My new novel will be published within the next three months. It’s just about ready to go now. The final proofreading is in progress. I’ve updated the first three chapters on here to reflect the changes.
If you fancy a read of those chapters you will find them here.
Shopping Monsters 2003
- There’s a letter from Cardiff on the table in the hall.
- Oh yeah.
- Yep.
- It’s for you.
- Thanks.
- Aren’t you going to open it then?
- Later.
- Oh! Right.
- How was it today?
- What? Work?
- Yep, you know, how was your day?
- Fine, and you?
- Quiet, boring.
- Never mind.
- I was wondering, you know, fancy a drink, tonight?
- Tonight? OK then, where did you think of going?
- Just up the pub.
- The Butcher’s?
- If you like.
- All right. Have you made any food?
- Got some pizza in the oven.
- Lovely.
- So, did you have any bother?
- What do you mean?
- Did you have any bother in work? You know, you said the other day that that bloke was mucking you about; the new supervisor.
- Oh, him, no, no bother with him, I just overreacted, you know.
- Oh.
- Well, how long have I got?
- Uh? Oh, for food. You mean, when’s the pizza going to be ready.
- Yeah.
- Half an hour.
- Got time for a shower then.
- I suppose.
- What’s the matter with you?
- What do you mean?
- You’re very sullen.
- I’m not.
- Right, see you in a bit then.
- The water’s warm, you could have a bath, if you want.
- Did you get bubbles?
- I’ve been working, and cooking.
- It’s all right. I wasn’t . . . . .
- It doesn’t stop, does it? I really have been working you know.
- I never said . . .
- Sorry.
- I’d better get on with it then.
- OK. Oh, your mother phoned.
- What did she want?
- Don’t know, didn’t ask.
- You weren’t horrible to her, were you?
- She thought you had a day off. She didn’t seem to want to talk to me at all.
- Well, you can’t blame her, after what you did.
- How much did you tell her?
- I’ve got no-one else to talk to.
- What about me?
- You – are the problem.
- Who do you know in Cardiff then?
- I bet that’s been bugging you all day, it’s a wonder you didn’t try to steam it open.
- Just wondering.
- You don’t trust me, do you?
- Well . . .
- Look, I can’t help it if you haven’t got a life.
- But I have, I work from home now, you know that.
- Look, I really need that shower.
- Sorry, you go ahead.
- Thank you very much sir.
- No need to be so sarcastic.
- You’d better check that pizza.
- It’s all right, the oven’s on very low, I spent a lot of time on that pizza, I’m not going to ruin it now. It’s a very complicated process, making it from scratch, no wonder people just pick up the phone.
- I didn’t ask you to make food for me; I don’t even like pizza that much.
- Excuse me.
- Sorry.
- Are you all right?
- I’m tired.
- Had a long day?
- Yes, I suppose so.
- Never mind, have a long soak in the bath.
- What about the pizza?
- It can wait.
- Thanks.
- I love you.
- I know.
Branwen is an A* pupil who has been offered university places at both Oxford and Cambridge. She’s agonised for days about which one to choose. She’s weighed up all the pros and cons and it’s pretty much 50-50.
She decides to flip a coin. If it comes up heads she will choose Oxford; if it’s tails Cambridge will have the privilege of her attendance.
In a parallel universe a Branwen who is identical in every respect down to the last sub-atomic particle has, of course, exactly the same dilemma, and does, of course, exactly the same thing.
This scenario is not science fiction but is based on theories that are taken very seriously by very serious scientists
The Branwens in both universes flip their respective coins. Remember, they are exactly the same. Every thought, every emotion, every breath is exactly the same for each of them. Since there is not a sub-atomic particle of difference between them they are, in effect, exactly the same person.
The coin spins in the air and clatters to the floor of the little coffee shop where Branwen’s working for the summer holidays. She leans down to look more closely at the coin, supporting the small of her back, it’s still sore after the fall from her bike yesterday.
