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Tags: Childhood

Seen from a boat, approaching the island through cold, choppy, white-flecked seas, the island of Staffa looks like a dense grey forest of rock off the western coast of Scotland. Columns of basalt push up and then flower out into a puffy, cloud-like summit on top of which the plantlife of the island

Kimi broke sticks just for the fun of hearing them crack. Dry sticks, thick as the fingers of old men and crooked and brittle. And she’d tread on them in the wood or flex them in her hands or across her knee, and the sound of them breaking was like small gunfire. Everything quiet then and all the

We’re nearing the end of the academic year. The collective rumble of chairs being lifted above the ground reverberates around the school as the sound of chatter slowly crowds the air. Students throng along the corridor, making their way to their classes before the next bell rings. In the classroom

'Hey! You’re not even waving!’ Annie’s voice had an air of authority, but with a wry undertone. She was wearing the biggest smile and waving frantically as we walked past the window of 1 Croft Road. ‘Oh, sorry!’ I was suddenly ripped from my mini mind-drift and gave a clumsy left-handed

'Why do we have to sit on the hill?’ Zach said. ‘Why can’t we go in like everyone else?’ He’d asked this question every year for three years running, and he always got the same response. ‘Because we can't afford it,’ his father said. Zach had heard these five words more times than h

If they knew we’d gone there, our grans would’ve tanned our hides for us. As they’d say. One of our mums had a brown leather bag she called ‘tan hide.’ Our mums were too busy, and too tired with work, to do more than yell at us. And our dads would’ve taken their belts to us. If they’d

The dream followed him out of bed, across the landing and into the bathroom. It waited patiently while he fumbled at the fly of his pyjama bottoms – lingering behind his reflection in the soap-spotted mirror; in the damp heat pooled in the small of his back; in the sleep-thickened ache held betwee

It was common knowledge that Stanley Walsh lived in a zoo. Through the yellowing lace curtains of 17 Church Street, passers-by regularly caught sight of a ferret’s tail or a pheasant’s wing, though few would linger long enough to see the whole picture. Old Stan had long kept to himself, rarely s