhere else. I can write about sea monsters and Ancient Roman goddesses and groupies and Japan and fucking behind all-night garages. When I have to lift my pen and measure out two small red wines, three large white wines, a jug of tap water, I’m still halfway across the world or under the sea or two thousand years in the past. Once I’m elsewhere, it’s hard to drag myself back.

The credit card machine is slow to spit out receipts. It dials through the phone line and if someone is on the phone then it won’t connect, just stutters out millimeters of receipt paper while I stand there and smile at the customers. Even when it does work it is the slowest credit card machine I have ever used: one minute to dial, one minute to check, one minute to print the confirmation.

#1. Seventeen slices of white bread, spread across the lid of a bin in an arc, frost making its surface glitter brighter than my Christmas decorations. I consider bringing them home, taking my third-hand angels off the tree, and bejeweling my home with these new glittering shards; then I remember that they will soon melt, leaving me with a damp carpet and a tree covered in old bread.

I add up the hours I have spent standing awkwardly by a napkin-strewn table, staring down at the tiny green screen.

#2. A girl with white shoes and shiny hair hunching in a doorway as her boyfriend screams down at her why couldn’t you just leave it alone?

At the weekend I tape all the check pad sheets together and type them up on my laptop. The taped sheets arch over the kitchen table where I work and when I get up to make tea I tear the tissuey paper with the chair legs. It takes a long time for my imagination to rise up beyond my fingertips again.

The next time I am staring down at that little green screen, I resolve to write a paragraph in my head.

three minutes each time + ten times a shift + three shifts a week + two years = 156 hours / 6.5 days / just under a week. I could write seven short stories in a week. I have lost seven short stories waiting for the credit card machine.

#3. My girlfriend’s ex-girlfriend buying broccoli at the greengrocer; she has puffy eyes and wears black skinny jeans that are two sizes too small. Her cheeks are so round and pink that she looks like she’s holding her breath. #4. A winter sunrise that staggers me so much that I forget how to walk; I stumble off the pavement, my shoes too big and my brain too small because I can’t take it all in. The sky is the color of bluebells, of marigolds, of ice-capped hills, of the insides of fruit, of pigs’ tails, of hunger and satiation and solitude, of joy burning through me from my scalp to my heels. It makes me ten minutes late for work.

THE GLAD RAG

Poems Richie McCaffery (b. 1986) is a Carnegie scholar in the Scottish Literature department of the University of Glasgow, working towards a PhD on the Scottish poets of World War Two. He has twice been shortlisted for a Scottish Book Trust ‘New Writer’s Award’, once shortlisted to the final fifteen poets of the 2012 Eric Gregory Awards. His first collection is entitled ‘Spinning Plates’ from HappenStance Press.

Mark Wilson superwork.tumblr.com

THE GLAD RAG

Inventory of a new home

Work in progress

The number you have dialled…

Ring marks on the dining table where scolding cups of tea have branded broken Venn diagrams.

My mother is a better artist than my grandmother was but today she’s putting aside her ego and watercolours having re-discovered her mother’s old acrylics.

I find the old family films and watch them on a VHS player exhumed from the loft. Footage of us as high-as-kite kids up too late and you singing your lullabies in vain.

Here people sometimes agreed and often argued, leaving these little caffeine runes. Soon we’ll be doing what they did, making a mess, not using coasters, bickering over our builder’s tea,

Time has set the colours rigid in warped aluminium tubes. She squeezes each one a child grasping an adult’s finger.

Suddenly in the background the old circular dial phone starts ringing but is ignored to go unanswered. You carry on singing as we keep not listening, playing silly beggars. Death leaves questions not answerable by help centres on the other side of the world, if I phone you now the line will just ring out in the lacquered ribbons of these old films.

not knowing that beneath it all there is old damage, something burning to be spilled or said.

She exhausts the rainbow and finds at its ends that only the black and white still ooze like back then.

Potsherds

Museum

Grandma

In the garden a shovel yields only seeds of willow pattern like a vast plate of hot food was taken out to cool and dropped leaving a ruined feast of the world.

You could touch some of the exhibits in the museum and a broken piece of Roman amphora caught your eye.

Of an evening, all along the street it sounds like people are learning to play the piano.

Shocked when we turned it over to find a fingerprint caught in the clay.

She walks through their beginnings learning in her own way to live without him.

The grooves of that finger like a weather-chart, stuck forever on one sure forecast.

THE GLAD RAG

West Highland return Sheila McLachlan discovered a love of creating writing as a child, around the same time she discovered a love of reading. She harbours fantasies of one day publishing a novel and in the meantime regards writing as her most passionate hobby.