The coin lands heads side up in one universe and tails side up in the other. Now we have two versions of Branwen. Branwen A heads to Oxford while Branwen B takes up residence in Cambridge.
Branwen B loves Cambridge and settles in straight away. In her third year she meets Joseph, a politics student. They fall in love and get married. Joseph wants to devote himself to a political career. Branwen gives him the emotional and financial support he needs to do it.
Ten years later Joseph becomes a Member of Parliament and over the next twenty years ascends the political ladder until he becomes Prime Minister.
Branwen A can’t settle down in Oxford and drinks too much alcohol for her own good. She skips lectures, neglects her coursework and misses exams. In her third year she is asked to leave.
Branwen A goes back to her home town suffering from a breakdown and lives the rest of her life dependent on medication and benefits. Joseph meanwhile, loses interest in politics and becomes a corporate lawyer.
Now, along the way both Branwens make thousands of choices, for example, whether to get a bus to the market or cycle, or whether to wear the red or the green coat. You could say that every time Branwen makes a decision a parallel universe version of Branwen makes a different decision.
This leads me to conclude that if you’re sitting there with your head in your hands lamenting that you should have gone to Cambridge instead of Oxford, or you should have got the bus that day you cycled to the market and got flattened by that idiot in the taxi, then you should stop fretting. In a parallel universe you did go to Cambridge and your husband’s the Prime minister. (For the sake of balance, in yet another one you are the Emperor of the Galaxy.)
Note: I may come back to this. Actually, in another universe I do come back to this and write the most brilliant philosophical piece that leads to the Nobel Prize and world peace, while you win a hundred million on the lottery.
Sorry it’s not this one.
A story written a while ago, originally published in The Walker and Other Stories
I used to be like you, leaning on a counter of my shop and staring out of the window at me walking by. You were not normal – I was. I didn’t see me in my eyes like you don’t now. You will come to understand that we are one, one day. In your world where everything has a place even me, I am the madman walking by, I am your future, you are mine. At the end of this street I will turn left and make my way home at last. I have thought it through, it is good again. I’ll sleep tonight.
It is 7 am, I am awake, it is still good. Time for breakfast: a cup of tea and a couple of slices of toast. I slept last night for at least five hours, that is a good night – five blissful hours of unconsciousness. Today I’ll walk to the shops again: I’ll go in to that one near the station where they sell the strong smelling tobacco, and I’ll ask the price of the chrome Zippo cigarette lighter in the window. I won’t buy it of course, how can I? Besides – I don’t smoke, any more. First stop – the bathroom – that’s a satisfying piss, the first one of the day always is, that’s when I really need to empty my bladder; no need to stand there and shake it about nonchalantly waiting. God – I hate public toilets, always some pratt trying to see over your shoulder, as if to compare dicks. Is it a natural consequence of man’s evolution, to stand, shoulders rubbing, next to complete strangers and stare at pastel coloured walls, while down below, your urine and theirs mix together before rushing on a journey that ultimately leads to the ocean and complete amalgamation?
On to the kitchen: such a complicated sequence of actions to co-ordinate this morning. Items required: tea bag, cup (must be clean), milk (must be fresh(ish)), sugar, kettle, kettle lead, water, bread (not too stale), margarine, grill, peanut butter, jam, big plate, small plate, butter (or margarine) knife, another knife for peanut butter, yet another for jam, tea spoon. Will the toast burn while I’m washing the knives? What now? Turn the grill off. Shit! It’s all getting cold now. Radio on, get something to read – what’s this? Last week’s free paper – that’ll do.
Chomp, chomp, delicious. ‘Test Drive the New Rover’. ‘First team lose by two goals.’ ‘Gang of shoplifters hit town.’ That’s an interesting headline. ‘Gangs of professional shoplifters are targeting stores in the town centre.’ Read on. Bullshit! Sensationalism! We’re all alone really. No such thing as a gang. Christmas soon – the adverts tell me, I like Christmas; more people about and the shopkeepers are too busy to notice me; I can just walk all day – walk and observe, watch you in your hamster cages.
