The Little Girl Who Worried (2010) (unfinished)

There was once a little girl who was very worried.

She worried that her mummy and daddy would die.

She worried that she didn't have any friends.

She worried that her teachers thought she was stupid.

She was even worried about being worried all the time, which was very worrying.

She decided to write down all her worries, great and small, on little pieces of paper, and make paper aeroplanes out of them, so that she could throw her worries far, far away.

So she did.

There was a big pile of paper aeroplanes by the time she finished, because, as you know, she had lots of worries.

She wrote on one that she was worried that her clothes weren't as nice as the other little girls' clothes.

She wrote on another that she was worried that her chin stuck out like a witch's.

She wrote on another that she was worried that her feet smelt.

She had so many worries that the worry monster came.

It was a big ugly brute, made of all the secret worries that everyone has but doesn't tell anyone. And now he was stood in front of the little girl.

Which was worrying.

The little girl threw a paper plane at the worry monter. It flew like a dart into his eye. It roared in agony and stumbled (half) blindly backwards. The little girl kept throwing paper planes at the monster (and there were loads) and each sunk into it's flash as though it were rotting fruit until it was a pulpy dead mess. Then the little girl cleaned up (there wasn't much work, most of the goo had soaked into the paper), and she never worried again.

The End.

This is a place (2009)

Here are some nettles

Here are some stones

Here is some grass

Here is a wall

In these pictures you can’t hear the wind roaring

Or feel it shoving at your back

Winds that shatter walls and break necks

Winds that wail like feverish children

Winds that seethe and hiss

Winds like a Mother’s insistent “Hush”

Winds like a lover’s breathe on your neck

Winds like a hand at the small of your back guiding you to where you should have been all along

This is a place where the words fall silent in your mouth

This is a place to stand and stare agog

This is a place where you will be kept warm and sheltered

This is a place where all you need is provided for you

This is a place where you’re allowed to feel sad or disappointed

This is a place where you’re allowed to feel alive with the sunshine in your veins

This is a place where there is comfort in your insignificance

This is a place where you touch the bark and smell the grass

This is a place where dead leaves cluster at your feet

This is a place where everyone should come

This is a place where the cushioned ground rises to meet you

This is a place to cast spells

This is a place to collect stones, pine cones, leaves and sticks

This is a place where green meets yellow

This is a place to collect white heather for luck

This is a place where you won’t understand the signposts

This is a place to play hide and seek

This is a place to wear a green coat and disappear into the trees

This is a place where the trees are taller than the tallest man

This is a place people will write songs about one day

This is a place where you could fall asleep for a hundred years and when you woke up everything would be the same

This is a place to be a solitary shadow, insular and content

This is a place to be a mirror for other people to look into

This is a place where you close your eyes and the backs of your eyelids are green

This is a place where you can see the world

This is a place you can get to anywhere from if you have enough time, money, a map, a good pair of boots, accommodation when you need it and a good grasp of the local language

This is a place your father came to once

This is a place to remember that you are young

This is a place to remember that one day you will be old

This is a place to remember that one day you will die

This is a place of ancients.

This is a place where all the hooks that tether you to the place where you usually are are removed

This is a place where you are weightless

This is a place where I kissed you once but didn’t tell you

This is a place where I loved you once but didn’t tell anyone

This is a place where if you listen hard enough God whispers

This is a place where a lost glove is the saddest thing in the world

This is a place where you holler echoless into the wind with lungs full of ice

This is a place to hear the dry dead leaves crunching under your feet

This is a place to remember a time and feel sad

This is a place to remember another place and feel long-forgotten longing pulling at you

This is a place where all is luminous and lush

This is a place where you hear footsteps behind you but don’t feel compelled to turn around and see who it is

This is a place for one last lingering look

This is a place to crash glorious through the undergrowth whooping like a child and ruining your best boots

This is a place to hear a sound you haven’t heard for years and years

This is a place where no birds sing, or squirrels scurry

This is a place to hear the birds sing and see the squirrels scurry

This is a place where all is well with the world

This is a place where the sun makes you blink

This is a place to be wary of the slippery leaves and mud, so treacherous underfoot

This is a place to think without thinking

This is a place to recall childhood

This is a place where you can spy on people and they’d never know

This is a place of mud, leaves, grass, trees and clean air in the heart of the industrial North

This is a place where you can forget

This is a place where you can remember

From my island (2009)

From my island I can watch as my every need is fulfilled

From my island I can watch as my enemies are smote

From my island I can see all the calmness in the world

From my island I can see all the things I’ll never achieve

From my island I can see my family

From my island I can see what all my friends will look like in 40 years

From my island I can see what I’d look like if I lost weight / had surgery / cut off my hair

From my island I can see blinding white blonde sand

From my island I can see what she sees in me

From my island I can see what my mum wishes she could change about me

From my island I can see yachts which are worth more than my parent’s house

From my island I can see a pile of my favourite fruit

From my island I can watch my unborn children play

From my island I can see a happy, healthy life for myself

From my island I can see why I need to be alone now

From my island I can see how much I am loved

From my island I can see a letter that I wrote long ago but didn’t send

From my island I can see my bravery retreat across the horizon

From my island I can watch my fearlessness ebb away

From my island I can watch the waves erode, destroy and scar

From my island I can see the people I love leave me

From my island I can watch as two people fall in love

From my island I can watch two people dance themselves into oblivion

From my island I can smell the shrimp cooking

From my island I can smell the sea full of salt and piss and tears and joy and death