Anna gazed out at the water and watched the ferry coming in. She glanced at the clock. It was probably its last trip of the day. It would tie up by the pier soon. Across the Loch some seagulls were circling a fishing trawler. If she craned her neck she could just make out Iain’s red sweatshirt. He was down on the beach again. He didn’t seem to mind the midges. She sipped her wine and smiled. She still expected her grandfather to appear and tell her off. It didn’t feel like years since she’d been here at this home of her ancestors, place of her childhood dreams. Her great grandfather, a fisherman, had bought this Victorian terraced house after a particularly good catch. Nine people had slept in it once. It was now a holiday home. Her sister had redecorated it with Ikea throws and tea lights. But it smelt the same: a mixture of sea, wood and moth balls, even though her great aunts were dead more than twenty years. Friday had been a rush. She’d had to leave a meeting early and she’d felt her manager’s eyes on her as she left. Then they’d got stuck in traffic at Loch Lomond, a typical Bank Holiday. She’d arrived fractious and rumpled. She’d been cross because she couldn’t remember where anything was kept. Eventually she’d found clean linen to make up the beds but couldn’t find the key to the coal cellar. Once they’d lit the fire, opened a bottle of red wine and cooked some pasta she’d begun to unfurl. Iain had suggested a moonlit walk. The sky was like indigo satin, beaded with tiny jewels. They’d climbed over rocks in the dark until they reached the shell beach, its whiteness dazzling. The waves had lapped slowly and the stillness had been tangible. They’d watched a small boat cutting across the water, its tiny light just visible, its motor a soothing sound. As a child she’d loved to see a boat in the dark, wondering where it was going and where it had been.

She became accustomed to the sound of unaccompanied psalm singing on the radio on Sundays. It was like no other sound and seemed strangely raw.

Jamie Mac twitter.com/create48

THE GLAD RAG

And standing holding Iain’s hand she’d thought how nice it was with just the two of them. Her husband could see this place through her eyes only. She was reclaiming it for herself. The next morning they’d collected rolls and Saturday papers. She’d watched the fishermen unloading at the harbour. The herring fishing had died out now. Instead large lorries from the south of Spain came to collect seafood. She’d bought some trinkets in the craft shop and realized she’d been shopping in this village for over thirty years. But she’d exchanged the skipping ropes and Ladybird books of her girlhood for candles from Arran Aromatics. That night they’d eaten in a seafood restaurant, which had three AA rosettes, and an Egon Ronay recommendation. It was full of sailors braying about knots, sheets, and spinnakers, throwing back large glasses of wine. They had burnished red faces, crisp sports shirts and deck shoes. She and Iain had eaten mussels in cream and garlic, followed by hand dived scallops, a far cry from her grandmother’s cooking. During her childhood holidays the main fish on offer was kippers. She’d watch her father painstakingly removing all the tiny bones and wonder how he could be bothered. The memory of those summers was of fish and chips for a treat, sometimes followed by Italian ice cream from the cafe. In her grandparents’ dining room meals were often consumed in silence with only the sound of the grandfather clock ticking and the scraping of knives on plates. Biblical texts on the walls. And yet it was never oppressive. It was uncomplicated. She remembered the frosted glasses of milk, each glass with a different coloured stripe round the rim: lemon, lime and pink. All her grandparents’ things were wonderful because they never became too familiar.

She looked at the sepia photo on the wall. Her grandparents on their wedding day. Her grandfather, bursting with happiness because he had his prize, his Dolina. Her grandmother looking somber and breathtaking in lace. Her grandmother had come to the village as the local midwife and went on to deliver countless babies. Anna remembered her as severe and rarely smiling and yet had never been scared of her. She had been intrigued by the strange language her grandmother spoke, which she later realised was Gaelic. She became accustomed to the sound of unaccompanied psalm singing on the radio on Sundays. It was like no other sound and seemed strangely raw. Her grandmother wore navy leather shoes and a navy hat and gloves to church and carried a prayer book. She smelt clean. Only her grandfather could make her grandmother laugh and how she would laugh, bent double- it was then she looked like a girl again. Her grandfather had red cheeks and smelt of Old Spice. He’d fought in the Great War, having lied about his age. He’d only been seventeen. He was gentle and funny and deeply religious. Sundays had always been for the Free Church. The family had sat in silence breathing the musty air waiting for the minister, the only sounds the tolling of the Church of Scotland bell and the occasional clicking of heels as the choir members walked to their pews. There was no television on a Sunday. Her grandparents called it the Sabbath. She remembered summers there, when she was a teenager and her sister was still a child. Her sister and her friends had laughed at her because she didn’t want to join in their games. She’d walked along the beach on her own collecting shells, shutting out their voices. In the evenings she’d pleaded to be allowed to go out fishing with her elder brother but she was never allowed. Sulkily she’d retreated into her books. One of her mother’s friends had suggested she might be happier at girl camp. Anna had pictured “Mallory Towers” type japes and shuddered: bicycle rides and picnics, whilst singing “the Happy Wanderer”; midnight feasts and everyone obliged to “play up!”.