On July the twenty-fourth
nineteen-ninety-nine,
the world will end.
If not then,
then certainly in the year two-thousand,
when the New Age dawns.
All from all time will have to account
for their behaviour, and will be judged
according to their ability.
So only the dull will enter,
the gates of the Abattoir,
and become Angel fodder.
Time and Space, here and then
will be gone as if,
as if,
they were only
ripples on the divine mind
But for George and Tim,
and Mary and Louise,
the World ended in 1998,
when they died,
from cars or cancer.
It’s no big deal,
the end of the World,
just another statistic,
but no-one there,
to record it.
I don’t know how this is going to turn out, but while Cheats and Liars is cooking I’m looking at all my works-in-progress deciding what story to focus on next. Trouble is, there’s a lot to choose from and I really would like to work on them all.
Here’s a batch under consideration.
From the Backfields
The favourite at the moment is From the Backfields. The first draft of this was written about 15 years ago. It’s been lingering at the bottom of a drawer and at the back of my consciousness ever since.
From the Backfields is set in the Welsh seaside town of Elchurch and follows Mick, a man puzzled by the mysteries of his own life, for 50 years. The story starts in 1963 when Mick is just 13 years old.
Elchurch is really Llanelli in a parallel universe. Perhaps all stories come from parallel universes, or, maybe, a parallel universe is created every time someone tells a story.
There’s a story in there somewhere. Continue reading
Updated May 2013
The first three chapters of Cheats and Liars. Publication Spring 2013.
Everyone’s a cheat or a liar, or both. What happens when the Greatest Living Artist in Wales decides to stop playing the game?
Brian Llewelyn is an artist at the peak of his powers, in fact he’s the Greatest Living Artist in Wales. Despite his success, or perhaps because of it, his life seems worthless. He decides to redeem himself by investing heavily in a community arts project.
Following this altruistic path exposes the fragile foundations his success is built on. His life disintegrates and his career evaporates as the corrupt liars and cheats propping him up turn on him.
Cheats and Liars is an exploration of success and its fallout set deep in the psyche of Brian Llewelyn, The Greatest Living Artist in Wales.
* First rough draft is complete. Here’s the first 3 chapters while the rest of the book is being edited for self-publishing in Spring 2013 – unless a publisher makes me an offer before then 
* Update May 2013 – Proofreading almost complete – nearly there
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -
CHEATS AND LIARS
You should know that I am a cheat and a liar.
O N E
“Are you ready?”
I’m in the kitchen snaffling a crumpet dripping with raspberry jam. Of course I’m not ready. I’m never ready. I am a work in progress.
“Come on. You don’t want to be late for your own exhibition.”
I gulp. A crumb of crumpet sticks in my throat. I cough and the crumb dislodges. Jam stained spittle dribbles over my lip.
“Look at you,” she tuts, and picks up a damp dishcloth.
After she rubs the goo from my mouth and from the lapel of the blue linen jacket I grab the car keys.
“I’m driving,” she says, taking the keys from my hand. “You can drink. You always do. Just try not to offend too many people.”
“What’s it matter? They stick like dry shit whatever I say.”
“Brian! You may be known as the Greatest Living Artist in Wales but nobody likes an arsehole.”
“Like? What’s like got to do with it? They don’t care and I don’t give a toss. It’s not real Lizi. It’s a performance.”
“Then perform, pretend.”
She’s right, and I’ll need to drink so that I can stomach the unspeakable pricks. Every year I bare my arse and they come like slime to a stagnant pond. This isn’t my life. This is some jerk spewing on cotton canvas and picking the overfull pockets of the privileged and the gullible. The gentle boy in me is lost; he’d feel sad to look through these eyes now, to see my betrayal with its parade of pseudosmilers and its fake humility. I am a hollow husk, devoid of depth. I am dead.
I strut into the exhibition hall, late, of course. Lizi’s at my side, as always.