From my island I can smell decay

From my island I can hear the latest chart toppers

From my island I can see pools of light

From my island I can see the rockpools

On my island I can savour every breath

On my island I can see every promise I ever made

On my island I can see other people cuddled up

On my island I can see my reflection in others

From my island I can see a carnival of happy people

From my island I can see planes

From my island I can see the stranded

From my island I can see moon and stars and sky

From my island I can watch snow turn into ice

From my island I can see skyscrapers

On my island it’s getting dark

On my island I can see thick air

On my island I can see everyone I love

On my island I can see everything I’ll never do

On my island I can see a pile of clothes. They’re not mine

On my island I can see a light

On my island I can see a spark

On my island I can see something stirring in the dark

On my island I can see a path I’ve never walked

On my island I can watch reality blur

The Savage Beloved : Delilah (2009)

Ladies and Gentlemen, Vaudevillians, cherubs and seraphim from either edge of this eternity, greetings, salutations, and our heartiest welcome. To those of you who have graced us with your companionship before we extend a special greeting. Already I peruse freckled faces I have seen before – eyes shining, nostrils flared like those of wild horses, lips trembling in anticipation.

We will show such sights, such wonderments, that on your deathbeds you will recount and be amazed still.

Wandered we have, travelled through sickness and squalor, merriment and heady milieu, to guppy down round your friendly fires and tell you some things that we know to be true. Wonderful, terrible things we’ve seen, beauty, tragedy, villainy, chivalry, alchemy, lobotomy. All of the evils in this world that should be avoided, and all of those that should be indulged.

But hold! Hold! YOU! YOU have participated before. You witnessed the presentation of Delilah. Delilah was 300lb Doberman bitch, with a hellish temperament, teeth that could dispatch of a pig carcass in minutes, and rabies of such an advanced state that veterinarian and priest alike were afeard to approach her. But Beatrice was not. Her dulcet whispers could lull the beast into a living sleep, and, as though there were an affinity between them, it would suffer to be caressed and mauled about the maw. The audience were stunned into silent astonishment, and thereafter would brawl tooth and bloody claw to witness the act.

Delilah, regardless, was a danger to all, and in kindness ought to have been lain to rest, but she bore a litter of nine pups, each as rabid as she, and in truth there is no such sport as watching them, still blind from birth, snarling and ravaging each other with bloody gums. Eight of the bastards perished, succumbing to the disease they had sucked from their mother’s teat. The bitch, even through the cloud of her madness, was much aggrieved, roared and snarled for her dead babies, and became hellish protective of the last remaining pup, which was named Star. It was this very lifeblood of the birth mother, that daring Beatrice, having sated the savage with melodies secret, sweetly slipped from beneath her vicious claws. Silence blanketed the auditorium. Our heroine’s inaudible murmurings were like shining diamonds in the night, as she ascended the trapeze, with whimpering cargo in her arms, up, up, up into nowhere, it’s mother bright-eyed, but unmoving, beneath them. We beheld Beauty suspended in the night, borne by our own frozen breath. And still the beast didn’t snarl, or pace, or bay for her baby, simply stayed beneath them, entranced but alert, bright eyes fixed unrolling on her precious one. Only when she saw her pup gripped in Beatrice’s one outstretched hand, did her body begin to tremble, and urgent, wild, yelping noises began to form behind her rancid fangs. She watched as her mistress’ fingers unfurled one by one from the whimpering pup’s neck. And only as the baby Star plummeted through the air did the Beastmother finally erupt, roaring like hellfire, slinging ropes of rabid slaver over the nearest men who had retreated far back from where they had stood in wonderment but moments before. Delilah lunged and caught her baby in her jaws, then withdrew to a far corner, the very epithet of fury, daring any man to approach. And if they had, I doubt not but her babe would have feasted on human flesh that night.

But our own Beatrice, now seeming trapped, still suspended high above, had no exit but to descend into the pit of the beast she had so sorely riled. The audience were petrified – surely she would be killed! Even our own crew were unsure of what to do next. But our Beatrice calmly gave the order to be lowered down. Silence once more drowned the auditorium, but this time not in awe, but pure, choking terror. Delilah was invisible, having drawn back far from view, but for the steam of her rancid breath, and her eyes, like embers of hellfire. Upon descending Beatrice started to trill that same strange tune, quietly, quietly, only for Delilah. There was no response from the bitch until Beatrice’s feet touched the ground as she dismounted the trapeze, and a low, terrible growl rolled all around us. The audience were incapable of doing anything but look on, as though they too were under some sinister stupefying spell. Still Beatrice sang and slowly approached the Beast, a tiny birdlike thing, whom Delilah could dispatch with one snap of her jaws. And yet, she didn’t. She dipped back into the darkness, and re-emerged nursing her pup, our little Star, in her mouth. Beatrice came closer, and once more a strange, loving empathy radiated between them. The frozen crowd looked on, agog, as Beatrice took the baby from Delilah’s compliant jaws. That was the night the beast was broken by the bird.