A year later the village took on an added allure with the arrival of the summer Fair. This fair of her childhood suddenly seemed more compelling than ever before. The waltzers and the dodgems were no longer symbols of family enjoyment but of a more dangerous excitement. She lay awake at night listening to the 70s disco music traveling across the water: Belle Époque’s “black is black”: Donna Summer’s “I feel love”; Hot Chocolate’s “so you win again” and wished she was there. Everything was strange that summer. Her face grew hot every time she saw one of the local boys in the street and her stomach flipped over, when one of the fairground boys smiled at her. She had a feather cut and wore a bomber jacket. She spent a lot of her time trying to get a decent reception for Radio 1 from her tiny transistor. She bought cherry flavoured lip gloss from the chemist and devoured the Jackie Summer Special. And how she’d loved the Italian café, the Ca d’ora, with its languid eyed Italian waiters. Hadn’t they been brothers? Their ancestors had been interned in the war. She loved the Formica topped tables and the 1950s jukebox. Occasionally she would pluck up courage to select a track and hope it met with local approval. The local gang always sat in the corner smoking and she would dart furtive glances at them. Now the café was a bistro. Ice creams and cheese toasties had been replaced by fajitas and ciabatta with goat’s cheese and basil. In her memory those summers lasted forever. The sky had been bluer than it ever was now, the water stretching for miles, the possibilities infinite as she gazed out at the boats going in and out of the harbour or waited in excitement for a steamer to come in, maybe the Waverley. Perhaps bringing holiday makers from Glasgow. Herds of them in shorts, buying ninety nines from the Ca d’ora. She’d be full of happiness so strong, it was almost impossible to express. And she’d had a childlike acceptance of it, never doubting that it wouldn’t last forever. Iain was coming back now. Like a little boy he was smiling, showing the shells he’d collected for her. She raised her hand in answer. She was finally home.

THE GLAD RAG

Resolution! David Ward is a writer from the south side of Glasgow. He studied English and Creative Writing at Strathclyde University, after which he completed a Masters in Television Fiction Writing at Glasgow Caledonian University.

January 1st

January 4th

February 1st

March?

Hello diary! And hello to future biographers reading this diary! I’ll concede that writing every day whilst simultaneously working on The Novel may be tricky, but for posterity’s sake I shall persevere. This will be my year!

This office, I just can’t work here. We have a painting on the wall of a vase of flowers. I spent three hours today wondering why anyone would bother to paint a vase of flowers when they could simply buy some flowers and put them in a vase. I know I can’t keep letting my mind wander like this – such is the burden of the creative brain! But then I realised that artifice of the painting precisely mirrored the quandary that Jim The Novel’s hero - faces in his relationship with Magdalena, his house robot. Well, that sent me on a creative flurry like I’ve never experienced and I don’t mind saying that by the end of the night I had written a cool one hundred and fifty words. Unfortunately, it appears that in my fevered state I also threw the painting across the room. The frame smashed and now there’s glass everywhere. Thus, I need a new writing space.

Back in the house and into the shed! It feels wonderful to finally be getting on with The Novel. And while the water coming out the taps is expected to remain pink in colour for several months, my focus has never been clearer! I have to thank our next door neighbour Bert for his invaluable help in the final stages of the shed renovation. The door may occasionally violently swing open but at least the roof has stopped collapsing every fifteen minutes (which is a relief as the hard hat I had taken to wearing was most uncomfortable). Bert tells me that sellotape isn’t regarded as a legitimate building material ‘in the trade’. We live and learn.

Eighty two thousand ball throws in and the writing is going wonderfully well. Having initially envisaged The Novel as a sprawling epic in the style of War and Peace, I have now taken the bold decision to extensively trim the material to the length of a succinct short story or long poem. This was due in part to Jacob eating the vast majority of my notes while I slept, but creatively, I think it’s the right call. Thankfully my illustrations survived as robot anatomy is particularly tricky to describe. Magdalena’s family tree was not so lucky. This may be a blessing in disguise though, as it mainly consisted of page upon page of computer code.

February 22nd(?)

March 21st

Not entirely sure what day it is. Working in the shed has given me a new and I daresay improved perception of time. Time cannot be measured merely in hours and seconds. Rather it should be viewed by the number of occasions a man can throw a rubber ball off the wall of a shed and catch it again. By this metric I have been in the shed for fifty eight thousand four hundred and ninety two rubber ball throws. Which, I think, in nonshed time, amounts to around three weeks. A squirrel has taken to visiting me every so often. I have named him Jacob.

A strange day. After receiving some fairly condescending looks from Jacob, I ventured back into the house for a shave and a bath. To be clean in mind and spirit one must be clean in body! Margaret wasn’t home (I think she has a job), but there was an extra toothbrush in the bathroom. I asked Margaret about this when she got in and she told me that it belonged to Bert. I questioned why Bert would bother to come all the way to our house to brush his teeth. Margaret gave me a look that Jacob would have been proud of. She then drew my attention to the figure beside her on the couch. It appeared Bert had been sitting there for the duration of our conversation. Furthermore, according to Bert, he had been in the house all day and had in fact tried to speak to me on a number of occasions, only for me to stick my fingers in my ears and shout, ‘La la la’. A strange day.

January 2nd

A mixed first day. Sat at my desk for four hours ruminating on The Novel’s themes – power, destruction, and the dangers of falling in love with a robot when they are designed to be your servant. I then wrote these themes down and stared at them for a further hour until they no longer made sense to me. Designed. De-signed. Does that word seem strange to anyone else? Will make a start on Chapter 1 tomorrow.