“Fuck,” I say.
“Ssh! You don’t have to do this,” she whispers.
“Huh! What would these maggots feed on then?”
“Shut up Brian. Behave.”
But I’m right, it’s always the same. The blood-sucking creatures are here like tics on a donkey, appropriate reverent expressions turned towards me. Continue reading
Everyone should have a cat,
The days are different. Each day is different than any other day that has gone before – significantly different. Certain things are the same on many days but even those things are different when you zoom in on them. What does this mean? OK – elaborate. You can go into your (or any other) garden, or a park or a field, or I suppose, go and look at a roadside hedge. Choose a leaf. Study it. Go back the next day, at the same time if you like, and it will be different. It will have grown, or decomposed, or become wetter, or drier, or droopier, or perkier – and that’s just one leaf – even a rock – even a diamond will be different from one moment to the next. Some things will require a higher zoom, some things will be obvious, some things will cease to exist between one day and the next, and some things will come into existence. What does that mean? Time is the path through the tangled mess that is the universe – inner and outer (what a fucking cliché – sorry). Life is awareness, life is best when it is simply lived. Age comes to us, we move towards it – we are actually time travellers – we think we can only go in one direction – forward – but how do we know that? Answer – because we remember what has happened before and we can’t see what will happen in the future. But maybe that’s only because of the direction we’re looking in.
Rolling around – being blown – blowing – blown. I am blown through the universe – buffering – buffeting, being buffeted, blown and buffeted – through a universe of song and colour – everything – all of it, a glimpse, a snap, a snip a flash of breath, a spark, a one of them, too many clichés and the meaning is lost – too many words the same – There is, this is – a Time Space cubicle – it is in this cubicle and in the cube or is it a sphere – a ball, a world – a planet, and there under a blade of grass a chiv of life, light, feeling, and the light, the light the right, it’s all there here round and down and up and spherically shaped – - – - – - there is nothing to wait for to look for to hope for – it is here – now – the time space bubble bauble – inside and everywhere and then and now and then of course it is of course and you know it – you have to – no – should – should will – in the end discover – unearth find it always gleaming dreaming and worlds and planets and galaxies and universes and inside, deep inside – the light – the truth + time to learn and time to be and it is a start to finish / in between. So there so there it is it is there – Look.
My Dragon
it is time again
it has been long coming
poking at my consciousness
in the night – asleep
or should be
but it nags
it is my dragon
I woke it
demanded its breath
it resisted
said – let me lie
I am sleeping
I said – you are a dragon
not a dog
it sighed
and complied
now it nags
when neglected
yaps, bites
sometimes snarls
I sigh
and try
to comply
An extract from novel-in-progress Cheats and Liars
I hear a deep clear voice behind me.
“Be not afraid of greatness, some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”
It’s Phil, my friend, the actor. It was worth making the effort. He’s always good for a manly chat. He swings around and sits opposite me.
“I know thee well enough, thy name is Gloucester. Thou must be patient, we came crying hither . . .”
“Ah Phil.” I say. “Great timing as usual. What are you up to?”
“Me?” He says. “Me, I like hanging around in the arty centre I do. It stimulates the right glands. I am an arty centre pervert. What others get from washing-lines I get from being waited on by unemployed nasturtiums.”
“Oh shut up. Pint?”
I decide to get a couple of whisky chasers to go with the pints. Phil is fiddling with a phone when I get back to the table.
“Here.” He hands it to me. “It’s one of those touchy-feely bollocks. As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.”
It’s a nice phone, lovely colours, bright blues and oranges, crisp text, feels good in the hand, like a suitable stone – a hurlable stone.
I can’t be bothered. I drop it on the table.
It’s great to be with Phil. We don’t really need to say anything so it doesn’t matter what we say. He is my oldest friend and I forget, we forget each other, in between our always random meetings. It’s been a while, six months at least. He looks a bit tired.
“All OK Phil?” I ask.
