Hello

      Christmas Games After the lunch he gets his folder of Christmas games. Ten copies he writes out each year. The file is spilling like a drooping accordion that swings down and open as he makes his way through rooms, looking for people to play. But...

      Weird Thank you for the knickers but I think I prefer the ones that cover my tummy and how the elastic feels round my waist. I started last summer. I was wearing my white indoor jeans and feeling kind of both tired and sparky so I lay on my bed...

      Once there was nothing sweeter than snow Do you remember Penguin biscuits? Their bright wrappers enveloping our first knowledge of flightlessness. What are snow angels called when there is no snow? Mud demons, grass ghosts, sand sprites. Once...

      Eighteen Years of Advents Gone Because My Father is Now a Crow We pick up where you left off, searching still, choosing random cards from a dealer’s deck: twenty-one crows in a night-time tree, deep within the dark, with all that chatter all that...

      Spreading the word As regular as Santa Claus, she’d call around at Christmas, the next-door neighbour and my Sunday school teacher, Mrs Williams. My mother sent me searching for the matching cup and saucer, television off for the only time that...

      Christmas Eve ‘I was all hers and we peeled potatoes’ - Clearances III, Seamus Heaney we set about our tasks. I was called to the kitchen where she was ribboning their freckled skin, the fall of my knife steady like hers, they hit the cold pan and...

      Poplars in the Mist A crow’s eye weighs the view: poplars and their spiky layers, mist – all froth & pomp & wisp. I am more poplar than mist. I am there in each defiant branch: stalky, not willowy, standing my ground. I am always reaching...

      The Christmas Market Her mother doesn’t want to linger here - cheap stuff from South America at cruelly inflated prices. Disgrace. But Nuala won’t be dragged away. There are wooden frogs that sing an ugly croaking song. Their coats are bright,...

      The Solstice Turn Happiness starts coming back with winter chill. The cold raises the hairs on the back of our necks the way honesty does. The sky opens its arms to clouds and the setting sun paints them gradually into shadow. We hold back from...