January 18th January 3rd

How are people able to write with music in the background? Having gone through the entire back catalogues of both Mozart and Bananarama I can say with authority that it is not conducive to productivity. But it was either this or listen to my wife Margaret practice her primal screaming exercises (as recommended by her therapist). So, not the ideal second day, but I did manage to decide on which font to use going forward, which is a real weight off my mind.

I know, I know! It’s been far too long. But the construction of a new space has meant a temporary halt on all forms of writing. I’ve decided to renovate the shed in the back garden. The only problem was what to do with the fifteen or so tins of paint left over from when I intended to decorate the front room. It transpires you’re not meant to flush paint down the toilet. So, with the house out of commission I’ve been forced to stay in a hotel, and really, who has ever written anything of worth in a hotel? Margaret, as is her way, has elected to reside at her sister’s house. Sadly, Veronica and I haven’t seen eye to eye since that unfortunate incident when I kicked their dog. My repeated apologies and assertions that the dog had it coming have done nothing to thaw things between us.

THE GLAD RAG

Naturally I took this ultimatum with the good grace and cerebral mind-set that is the hallmark of any great writer.

March 22nd

June 3rd

June 18th

July 14th

Well, I am peeved. There I was in the middle of a particularly tender scene in which Jim and Magdalena bond over their shared love of the Macarena, when there was a knock on the shed door. ‘Why the sudden formality, Jacob?’ I said. But it was not my squirrel colleague, it was Bert and Margaret and they looked serious. They informed me that Bert would be moving into the house and that I should look for somewhere else to live. Apparently, simply continuing to reside in the shed was ‘not okay’. Naturally I took this ultimatum with the good grace and cerebral mind-set that is the hallmark of any great writer. I did however, return later with a can of lighter fluid and a box of matches. Bert and Margaret watched on through the kitchen window as I ritualistically set the shed alight, the flames burning high into the night air as I invoked ancient pagan spirits through the medium of dance. It was only when I started to remove my clothes that I saw Bert draw the curtains. In retrospect, I wish I had chosen to daub myself in a less flammable body paint.

Apologies for my lax writing habits! It’s been a transitional few months. Once more, I have seen that every aspect of life is truly subjective. What one divorce lawyer may choose to label as ‘homeless’ I prefer to think of exploring myriad housing options whilst taking some time to re-connect with nature. The sole downside of my new living status is that it had been difficult to get things going with The Novel again. Perhaps it was a mistake not to remove my laptop before setting fire to the shed. That being said, it is a great thrill to re-embark on The Novel writing purely by hand. After all, Shakespeare never had a word processor (though maybe he could have used one, Macbeth does drag on).

An intriguing couple of weeks. Work on The Novel has stalled for the time being. As well as this Margaret informed me that she and Bert have noticed that I’ve been sneaking into the house for dinner every night (my poor table manners have always drawn attention). But, in a stroke of great generosity, Bert presented me with a one-way ticket to France, saying that me leaving the country would be a ‘good thing’. I couldn’t have agreed more! I’m writing this in Paris as we speak! So far I’ve found that the French don’t respond well to English speakers, even when you shove them.

Happy Bastille Day! I have no idea what it means but everyone seems to be in a good mood. I’ve given up attempting to learn French and have instead bought a Chinese phrase book. China is supposed to be the dominant nation this century, so I figured it was probably a good idea to get a head start. Sadly no one else seems to be on my wavelength. My attempts to strike up conversation in Mandarin were not reciprocated. I must admit, for a couple of weeks I felt at a loss. I had no urge to write anything. Maybe this wasn’t going to be my year after all. At my lowest ebb, I decided to visit Oscar Wilde’s grave in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery for inspiration. After two hours of searching and tripping over numerous tombstones there it was, the great man’s final resting place. I gazed at it for several minutes, wishing more than ever that I had read or knew the title of any of Oscar Wilde’s works. ‘What a waste of time!’ I exclaimed. Normally I am a stoic and dispassionate sort, but at this moment I felt the inkling of a tear roll down my cheek. Why should I write? Maybe the world doesn’t need to hear my thoughts. Maybe nobody cares. It was then out of the corner of my teary eye I saw a shape rustling in the bushes. Further investigation revealed it to be, yes, a squirrel. Excitedly I tiptoed over to him. Could it be? The squirrel turned around and gave me a look of such prim disapproval that I knew it must be him. What were the odds of both Jacob and I being in Paris at the same time? It was a sign. The world needs my voice. The Novel will be finished. It’s only mid-July. This will be my year!

