Uncle Do was a wise old dodo. He was not in great shape as he happened to be the oldest in his neck of the woods. His bones creaked, his jaws hurt when he chewed, but he was the only one of his flock who could still fly. Which made…

The one with God — When Escobar dropped his baton, two or three people were aiming to pick it up, with none more prominent than Gustavo Gomez, known to all as El Matador. He was just as ruthless and bloodthirsty, and astute businessman that he was in less than six years he was reputed to…

The most revered French author was something of a lecher who loved few things more than sex. He had a string of lovers and mistresses, including Sarah Bernhardt, and his own daughter-in-law. The French are as reluctant to discuss this as the British, Dickens’ blatant racism_ and I don’t just…

This story was inspired by the Japanese film Love like falling petals in which the heroine Misaki is afflicted with a progeroid syndrome, making her age rapidly, putting an end to the beautiful romance that had bloomed between her and her photographer lover Haruke. This is a story set in…

I published “A Short Film Script” in April 2018; this one is a modified version. Readers might like to compare them LONG SHOT: Smoke-filled Club. MEDIUM SHOT: Man and Woman are dancing lasciviously together. MEDIUM CLOSE SHOT: They kiss. CLOSE-UP: Contact of lips. MEDIUM CLOSE SHOT: They smile at each…

I. Lachrymatorium The lachrymatory at Lusail will not hold all the tears of the mothers children and wives of the sixteen thousand and twenty one who lost their lives As they fell down the scaffold Or had their skulls crushed by falling concrete in forty five degrees of heat! II Horror and…

The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is among one of the most famous novellas ever written. Conrad had effectively travelled the Congo river from Matadi where it flows into the Atlantic to its other end in the east, Stanleyville or Kisangani. He probably met the infamous Stanley, but there…

Charles Baudelaire was probably the first of France’s many poètes maudits, so dubbed because of their nonconformism and for their refusal to consider any subject taboo, and for which he was castigated by the literary establishment of the day. He had travelled extensively, and indulged in many of the activities…