Lockdown Day 12: Friday 3rd April, 2020 Grandma is sitting in a large chair in the centre of the bay window, silhouetted by the matriarchal sun. The armchair dwarfs her. She was only ever five feet tall. And that was before she shrank with the passing of the years. Always a force of nature, though […]
Category: Book of the Dead
because seven eight nine
Lockdown Day 11: Thursday 2nd April, 2020 In the lounge, the grand piano stands rooted in its spot to the left of the bay window. As it has since the day it was wrestled up the stairs into the house. Gleaming. An awesome display of profligacy when bought in the Fifties. Deemed licentious dissolution and […]
all passed in the blink of an eye
when mystic trees were barren
Lockdown Day 9: Tuesday 31st March, 2020 We pull up outside the russet sandstone tenement. This is still an exclusive area despite the city’s decline, a peaceful, easy feeling of tree-lined avenues, parklands and immaculate tenements. The curtains are drawn in many windows as a mark of respect. For forty years Aunt Vivien lived here, […]
fucking All Sorts
Lockdown Day 8: Monday 30th march 2020 As the sullen sun struggles to pierce gathering clouds once more, we muster behind the hearse to walk the half-mile or so to the cemetery. The cortege is heavily rugged up for the wan Scottish winter, dark heavy coats, long woollen scarves, shined thick-soled shoes. All except for […]
celebrant sons and daughters of Abraham commemorate common ancestry with drawn sword
Lakeshore Drive hustled Lincoln Park
Lockdown Day 6; Saturday 28th March, 2020 Lakeshore Drive hustled Lincoln Park twenty floors below, late-evening traffic clogging the highway from the Old Fashioned grandeur of the Drake hotel to the malt liquor melee of the Addison turnoff. Lake Michigan sparkled in slow evening light, the twinkling rays of the retreating sun fading across that […]
liquid sunshine bound by the sky’s tears
Lockdown Day 5: Friday March 27th March, 2020 Uncle Lachlan Ruadh? Whisky – liquid sunshine bound by the sky’s tears. The water of life finished him off young before I was eight. He was always fun, the Big Bad Wolf of eager infant imagination. He never opened his mouth without a joke to crack or […]
Capstan full-strength fog
Lockdown Day 4: Thursday March 26th, 2020 Next? Grandpa – emphysema. I was seven by then. He was bedridden as long as I could remember, wreathed in a constant Capstan full-strength fog, assuring the doctor on his frequent visits that he’d really, really given up smoking this time despite the dead-give-away haze you could […]
she’s still dead
Lockdown Day 3: March 25th, 2020. I paused to marshal delinquent thoughts.“This is a pretty unusual way to pass the time, Terry. You sure this is what you want? It’s not very… uplifting.” He nodded, rigid shoulders framing syncopated breathing, “Humour me.” “Humour you? That’s easy. What do you call a Glaswegian in a […]