THE GLAD RAG

Emma Lindsay www.emmalindsay.co.uk

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The Pinata-Morphosis John McMillan is 41 and works at City of Glasgow College Library, which increasingly feels like an embrace, of sorts. He enjoys the short fiction of Angela Carter which is always freshened by an excess of sensation and precision. John currently attends a poetry group

They’re everywhere. One to a post-code at least. Giants; honest-to-god, shouldersat-the-battlements giants. All races, most under 50, not bad looking men and women, any of them. The first thing most people knew about it was that the post hadn’t been delivered. Minnie - we call her that because she calls everyone “MINI!” in that big shipyard voice of hers - Minnie had been curled up in the foetal position at the foot of Marlborough Tower, her damp breath fogging the curtained windows of the entire first floor. The post van rounded the base of the high-rise, only to be confronted by this huge backside - about 25 feet across, no offence to Minnie - edged by the ten toes of her primly drawn feet. There’s still the remains of quite a tight, practised-looking, handbrake turn, where the guy spun the truck and got the hell out of here.

at the Centre for Open Studies and his hobbies are movie-going and casting a shadow on warm tarmac. He was last at the Glad Café to see Duglas T. Stewart whose lyrics hung in the air like barley in the great man’s beard. This is his first published work.

They are naked, although this provokes no stronger reaction than an unclothed sculpture would. Because of their nudity you might assume they’re from a pretechnical culture. But their hair is barbered and they know about money. They feed at the big NutriCo plant just outside of town. Two of them will sit on the ground and split a silo of fruit juice, or soup stock, passing a massive hose back and forth as if it were a hookah pipe. Gretl, a petite, sixty-something, French-accented giantess arranged all this with Nutrico, within hours of their arrival. She met their representatives in the company car park, with a girl from the local advocacy trust and somehow, a Swiss bank account number. Giants, incidentally, eject waste by intermittent bouts of vigorous sweating. Going by our experience with Minnie, these sweats only strike when going to or coming from the plant, so we haven’t had to contend with puddles of it around the streets. It’s a very social metabolism.

The skies blow cold and the kids forget their desire to be on the rooftops. People take holidays or return to chasing a living in earnest.

The kids love them of course. Their very existence has taken a toffee hammer to the predictability of daily living. The older ones spend their days at the top of the towers, talking to Minnie whenever she stops. They want her to know what it’s like here – football, boys and girls, what’s funny and what never is. No-one ever asks her why she’s here. Life beneath her big, kind, hazel eyes is good. Our trust and optimism could be something to do with the weather. The days are warm but feather grey. The engines of vehicles sound distant and avuncular, and the full trees shudder with birds. Even the distant banging and whistling from an Orange band seems reminiscent of an Amish barn-raising. It takes about five weeks for the disintegration of this peace to commence. The skies blow cold and the kids forget their desire to be on the rooftops. People take holidays or return to chasing a living in earnest. Trouble starts when a base-jumper is killed, parachuting from Minnie’s shoulder. The practice is known as “Newtoning”, after the famous Isaac Newton remark that “We stand on the shoulders of Giants”. Deposited from a friend’s hang-glider, this guy leaps from her collarbone. Minnie, unfamiliar with extreme sports, swings her hands around anxiously trying to break his fall but instead bats him into the side of a building, two streets away. The perpetually vacant tabloids flood with coverage. Graphics show what a giant could do, if angered. We begin to fear government intervention. The US are bristling at the first human casualty and if they decide to retaliate, we will surely fall into step without debate. On the last day of August, I wake from dreams of tragically benign carcasses, littering the summer soil.

It’s 7am. In every direction, giants stand in their adopted neighbourhoods, slumped, tired, with a hurt look across their eyes. They strike up a chorus of some halting lament, a dignified acknowledgement of fate. And from the hems of the horizon, a flock of heavy, winged forms beat through the air, towards the city. Feathers of steel shiver and jingle, like tumbling scree. Is this a military response - or an end they have called upon themselves from an unknown heaven? It is so different from our piecemeal, mortal attrition, I almost feel like applauding one last, great revelation from this incredible breed. Horrified gasps burst from the crowd, as far above, talons grapple ribs and beaks lock biceps. But the gentle behemoths stand like statues now; eyes white and immobile, never flinching from the efforts of the industrious birds. As the first sheets of skin are pulled from their massive frames, what spills out is neither gore nor offal, but a rain of rose petals. Each strike showers the crowd below with a sweet, moist pot pourri in every colour of the rainbow. Skin floats down like lace, but evaporates before it hits the ground. Bones land end-on and burst in showers of talcum powder. With the transubstantiation of the guts of the huge, summer draws to a close. The end they met quells the notion that we witnessed the genocide, tragedy or disgrace of their kind. Whatever consciousness had roamed their massive bodies departed in song. Beyond the city, on softer ground, their footprints endure into the new year; earthen cradles for lovers, wanderers and the first lambs of the greening Spring.

