Author: Thomas Kelly

Chapter 1 The last time she had been to Glasgow, it was dull and rained grey. The student digs were cold, damp and generally miserable. Her then-boyfriend insisted she came up for his finals week. There had been a lot of drinking and then some rather inconsequential groping on a single bed. A flatmate coming…

It is two a.m. The main arrival terminal at Dubai is shaped like a pangolin, resting in a shallow sand grave. Steel white ribs brace its bleached skin tight providing shelter against the searing heat. It lies inert like a giant slug, too fat or lazy to move and ingests passengers delivered constantly on conveyor…

The large brass hinged, black stained wooden front door of the British Bank of the Middle East opened onto a litter strewn, dusty straight road. Hot wind had funnelled plastic cups and wrapping papers from the night’s kebab meals like tumbleweed along the curbs and drink tins had lodged themselves into the storm grates. No…

In our writing class of 14, we had to follow the previous person’s page, and I was almost the last. These will all be put together to make the final story called The Hat. This is my page and I will post the whole story when all finished. Looking through the file and as his fingers…

From the moment he saw it, that wet pink slip of paper wedged into the hedge, he knew that it was a lottery ticket. Always conscientious and meticulous he picked it up and put it along with the other pieces of litter from his walk into the now rather bulging coat pocket. He was not…

Last week in Nevis in the West Indies I met the wonderful author and local historian Dr June Goodfield and then by chance Roger Daltry. She told me that stories of the Caribbean tend to concentrate on drugs, slavery, pillage and not forgetting the Pirates! There was so much more she said. So following on from…

Nevis, British West Indies I arrived here on British Airways that stopped first in Antigua and then made the quick ten minute flight to Basseterre, capital of St. Kitts and finally a water taxi landed us onto Nevis.   I had thought that Bahrain to Dhahran was the shortest commercial flight but am wrong on…

She stood at the rail looking out to the horizon in that early morning. The West African coast burned in the rising sun. It was already getting hot and the passengers squinted through cheap dark glasses bought in the kiosks of the Liverpool docks, unused to the white searing light. The view was unnatural to…

The car slipped along the rocky track, the tyres were almost bald. The sides were shiny and slippery with oil. It was never built for this terrain, but after many years in Kabul as a taxi and having carried everything from goats to bullets through potholes and deep mud, it had form. Fast and dark…

Another first page of a novel perhaps. Cribbs looked up at the canopy, bulging above him. It was full and solid, like a half-melon and reminded him of the breast that he had kissed last night before he left for this, his last mission. The night air was cold and he counted the seconds down, knowing…