Charlie used to bring hunting trophies into the house. I never appreciated the headless mouse carcasses or twitching, butchered tits. Still, I told myself, this was nature at work.

He watched the train come into the station, little flashes of blue electricity snapping on the overhead wires as it hissed to a stop. He waited for passengers to get off before he swung himself up the step and entered the car.

Several boys from the Grammar School down the road are loitering as I come out of the school gates.  Their shirts are untucked, their ties askew. I give them one of my looks.

In the time of rationing many items were prohibited. What affected us most was the restriction on anything pear-shaped. It was a fearful time, people became desperate and unpredictable in their behaviours if they did not have something pear-shaped around them.

The sloth is sporting a pink bow and a gift tag. “Saw this and thought of you,” it reads, in a childlike scrawl that could belong to any of them. They titter in unison, but no-one claims responsibility. I remove the bow. The sloth shoots me a grateful glance. 

Fish out of water; he’d never heard the expression before. He flipped it over in his mind’s eye, watching it flex and struggle. He was more of an eel, surely. Slim and sinewy.

She holds onto the worktop, watches me put away milk. ‘I said full fat not skimmed.’ I nod sorry. She says white bread instead of brown, butter not low cholesterol spread, oily fish not blood-red steak. Curses chops free of marbling.

The family who used to live next door let Tom fix a trellis to the side wall of their detached garage, which formed part of the boundary. Maud wondered if Beth would have been so amenable. Anyway, now the climbing hydrangea was flourishing, a cascade of green leaves covered in tiny white flowers like stars.

Local winter fruits keep me going. I can pick flundermokers and red limp near the house. At Wasted Yawn frozen lake, flen wibble grows to an enormous height.

So, I was totting up the cost o' tangerines, beef burgers and custard powder—eee and, the bloomin' prices in Grimethorpe Museum o' Nostalgia

Eight-year-old me circled Auntie's bad words with a red pen. 

The day Maeve told me she was leaving to become a nun I vomited. We’d been friends since primary school. When the bullying began in secondary school, Maeve was the one who pulled me through.

At Monolingual International Airport, Terminal B, everything appeared to be in order at The Tower of Babel Café. There was a cashier, a cook, and a customer, but there was a crucial limiting factor: they shared no language in common.

Mum isn’t interested in cars.  ‘They’re giving your Dad a new one,’ she says.  ‘What sort?’  ‘Brown.’ It’s a Cortina Mk II in Saluki Bronze.

In the car, chubby thighs fart on leather seats. Five children in three spots, the ripe smell of cousins and siblings on holiday, left to go feral.