THE GLAD RAG

transform-ation (apologies to Lou Reed for transforming the true meaning of his lyrics)

left the archive nora 250 w.57th tired hungry grabbed pastrami on rye from a neon strip-lit kiosk & a yellow taxi cab heading down-town in the rush rob recalling busking round europe double bass in tow times square flashing mesmerising messages traffic snagged up slow me hearing hermann’s taxi driver not lookin’ at but hopin’ that ours isn’t called bickle rob on his cell hey lou nope no can do we’re heading for east village to hear laurie read haiku she read jack k-k-k-k-k-k-k e r o u a c then when rob dropped me back at 59 w.44th (thurber’s scribbly walls parker’s squabbly table & lerner & lowe’s showy sound track) tho’ we didn’t drink sangria in the park feed animals in the zoo then later a movie too I knew I’d be coming back ‘cause it’s such a perfect day I’m glad I spent it with you

Kay Ritchie has been a freelance photographer and radio producer. She spent several years in London, Portugal and Spain before settling back in Glasgow. She has recently been reading lots of poetry and scribbling some of her own which has been published in anthologies - Tracks in the Sand and Shorelines.

James Oconnell twitter.com/jamesp0p

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Big Fat Moon

Sometimes it seems the moon’s touch close. Feels like I could push out my hand pluck from the sky Its’ whole silvered, white body. but you see the thing is I get frightened incase, I can’t put it back just in the spot I found it. So I leave it alone, and content myself, with watching it instead.

Donna Campbell has had work published in various anthologies and magazines. She has performed in many venues throughout the UK and is a regular performer at “Seeds of Thought” monthly nights at the CCA. Donna is currently working on a novel and runs creative writing workshops in the community.

Marie-Claire Lacey www.thefieldoflooseends.blogspot.com

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Bunnychow FT Polis is of the mind that, in times such as these, one needs a nom de guerre. He is happy to be told to bolt @FTPolisG41.

The new one they jast got fram the government. And they sit on they fackin ass man. Sit on they fackin ass in the shitty shack. Do fack all.

By night the welds groaned. There was only Denys from Odessa on the bridge peering over cheek bones for light in the darkness. We were mostly on day shift since leaving Stavanger. The galley, full with lunchtime hunger, was not built for this traffic.

‘Ah yeah,’ Don offered, ‘bunnychow, eet’s called bunnychow. Eet’s half a loaf and they scoop out the middle. Then eet’s stuffed wit curry, potatoes, rice an shit. Then they put anotha slice on top and wrap eet ap. It’s good. You be full afta one a thowse bru.’

The pork stir fry was a waste of pig and the ox tail otherworldly. I’d missed breakfast so couldn’t reject another plate. I took a seat at the South African table by the door.

‘Ah fack,’ Conrad was in agreement. ‘Ahya used to wahk they bru. In the oil reefinery. Efreeday, bunnychow fa lanch. Eet’s tha Indians tha make eet man. Jast pick tha facka ap.’

Don had his ox tail in his hand. It wasn’t finger food and he excused his choice explaining that the meat was ‘facking taff leik rabba man.’ Conrad persevered with his knife. I knew them to be Cape Town men. Phatic communion is an art form born out of intellectual ambivalence and a passion for manners; for those of us with a taste for the work of 1930’s linguists. ‘Man, what’s that weird shit you make in Durban? You know, curry inside a loaf of bread or some shit?’ I asked my fellow diners.

Conrad dropped his knife and began eating an invisible bunnychow. He tensed his arms and nibbled in curry circles. A few seconds of imaginary feast later he wiped his mouth clean of bunnychow and resumed with his knife. ‘What’s Durban like then?’ ‘Ya know man, same like aneeweah. Nice in places, eef ya know them, and raf in athas.’ ‘Like Joboorg man.’ Don butted in. ‘Like you guys ya know. Ya theenk Joboorg is real facked bat eets jast like Landan. What Enbara like?’

‘Edinburgh is beautiful, has its moments, but Glasgow’s probably a better comparison. It has a rough reputation like Johannesburg but if you know the place then it’s safe. Great even.’ ‘Ekzectlee,’Don continued, ‘ya know man, Landan is full of silva backs too. But eet’s not like owah ones.’ ‘What do you mean?’ The galley staff had ensured a bad taste in my mouth already. ‘Silva backs, man, caffas ya know.’ ‘I know.’ I knew. ‘But what do you mean?’ ‘Yeah, like, eet’s all facked ap know in Sath Efrica. All facked ap. You know what they do right? After tha ANC an all that shit, they said, right everyone should have they own house. They built all these proper houses for them. But they not like us man. They fackin stay in they shitty shack. The same shitty shack as before. The one they complained about. And then they rent tha new one out. The new one they jast got fram the government. And they sit on they fackin ass man. Sit on they fackin ass in the shitty shack. Do fack all.’

They wagged their heads at their ox tails. ‘They not fackin brought ap right man. Not fackin brought ap at all. Not like as.’ Conrad’s eyes tightened around his disheveled homeland. ‘No they not man, but they fackin worried now man.’ Don’s gravy finger pointed to the future. ‘They fackin worried now man. They fackin worried cause all tha fackin Rhodesians an tha fackas camin down fram Botswana an shit. They not happy man. Owah ones, they not happy man. What ees it again Don?’ ‘All tha ones fram ap north steal owah ones’ jobs Conrad. They mach cheaper. Half tha price.’ ‘Nowah, they fackin getting samfin. Owah ones. They getting samfin like a disease or samfin. Eet’s in tha papers.’ ‘Oh, fack yeah, that’s right they getting, what tha fack is it? Xenah, xenah… ah fack xenah-samfin they getting an eet’s fackin owah ones right ap.’ We were sailing to St John’s where you can find the oldest street on the North American continent. Eight days of water stood between us and our destination. Sometimes, when the sailing is plain and the horizon infinite you think of things bigger than yourself.

