Alan Beard

All he wanted was treacle tart
Not too much pastry

What can he steal from you is his first thought. He preyed on couples in pubs, provoking arguments, cheering on rows, on the look out for a corner of soul he could pluck, twist, hurt.

Words came out of his well-toothed mouth but his eyes weren’t on them, he always hung back, away from what he was saying.

Here are the details of my book launch.

I’m also extremely proud to be part of this line up! Particularly happy that my book is launched at Voce Books in Birmingham (UK) in conversation with Wendy Erskine whose work I adore.

He’d stood in front of her, swaying from foot to foot like that, for nearly forty years.

He was addicted to the making up times, the aftermath of affairs. He had dipped into depression, could feel it along his edges, in his breath. Didn’t like it. He needed to interrupt himself. Set a new course.

Croissants from Clean Kilo and cooked in our air fryer. We walk through parks now and comment on the sky, we carry folded up plastic bags for re-use, we listen to Quicksilver Messenger Service – Where You Love - 6:07 mins of handclapping and shouts. Like hippies in a field.

He wrote with a pen he was making a stance he was growing a beard in protest & attending readings & buying bread baked on the premises. A pint of craft beer in a converted warehouse, concrete floors, electric plugs & machines left behind on the walls. Listens to Nico eats Portuguese tarts.

Pensioners about town, calling in for a cocktail and toasting their ages to anyone who will listen and how their granddaughter is Head of Maths and only 29!

The other couple in the window seats talked of throwing away marinade and road routes from North London to the South.

So the pain the wandering, the pills, the sun gone quickly, scurrying away, his son popping up from cupboards, fixing something, his dead wife later laid in his bed, came apart in his hands. The roof bent the walls bent.

I’m leading a horse to water. I’m taking a prat to the prat convention.

Thanks again. It’s been 60 years arriving…

Thank you, Jay!

Thanks Robert!

My story ‘Afternoon Drinking’ is out today at Fictive Dream. It is also the title story of my new collection coming out in the Autumn from Floodgate Press.

Thanks Laura! Story tomorrow…

Fantastic night last night at the Birmingham Hospice Shop with 6 short story readings and a take home pamphlet and all for a good cause. Thanks charlie hill for organising!

Come and see some great short story writers - and me - at the Birmingham Hospice Shop in Harborne on Thursday. Details:

photography of a car outside houses in the suburbs by Gregory Crewdson

photography of a girl in her underwear standing in front of a car at night with two other women inside by Gregory Crewdson

photography of a woman floating in a flooded living room by Gregory Crewdson

photography of kids walking along tracks in the suburbs by Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson

David Trotter · Don’t go quietly: Ken Loach’s Fables It's largely thanks to Loach's example that social realism remains a potent and versatile cultural resource for young...

‘The solace he seeks is to be found not in nature, but in a removal of nature from nature mediated by cultural exchange, by the gathering of information.’

David Trotter on Ken Loach:
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Watching glossy people leading glossy lives interrupted by murder - Perfect Couple/White Lotus - Nicole Kidman on our big telly, small nostrils quivering.

Marg's 50th had everything - a fight, a male stripper, sausage rolls.

Let me go and do my two hours of worrying.

Goodreads 2024 Year in Books Check out My 2024 Year in Books on Goodreads!

Books read 2024: www.goodreads.com/user/year_in...

Christmas haul.

"She turned to alcohol and men and is now in hospital with a busted liver and swollen weeping legs, only allowed out on Sundays to see her daughter."

Waits for his screen to boot up, the screen of golden corn irritating him now. He’s got things waiting on social media, he’s sure, new followers, a message, a like.

You click and wait, click and wait, girl don’t come.