Stalling_The Balcony_Meatballs and Peppers_A MAN'S LIFE
Catalog Guide:
Stalling
I wasn’t very cool in school, kind of nerdy, shy, and awkward. I had always felt weird about people, we would be cool one day and the next day they would pretend they didn’t know me. I always wanted to be like my older brother Rick, was super popular in school had a lot of friends and friends that would pretty much take a bullet for him. Rick being my brother made me, I guess sort of cool, but my brother did his best to give me tools so that I could be cool on my own. He taught me how to breakdance, always put me on to cool music, and taught me to have rhythm.That was all a long time ago, I w...
The Balcony
It wasn’t until Lockdown that Jacob realised he was lonely; before that, he had thought of himself simply as someone leading a quiet life. What he missed most was the noise, secondly the smells: the noise and the smells that had, up until now, infiltrated his subconscious from the balcony below, filling his head with joy, hope and that indefinable feeling of being truly, fully, alive. Ire, who lived in the flat beneath Jacob had, until 2020, a constant stream of friends and family religiously streaming into her welcoming home. Jerk chicken, curry goat, fried plantain, roast yam and sauteed ca...
Meatballs and Peppers
“What have you got to lose?” asked Louise as she perused the menu.Wilma slumped back in her chair and stared at the concrete Jersey barrier that abutted their table. She preferred to eat indoors, but COVID had forced the restaurant’s owners to limit seating in the dining room and serve customers outside on a makeshift patio that now extended into the street.“My dignity.”Louise almost choked on her wine. “Your dignity!”Wilma tapped her calloused fingers on the base of her glass. “I don’t wanna move. My home’s here.” She took a long sip of her wine, relishing the citrusy tartness of the chilled...
A MAN'S LIFE
As the horticultuwww.onedoor.ccrist could predict the type of defective flower emanating from a diseased and desiccated seed, the life course of a man could be equally reckoned by observing his beginnings. Jim Tomlinson, a wreck of a man, had chosen the wrong parents, and thereby suffered the consequences. His father was a capricious and jealous old goat, prone to sudden explosions of violence and abuse, with alcohol often the accelerant. His mother was a broken woman, having long ago abandoned any thought of a normal, good life. Her greatest pleasures now were playing canasta and eating Mallomars. Given th...