An anthology of creative writing from students at the University of Glasgow, in 5 parts under the theme of Journeys:
Nameless, a short story by Swara Shukla
Chessman, Warrior, King, a poem by Mairi Murphy
My Favourite Place, a short story by Aike Jansen
Abduction on Memoria Lane, a short story by Gerry Erang
The Glasgow and South of Spain Olive Oil Company Ltd., a poem by Tom McDonald
The blasting wind screams along the narrow street, engulfing me within its solemn immensity like a frosty cloak. Tickling sensations rush through my body. I imagine giant ants, like those I have seen on TV earlier, relentlessly crawling under my skin. As I think more about these little creatures, I’m suddenly suffused with a profound sense of inescapable sadness.
At a book fair in a church on a square in Inveraray, I read a poem by Liz Lochhead. It’s the only poem she ever wrote about her husband dying, a friend I’m there with says as she shows me the book. My eyes pass each word slowly, while I travel up the road with her, Liz Lochhead, and her late husband, savouring the Gaelic names of towns and expressive phrases, sitting down on a wooden bench at a book fair in a church on a square in Inveraray.
“Stop!”
He sighs and brings the car to a stop for the third time in twenty minutes.
There goes the family dinner.
When I look at my eldest daughter, my second wife stares back at me. I see it now in my daughter’s dark, almond-shaped eyes and the way her nose pulls down slightly when she smiles. I see it now in that look she gets when I begin to speak. Like she’s typing all the words out in her head, so that she can go back over the conversation later to read between the lines.
“It’s just…” Rishabh turns another page of the book he is pretending to read, “I don’t like the way he looks at me.”
I try to be indignant. I should be able to defend you better, brother. It hurts that I can’t stand up to my own son, when you were always ready to fight the world for me.
“Don’t talk about your uncle like that.” A feeble attempt.
A man huddles in a doorway, shielding his silhouette from the passing patrol car. They will move him on, or worse still, throw him in the back of the vehicle; another bum to be dumped in the menacing chaos of the shelter. More than once they have asked ‘Haven’t you got a home to go to?’
