Reheating tea

.

My forehead is a touch screen.
I take the edge and thumb swipe time
forward, while regrets blur into pain.
One swipe and 30 seconds die
not with a bang but with a ping
on the microwave.

.

I have heard the burst of bombs
left by terrorist platelets,
sound travelling from the crater of a synapse
banging anvils onto hammers in my ear,
projecting dragons out through closed eyes,
and counted myself lucky
afterwards.

.

In spring an old man's fancy
likely turns to thoughts of wonder.
I open the blinds to let sunlight
blind me and send its flying vitamins
to anaesthetise lesions, and waken
hibernating hope cells with a splash
of witch hazel.

.

Shell is too strong a word
for this bubble, reflecting day's glare.
When you've floated around the sun
a few times, landed somewhere -
called it home and held in
the breath you were given. I wish
I had a shell.

.

February thoughts.

Ganache

Short list for the 2014 short story competition

There were 381 entries and reducing them to ten wasn't easy at all. Many brilliant stories had to be omitted. It was fascinating, as always, reading each and every submission. When you think of all the craftsmanship, thought and sheer imagination there is out there, it's quite heartening.

Short List 2014

• Piercings by Jo Barker Scott
• Such is her Power by Joan Brennan
• The Beekeeper’s Daughters by Gina Challen
• Ward by Nick Holdstock
• Rock Pools by CG Menon
• Rip Rap by Dan Powell
• Postman’s Knock by Angela Sherlock
• Rash by Megan Taylor
• The Stealing by Lindsay Waller-Wilkinson
• Cotton-Fisted Scorpions by Medina Tenour Whiteman

Congratulations to the writers of the short-listed stories and thanks to all who entered. The first and runners-up prizes will be announced by the judge, Charles Lambert, on April 16 at a special event in BAR Gallery in Willesden. New Short Stories 8, the anthology containing all the stories above, will be launched at the same time.

Steve Moran

About the Authors

Jo Barker Scott was born in London, but grew up mostly overseas, in Kenya, Pakistan and Iran. These days she lives in Winchester, writing fiction and loitering on social media. Her work has been variously ignored, long-listed, short-listed, prize-winning and published, and she is currently polishing a novel. Her dream is to become a good enough writer to do justice to her family’s story.

Joan Brennan lives in London and writes full-time. Her stories have been short-listed for the Bridport, Fish, V.S. Pritchett and Lightship. She was placed second in the final London Short Story Comp. She lived in America for 7 years which is the setting for her recently completed novel, ‘The Bean Farm’ - currently short-listed for the Exeter Novel prize. After gaining a degree in Art she went on to complete an MA in English Lit. and over the years has worked as an illustrator, education editor, F.E. tutor, and university librarian. Originally from Lancashire, Joan still hankers for the North

Gina Challen is originally from London but has lived in West Sussex for over 30 years. She left her job as an Insurance Broker in 2012 to complete a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Chichester. This she calls her mid-life crisis. Her short stories have been published in anthologies by Cinnamon Press and Rattle Tales, and her essays can be found on line at The Thresholds Short Story Forum. She is currently working on a collection of short stories linked by the life and landscape of the Sussex Downs.

Nick Holdstock is the author of The Tree That Bleeds, a non fiction book about life in China's Xinjiang province. His stories and articles have appeared in the London Review of Books, n+1, The Independent, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. His first novel will be out from Thomas Dunne in Spring 2015.
www.nickholdstock.com

CG Menon is Australian, but currently splits her time between London and Cambridge. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in a number of venues including Litro Online and Stupefying Stories. She was short-listed for the first Words and Women competition and has a story forthcoming in the associated anthology.

Dan Powell grew up in the West Midlands and currently lives in Lincolnshire. His short stories have been published in Carve, Paraxis, Fleeting and The Best British Short Stories 2012. He is a prize winning author, receiving both the Yeovil Prize and an Esoteric Award for his short stories. His Scott Prize short-listed debut collection of short fiction, Looking Out Of Broken Windows, is published by Salt. When not writing, Dan teaches part time and takes care of his young family as a home-dad. He is currently working on his first novel and procrastinates at danpowellfiction.com and on Twitter as @danpowfiction.

Angela Sherlock has worked in engineering and in education but now lives in Devon where she writes full time. She has published reviews and articles but currently concentrates on fiction. Her first novel, The Apple Castle, (as yet unpublished) was long-listed for the Virginia Prize and short-listed for the Hookline Novel Writing Competition. She has published some short stories and is currently working on a novel that draws on the history of Plymouth. Postman’s Knock, her third story to be short-listed by Willesden Herald is from her collection, Exports, which explores the Irish Diaspora.