THE GLAD RAG

Gloria, Me & The Feathered Serpent The New Mestizas Craig Smillie thought to give up teaching last year to paint in the South of France. Instead he has wound up washing pots and serving lattes in The Glad Cafe.

I remember seeing Nanci Griffith for the first time and thinking, “When I see her after the gig I must tell her that I really enjoyed...” and then thinking, “Haud on a minute, you don’t know this woman and you won’t be seeing her after the gig.” But Nanci had made such an impression on me that I had thought that she was one of the chums. The same thing happened when I read Gloria Anzaldua for the first time: I felt immediately that she was “one of the gang.” Anzaldua’s book “Borderlands - La Frontera - The New Mestiza” is about identity and the self. She argues for the benefits of being Mestiza - mixed. Gloria is Chicana / Mexican / American / Aztec / Catholic / lesbian / activist / peasant / cultural theorist / feminist / poet - so she is pretty mixed. She talks about what it was like to be the first person from her valley ever to go beyond secondary education. Also what it was to find yourself lesbian in the machismo of Latin American peasant culture. She describes these feelings partly in relation to Aztec belief - which creates some fantastic, visceral imagery: she identifies with Coatlicue, the mountain and earth mother; La Llorona, daughter of the night, crying for her lost children; La Chingada, “the fucked one”; Coyolxauhqui, goddess of the moon with golden bells, decapitated by her brother! So it’s a richly poetic world. She also moves into Spanish much of the time without translating into English: I guess the idea being that most theorists are writing in English and therefore excluding her people from accessing these ideas - so, let the imperialist English speakers have to do a bit of work to access her mental world - to let us experience how it feels to be a linguistic borderland person. She

says her languages are: 1 Standard English, 2 Working-class and slang English, 3 Standard Spanish, 4 Standard Mexican Spanish, 5 North Mexican Spanish dialect, 6 Chicano Spanish (various dialects), 7 TexMex, 8 Pachuco (aka calo). She describes how only No. 1 was valued (or allowed) in her educational experience and the shame felt by her Chicano people in their “inferior” peasant language: I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself... Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having to translate... to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate... But I will have my voice... I will have my serpent’s tongue. The idea I got from the book is that most of us are living on multiple borderlands. We all experience multiple identity: we are parent, child, grandparent, teacher, retired, housewife, musician, neighbour, activist, agnostic, white, lover, mourner, straight, Marxist, Freudian, board member... etc. The blurb says, “La Frontera remaps our understanding of what a “border” is, presenting it not as a simple divide between here and there, us and them, but as a psychic, social and cultural terrain that we inhabit, and that inhabits all of us.” Western culture and media have been built on the concept of excluding and marginalising “the other”; fearing difference, devaluing and ridiculing other cultures, romanticising in order to disempower and pillage. Anzaldua focuses on what we can learn as we come to the borderlands and experience our cultures together.

We all experience multiple identity: we are parent, child, grandparent, teacher, retired, housewife, musician, neighbour, activist, agnostic, white, lover, mourner, straight, Marxist, Freudian, board member...etc.

THE GLAD RAG

Jon Burgerman www.jonburgerman.com

Another symptom of borderland experience is that those who live on and are sensitive to these borders become more acutely aware of empathy and vulnerability. She calls it “La Facultad”: Those who are pushed out of the tribe for being different are likely to become more sensitized (when not brutalized into insensitivity). Those who are pounced on the most have it the strongest - the females, the homosexuals of all races, the darkskinned, the outcast, the persecuted, the marginalized, the foreign. When we’re up against the wall, when we have all sorts of oppressions coming at us, we are forced to develop this faculty so that we’ll know when the next person is going to slap us or lock us away. We sense the rapist when he’s five blocks down the street. Pain makes us acutely anxious to avoid more of it, so we hone the radar. It’s a kind of survival tactic that people, caught between the worlds, unknowingly cultivate. It is latent in all of us. I walk into a house and I know whether it is empty or occupied. I feel the lingering charge in the air of a recent fight or lovemaking or depression... I can tell how others feel by the way they smell, where others are by the air pressure on my skin... She parallels her own fascinating autobiography with the history of the Indian woman in Latin America, La Chingada: Even as a child I would not obey. I was “lazy.” Instead of ironing my younger brothers’ shirts or cleaning the cupboards, I would pass many hours studying, reading, painting, writing. Every bit of self-faith I’d painstakingly gathered took a beating daily.