“OK sir.” He salutes. “It’s the fucking cancer. He holds his hand out to silence me. “Details unimportant. Been away you see. Tripping in Switzerland. Driving a fast car, Chinese herbs, blood transfusions. Needles, mushrooms, always the bloody mushrooms, and the acid, legal there you see – with this guy – proper, pure. But I am dying, Egypt, dying. I go, and it is done, the bell invites me.” Continue reading
a short story
Tidying Up
He marched towards the anthill, broom held high above his head – he’d flatten it, get rid of those creepy-crawly invaders. How dare they set up camp on his lawn. It wasn’t his fault that it had been neglected. What was he supposed to do? He hadn’t been allowed in the house, or the garden come to that for years. Never mind, she was gone now, never to nag or threaten him again. He was free to be himself. That’s all he’d ever wanted after all.
He’d long suspected that she despised him, she resented the demands of their relationship and wanted to be on her own. She’d called him a vampire, what the hell was that supposed to mean? A soul-sucking vampire, the last thing she ever said to him, her very last words.
He threw the broom at the anthill. What did it matter now? There would be plenty of time to sort the garden out, plenty of time and plenty of money, at least she had left him that.
Angie was coming towards him across the unkempt grass. She had a can in each hand, cider for him in her right hand and lemonade for her in her left. That’s how she did it, she always put him first. She handed him the cider. He kissed her on the cheek and put his arm around her, patting her pregnant stomach. She smiled and kissed him back.
“Welcome to your new home.” He squeezed her shoulders. “Or should I say selamat datang ke rumah baru anda.”
This article first appeared on Adopt an Indie
When I started to write this I came up with what I thought was rather a clever little pun. “In his time ‘Shakespeare was no great shakes’. Hang on, I thought, let me google that just in case it’s been used before, and yes of course it has. The point is that nowadays we have at our fingertips – literally, access to the accumulated writings of just about every poor sap who has ever put quill to vellum or speech-to-text or any other way of recording words. There are loads of writers out there – millions upon millions of them and a small proportion are successful enough to be familiar to most literate people. Shakespeare is the Zeus in this pantheon of literary gods, yet in his day he was regarded by the then intellectual establishment as a “Johannes Factotum”, “a Jack of all trades”, nothing but “a second-rate tinkerer with the work of others” (Wikipedia).
Despite being an outsider, good old Will just got on with it and using his own wit and talent he produced The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. You can’t get more successful than that.
A Visit to Margam Steelworks
(i) FIRST IMPRESSIONS
A contribution of mine for the people’s panel on The Guardian’s comment is free section:
* * *
A strong smell in the car park heralded an in-store promotion. I hate being manipulated as much as I hate the smell of fish, so was immediately irked. It was the first time we had been to a supermarket for months, a visit prompted by curiosity and boredom rather than a desire to pick up a bargain.
We have never liked supermarkets, and like them less now since the lovely local wholefood shop we owned went bust recently, due, in part, to their behaviour. They take on brands tried and tested in small shops like ours and plant them at cheaper prices in strategic positions in their aisles. Then, when they’ve enticed our customers into their emporiums they quietly drop the products or replace them with watered-down own-brand versions.
In the past I’ve worked for companies that supply the big four, and can say from personal experience that they are ruthless when it comes to dealing with their suppliers too. They squeeze until the margins are so tight that the companies supplying them go out of business or are sold off for a pittance to larger brands. Despite our cynical and defensive attitude, we still succumbed to the Tesco trance and racked up a bill three times as high as it would have been if we had gone shopping in the local Co-op.
Don’t be fooled by the price cuts and the friendly visage, the supermarkets exist only to make the maximum profit for their owners; the customers are simply part of the equation, and that equation involves the customer spending at least the same amount of money on each visit. Tesco’s move to cut prices will have little effect on us, the damage has already been done. Who’s next? You have been warned.
* * *
Direct link to the full piece with comments
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/30/peoples-panel-supermarket-wars