Megan Taylor is the author of three novels, ‘How We Were Lost’ (Flame Books, 2007), ‘The Dawning’ (Weathervane Press, 2010) and ‘The Lives of Ghosts’ (Weathervane Press, 2012), but for the last year and a half, she has been concentrating on her short stories. In 2013, she was highly commended in the Manchester Fiction Prize and had a story published in an anthology, ‘Weird Love’ (Pandril Press). She was also recently awarded runner-up in Tin House’s Shirley Jackson competition and in Synaesthesia Magazine’s short story competition. She lives in Nottingham with her two children.

Lindsay Waller-Wilkinson worked in fashion for 25 years, but more recently spends her days writing – mainly short stories and poetry – and has been published in various literary magazines, both online and print. She is working on her first full length poetry collection titled DressCode and a novel length collection of linked short stories. She is an associate editor for The Word Factory and blogs at www.poemstorydreamreality.com.

Medina Tenour Whiteman is a writer, singer, musician, translator, small-time farmer and mother of two children who writes at a frenetic rate in the rare opportunities she has to do it. Born in Andalusia in 1982 to American-English Sufi Muslim converts, she is currently based in the Granada province, where she is co-writing a travel guide to Muslim Spain and trying to find time to finish a novel.

First prize includes a writing retreat courtesy of LitCamp.

Competition update 12 February 2014

It's been fascinating reading all the entries, as usual, and it was hard to reduce 381 to 10. Although I can't announce the short list as yet, I can confirm, because you have been waiting a long time I know, that if you haven't heard from me by now, then your story has not made it to the short list. Please check your email or Submittable account for new messages, just in case you were one of the ten. Thanks to everyone who entered and supported the competition. The short list will be announced in due course. Thanks.

Steve

We apologise for not being dead

We feel the need to apologise, like Leonard Cohen said, for not being dead. And here is a video that could make you laugh, which is, after all, something useful.



It's Noel Gallagher's scathing commentary over the videos made by Oasis.

Competition update

Testing 12 and 12 are 24. Looks like I'm on my own here. So I'm using AudioBlagger because I can't type. I'm one of the old school. Not that one, the one before. Who can't type. You'll be wanting to know what's happening with the results and our fairweather friends have seen fit to leave me here with no backup. I'm trying to get hold of Fred to put up the black smoke/white smoke chimney but he's not answering his phone. So I'll just tell you that the ten short-listed stories have been selected and we will let you know which they are as soon as possible. There are a few formalities to complete. In the meantime if anyone really needs to know whether their story is among the ten, you can send in a message via Submittable and we can say yes or no. Don't all do it, for God's sake. There are nearly 400. So there you go. Feargal, I'm not best pleased. Good work you writers, as usual. Nifty lot of stories there, I see. Cheers.

Red

WTF?

I go on a cruise for four weeks of dysentery and norovirus and come back to find the place boarded up. Do I have to do everything myself? What's all this about moving to Sudbury - is this Poorboy Pirbhai's work? That bugger has been the bane of my life.

Red

Curtain call

I have left Willesden and Brent to live just across the border near Sudbury Hill in the outer London borough of Harrow. I lived in Willesden for about 21 years and have been blogging here since spring 2003. There are also friends of mine who contributed messages, especially in the early days. It's all there for you to peruse and I will leave everything as it is. This is now a museum for as long as Blogger supports it, which I hope will be a long time. The short story competition can be followed at either Willesden Herald. com or New Short Stories .com. I have a personal blog as well, which you can find in the list of "Friends etc", which should be alongside here somewhere. I've come over all Oscar speechy now and want to say how much I love you all, and I haven't even touched a drop. Thanks, farewell, see you round.

Steve

Winter thoughts

They put me in school. They do it to us all
and they teach us the alphabet and how to read,
how to add up and take away and memorise
the dates of battles, the names of kings,

while round outside the classroom the sun
illuminates the unread leaves and stirs
the untaught robin to sing his rhapsody
for which there is no do-re-mi, no metronome.

And we learn like Pavlov's dogs; how to please,
to supply the formula, to recite the text
we copied from the board and in return we get
rosettes, prizes, kisses, presents, Easter eggs.

But when the teacher has retired and our mams
and dads have forgotten everything or died,
we're left to wander abroad with nothing
but ciphers, tokens, money from a vanished state.

And late, so very late, the sun breaks through
a bare giant tree to lonely winter benches
where, as this afternoon, I wonder who to ask
to teach me how to read the day, the light

on public footpath signposts and leafmeal,
to diagram the last of the afternoon sun,
warming a railway bridge in a country lane,
to derive the angles in a fine terrace below.

And I think of Yeats, Spender, Goldsmith,
walking through a classroom and being moved
to mystic reverie, fierce compassion, wonder.
But beyond the class there was a secret school

that taught us how to hear the ocean in a seashell,
to observe a crab blowing bubbles, the local names
for honeybees, how to draw houses, smoke & flowers.
Take me back to the school of streets and fields.


Ganache

Shoes - a YouTube music playlist

With most tracks suggested by friends on Facebook

Merry Xmas

Jacintha Pucka & Bartell Darcy