Chicana women are forced in to the Culture of Silence. Wild tongues can’t be tamed, they can only be cut out: En boca cerrada no entran moscas. Anzaldua rails against the oppression of machismo culture: I will not glorify those aspects of my culture which have injured me and which have injured me in the name of protecting me. Don’t give me your tenets and your laws. Don’t give me your lukewarm gods. What I want is an accounting with all three cultures - white, Mexican Indian. I want the freedom to carve and chisel my own face, to staunch the bleeding with ashes, to fashion my own gods out of my entrails. And if going home is denied me* then I will have to stand and claim my space, making a new culture - una cultura mestiza - with my own lumber, my own bricks and mortar and my own feminist architecture. (* A young lesbian student had misunderstood the term “homophobia” thinking it meant “fear of going home” as a gay person - to face rejection!) She is passionate about her ideas and beliefs, but what comes across is a lovely personality, full of affection. So, Gloria has become my pal. As a gay, Indian, female, peasant, Aztec, Chicana, she has welcomed a married, white, male, working class, Calvinistic, Scot to La Frontera / the Borderlands and we have discovered that, yup, we are the New Mestizas. Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa (September 26, 1942 – May 15, 2004)

THE GLAD RAG

Shirley Lochhead teaandtype.co.uk

La Petite Mort

It wiz yersel, ma Ortolan Buntin’ wham they cry the gairdener burd, sez o a wee quine’s nieve; Francois’ last supper so they tell iz. They pit yi in a daurk box wi ower much millet tae mak yi eat like there wiz nae the moarn, peened yi doon beh yir manglt weengs an droont yi in gowden Armagnac, syne roastit ah yir wee boady in a wunner, heidless an fitless. Wi a naipkin ower eez heid tae cover eez faiss, Tae gust eez gab an git the guff and tist o yersel an ti hide eez shamefuness fae eez Goad, ee devourt each tender bane, yir yella thrapple disappearn intae eez reid ain. Mitterand snafflt yi in ae mucklemaist bite an wi the blisst-oot guiltfu smirk on eez faiss o ane wha savours petites morts, ee quasht yir melodie, ingestit yir music.

Fran Baillie: Everybody in her family had a degree except her and the cat. She decided to do her degree, M.A. (Hons) English/French, at Dundee University, 94/98. and then worked at Dundee College in the Special Programmes Department for twelve years - great job! She promised herself that when she retired she would devote more time to writing, got a place on the M.Litt, and would encourage others to do the same life-enhancing stuff! She won a prize at last year’s Wigtown Book Festiva, caught the writing bug and will never not write again.

THE GLAD RAG

Evelyn Rachel Tennant

Embraced by obscure objects of musical desire you are a minuet, arms held high ready to dive into the acoustic pool. Humming bird hands dart over polished deck boards, head cocked to one side absorbing vibrations. Flutters of arpeggios cascade down your rib cage, drum rolls reverberate through bones to skull. Hair follicles are antennae to timbre picking up its message, breathing in rhythmic pulses through your pores. Mandy Maria hello@mandymaria.com

Your whole being is a tuning fork of cleft and bass, a resonating chamber vibrating to the journey of each sound colour.

THE GLAD RAG

Michelle Campbell www.chellecampbell.co.uk

(no title)

seven horses spaced grouped loosely; four

Kate Tough co-runs Shawlands’ Poetry@The Ivory. (Come along!) Her novel, out in 2013, gained a Scottish Arts Council bursary and short-listing for a publication prize. She thrives on collaboration, being selected for notable projects like 26 Treasures. Like many southsiders, Kate loves the Glad and wishes it well. www.katetough.com

three

teeth busy at the grass each muscle and molecule busy at the grass half-tamed tonnage seven shades of evening june-shine; mid-teak, mahogany, peat caught – I, them – in the high haze of this, of the quiet of lit pelts arc of carved hinds line of gossamer-lofty, film-backdrop oak

and pale bird music infusing cohering praising

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Girls in the Hood Margaret Callahan has an mlitt in creative writing from university of glasgow and is finishing writing a novel ‘the last big weekend of the summer’ she has just been shortlisted for the scottish book trust new writers award’

I was never that scared of the wolf, in fact I found him quite sexy; all that chest hair escaping from his shirt and those sardonic eyes. Even in my grandmother’s clothes he looked more masculine, if you know what I mean. That was only ever an experiment though. And not a particularly successful one as you will know. I read about it in Cosmopolitan. ‘Spice up your sex lives’ the article said. On reflection sleeping with a wolf should have been spice enough. The wolf wasn’t too keen on the whole thing. He was worried he would look ridiculous. But I talked him out of his clothes and into hers.

And now, well, I haven’t seen him for ages. He’s too embarrassed to come back in case his mates see him. He says they looked like they were laughing at him. I told him wolves always look that way. I doubt he’s faithful. Wolves rarely are. I daydream about him though as I trudge back and forwards to my grandmother’s every day, the way he would lick my hand and glance at me to see my reaction. It gives me something to think about when my grandmother’s moaning. “You don’t suit red,” she always says. “You should wear black, it’s slimming.” I’m always going to wear it though. In case he comes back.

Lynn Howarth www.lynnhowarth.co.uk 23

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