Cafe Aphra: An Online Community for Writers

Ellie stared from the stands, dreaming of the goalkeeper. He was diving around, squelching the mud into his body. It wasn’t the first time she’d gone to watch him play; she knew there was something about him, something that entranced her. A tap on her shoulder broke the spell; she'd forgotten that she wasn’t here alone. Ellie could tell Chrissy didn’t want to go watch a local football game in a soggy field; she’d been promised shopping and calamari. “Which one is he anyway? The one you fancy.” “I never said I fancied him; he’s just, he’s interesting.” Ellie pointed as discreetly as possible at the goalkeeper. “Him.” Chrissy huffed. “He’s a six, a seven at best - what’s so interesting about him?” “Just watch.” They watched him in silence. He jumped and floundered; he wasn’t a good goalkeeper, and he was getting desperate. He was letting in goal after goal until one rebounded straight off him like a cannonball be...

‘A penny for them,’ Agnes says, just as she had some thirty-plus years ago when out on their first date. She’s said it many times in between too. It became their thing. And whenever she said it, Jimmy’s thoughts returned to the icy winter night of big city bright lights – to the Italian restaurant – to the night he tried a little too hard – to the night he got himself into a tongue-tied tizzy that caused the wrong words to come out in the wrong order. Jimmy had retreated to the sanctity of his shell, sure only of one thing: that he’d blown his chance.  He felt marooned sitting there, alone amongst a hubbub of happiness. So they ate in silence.  It was Agnes who broke the spell. ‘A penny for them,’ she said, ‘for your thoughts.’ To anyone else he would have replied with a little white lie: ‘Oh, it’s nothing… really… I’m fine… just a little tired.’  Her voice was gentle, soft, and calming, so he told her the truth. Agnes listened, and her eye...

In my mind there is a bed, starched and white and you lie there, stirruped. I can’t look. Standing at the window my eyes fumble for a view, and fake a movie cityscape: the glamour of a highrise Hong Kong skyline, non-specific urban sprawl; hanzi hurled across the fishstink of a market- place in alien humidity. They have sapped your strength, tapped you with their needles, drugged you blind in this British military hospital. The pain is a balloon; you let it go, watch it bump across the tide-washed sands of Perranporth, puddled huge with sky, float over the black rocks at Gwithian, the littoral of home, hang at the limit of a cliff edge, where the thrift cling on for dear life to their babies bonneted in pink. It is September; those lanes - bordered with a cross of hedge and granite bank - are beaded red with bryony; sand between your toes, walk down them now and knock. It is tea-time at Trevalga and they wait to hear the answer: boy or cheel? ...

They mill around the desk, crotchety wasps, all of them, calling to the receptionist, making caustic asides, until finally relieved of their luggage by capable young men in tall hats, they stretch their livid lips into smiles and cross-fade to their rooms. I do not smile. I’m waiting for Dylan Thomas. Feeling distanced from my own narrative, as if reliving a demoralising flashback, I’m waiting for a poet whom I love more than life itself, in order that we can speak, soul to soul, artist to artist.  Yesterday, the managing editor of Mademoiselle introduced Candy Bolster to him. To Dylan Thomas! Over lunch they talked poetry and the rights to Under Milkwood. Candy mentioned all this with a breathless flourish in the elevator at eight this morning and a sob crawled from my throat before leaping, lemming like, into the space between our feet. Tears brimmed as I slid through the yawning lift door and sped towards the restroom. I’m in the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel, waiting....

I found a grave. I came on the evidence one day, in a forgotten file, randomly numbered by my camera.  I remember walking through white snakes of sand, lifted by the wind. It blew straight off the North Sea; ice in its jaws. Always seeking I had strode out, looking for messages in bottles, finding only crackled plastic. Holding my camera with numb hands, it had been too cold to take many photos. Further up the sand, I passed through the iodine egg-stink of seaweed, then, crunched through broken shells to the path, up and away from the rage of the ocean. The wooden steps were filled with sand, an oil company’s unmaintained project. Corporate social responsibility ravaged by the elements. On the cliff above the beach, marram grass, pink campion, gorse and broom, grew, holding the sand together with their roots. The fierce wind had stolen my breath as I looked towards the new horizon. Crumpled red and orange petals had led me through the grass, past the remai...

You see him now and then buying pizza He ain’t one of life’s experimenters The man with the negative charisma Who darkens every room he enters Someone told me he was married once Now he makes no impression on life The man to whom no one responds Who reckons he doesn’t need a wife Naturally his colour of choice is grey He’ll nod a “good morning” as he passes But he’s the man with nothing to say Who blinks behind his plastic glasses His name in the Book of Life’s a misprint His face on the page a careless gaffe He’s the man who leaves only footprints Who takes undiscovered photographs Though you’d notice no lack of gaiety If he vanished in holy ascension To another world where he’s a deity Who vibrates in the fifth dimension Wouldn’t that be a kick in the head If he swooshed skyward every night? The man who flies while you’re in bed Who dances in the yellow moonlight by Derek Dohren

‘You’ve got something under your nose.’ With a giggle, Trudy wiped a finger under her nose, inspected the white powder there and sucked it clean. ‘I always get a bit nervous when it’s live.’ Hamish smiled thinly. He didn’t like live tv either but didn’t need any stimulation to get through a ten minute slot in the Blue Peter Garden; his ambition was enough. Ambition which would take him, if all went to plan, to Hollywood within five years. They straightened as the director, a terrifying platinum blond with ambitions to move into Sunday night drama as a stepping stone to HBO, arrived. ‘Right, let’s get on. Where are the brats?’ Half a dozen small children, all wearing brightly coloured wellies and Blue Peter cagoules, emerged from the shed, led by a production assistant. ‘That’s no good! Give them shovels, or hoes or something. We need them doing something useful in the background. Hurry up Sally, for God’ sake!’ Sally rushed back into the shed, emerged with a handful of shiny new tools,...