Sharon Phillips

      Baldwin St, mid-November Wet tarmac blinks red and gold, names shine outside the Gaumont. Stop dreaming, you’ll get lost. I trot to keep up, past the chip shop, past a big man bellowing Mind out! as he shifts a stack of crates, past Carwardine’s...

Bill Greenwell

      Driving lesson Before the first turn of the key, before adjusting the mirror, before releasing the handbrake even, Dad said: there are two things you need to know. The first, he said, is double-declutching. It’s got me out of many a scrape. It...

Matt Gilbert

      If you didn’t know what a storm is This thing will enter your perception with a swagger. Kick open doors, slam wood to wall, shake rooms, with the impatient knock of nature. Alive, but not exactly, as it fills the frame, flicker-lit by lightning....

Rebecca Gethin

      This morning the room is bright with snowlight and everything seems illuminated differently. I have to trust the robin’s snatches of song like drips from a melting icicle, the starling’s rush of wingbeats overhead. Narcissi’s tender green shoots...

Lorraine Carey

      Her Yorkshire Puddings Every Sunday he insists on beef from Boggs’s butchers, a forty minute drive away. Mother has no respite from that blasted gas oven, her apron, or the vegetable peeler. Her Yorkshire puddings disastrous, until she fakes it...