The frequent sound of a hacking cough told her husband’s story.  It was not a smoker’s cough, but the sound of lungs full of darkness, losing their fight for health.  A chest that had inhaled too much asbestos, unaware of the death sentence it would bring with it.  He only left the house to shuffle…

The young woman’s been living there for five years now.  There have been some big changes, and some puzzling ones (to anyone watching the comings and goings, if anyone ever does). She arrived with a baby, who turned into a sweet little head standing up to the window, peering over the sill, grinning and waving…

She’d moved at least six times now, and every place she found was more uncomfortable than the last.  She never allowed herself to stop, and the exhausting routine of packing up her few possessions, and heading for somewhere different had become strangely normal.  ‘On s’habitue a tout’, you can get used to anything, she kept…

I’ve heard him quite a few nights, or early in the morning.  Sometimes it’s a playful, chatty sound, but mostly, it’s crying.  I think I’ve seen him once or twice, but he never has an adult I could attach him to – he is always toddling about by himself.  He must belong to the garden…

I see him every day, at least twice, in more than one place.  Sometimes I pass him risking his life walking on the footpath-less road away from our street.  Once I spotted him cycling away from the newsagent’s. There are so many suspicious people, on mysterious missions around here.  Today, for the first time, he…

As many of my blogs have already indicated, I like holding everything in my life in a very tight grip.  Already, my health has flown the coop, and the children always teeter on its edges.  But now, it’s the car.  The unbiddable, unpredictable, enfuriating black pest.  The low point was definitely being towed, helplessly, to…

I break away from all things, all people and, after a few steps of dragging responsibilities, I start to look ahead.  Looking around will come later, I hope.  The ground’s unsteady, so I concentrate on the tree roots and rocks, vaguely aware of the blinks of sunlight catching my head through the pine trees.  I…

I read somewhere last year that acclaimed authors including Joyce and Dickens were also great walkers, an attribute that is reflected in their work.  Hmmm.  I am most definitely not a great walker, and wonder if this inability to wander the streets, or climb mountains, is always going to condemn me to what someone recently…