MAN MADE FLASH FICTION BLOG

"Indira, get the passports ready," said Kash as they approached the gate. His wife complied, and soon they were through and heading for the luggage carousel.      Once outside at the taxi rank they savoured the warm Italian afternoon. Soon they'd be sitting down to eat at their hotel.      "It was a good summer this year Kash, certainly by Scottish standards," said Indira.      "Yes," laughed her husband of almost sixty years, "a mild summer in Scotland is infinitely preferable to baking in Mumbai, just as a warm Indian winter beats freezing in Britain."      Both long retired, Kash and Indira lived on multiple pensions earned working in the UK and in their native country. As usual on their seasonal changes of residence they were making an en-route stopover in Europe, this year Rome. It had become a routine they both prized greatly.      After dining at the hotel the couple sat out on their ro...

Tony couldn’t play pedal steel, but he was a policeman who checked permits other visitors required back then.      A wandering Spanish cock, despite beautiful wife and home, he revelled in the glamour of our music-making.      He’d disappear after gigs for a private performance with some lucky tourist sweating under his spell.      A pleasant yet despicable man, I still think about his wife. CC BY-ND 4.0 Russell Cavanagh

Read along while you listen to Canadian story-reader Heather Sherman's treatment of my slice-of-life flash-fiction  Obituary : 😎 The original story, as written: Doob was a soak who drank alone at his regular barstool in his local, where today the dark interior contrasted with a warm sunlit afternoon outside. He had extended his lunchtime drinking, skipped returning to work, had told his employer he would be out of the office to follow up an unspecified list of potential new prospects.      Donald O'Brien hated his job, hated his life.      Looking straight ahead he saw himself nursing his whisky and beer in the mirror sat behind the optics. This ritual he would repeat until, probably some time mid-evening, he would stagger back to the empty home he no longer shared with his wife.      Now well into his early thirties, Doob's hair had thinned and jowls were becoming noticeably pronounced. The creased suit he wore was just as sha...

Ross heard a commotion at the square. He went over, finding young adults of both sexes - plus a few more variations, if you believe such things - taunting a street preacher.      "Abortion is murder," proclaimed the preacher, his voice amplified through microphone and speaker.      "My body, my choice!" young adults with wombs screamed back at him.      "But it's not your body," insisted the preacher.      "My body, my choice!" screamed the empty wombs.      "From the first cell formed after conception, the foetus DNA is different from that of the mother - so abortion is murder," repeated the preacher.      "My body, my choice!" screamed the empty wombs. Now standing in front of the man, Ross turned to face the baying crowd. He held up both hands in a plea for silence.      The screaming subdued.      "Right at this moment," he announced, "I ...

"Who was that?"      "A blast from the past, Jim London," said Ross, putting down his mobile with one hand and scratching his head with the other.      "You were pretty abrupt with him," said Lesley.      "Yeah, well, fell out some years ago."      "Where did you know him from?"      "When I lived in England. We had one or two common interests, one might say."      Ross was clearly agitated by the call. He'd hoped for a relatively uninterrupted afternoon with his visitor.      "What's he like," said Lesley.      "A unique blend of considerate, kind-hearted, and supercilious dickhead," declared Ross.      "Being a wee bit judgemental there Ross?"      "Nah, just lived experience and keen observation."      "So what was he after?"      "Just what you heard. He's comin...

Ross remembered his mother making supper each night as the family sat in front of their rented 24" black & white Phillips telly.      It was usually something lightweight on, such as Morecambe and Wise , though Ross does recall one Play for Today episode where a distressed wife smashed a dresser of crockery, making his mother shake her head and mutter, "Och! What a waste!"      Supper would be around half-seven or eight with side plates containing toast or a sandwich and a couple of ginger snaps appearing on everyone's chair arms. Mother would then disappear back through to the kitchen to fetch mugs of sweet, milky tea. Ross' father might be at home, depending on his shift pattern.      One day his father was thoughtful enough to knock a hole between kitchen and living room so that supper might be passed straight through the resulting "workmanlike" service hatch, thus reducing wasteful journeys via their short hall. The ...

Slapped senseless day one then swaddled in sleep, do you know who, what, why, when or where you dream?      Come many, come many, come many, come one to a realm that sits beyond hell unseen, where snakes shake hands dipped in pockets of poison.      And under the milk sky a brass band play tacit, and even a poet forgets to write.      To understand how truth sits above our received wisdom, see the prince of the power of the air spin his lie over this earth.      He knows your days here number no more than a breath. CC BY-ND 4.0 Russell Cavanagh 2 Corinthians 4:4 - KJV

Two men met me at Central Station. One stood almost a foot taller than the other. I couldn't determine their ages.      My journey in from the coast had been uneventful - isn't that what they say? - and I'd hoped to spend a few hours wandering round the city centre browsing second-hand bookshops, seeing if any of my street friends might be about.      I wasn't at all aware of ever having met either of these two men now in front of me. Their appearance was entirely unexpected.      "Why did you come to Glasgow, Ross?" the taller one asked as his companion turned to observe a crowd of arrivals over on the next platform.      "Boredom," I offered. "I just needed to get away from my small town, to get some city-centre buzz." I had no idea why I was even talking to these guys. And yet, why did it at the same time seem so natural?      "You almost caught us off-guard," said the taller one. "We...

I've acquired a small dark demon who wears two distinct faces. With one, he will flitter, flutter, not quite flatter, obsequious in his manner. The other conceals a malignant mischievous smile redolent of a lower order. Don't think I dislike this wicked little weevil; au contraire, he's my reminder to abstain from all appearance of evil. I'll even show him these words, prepared to see him wroth, describing how I wish he'd just get lost.   CC BY-ND 4.0 Russell Cavanagh 1 Thessalonians 5:22 - KJV

This particular morning, on a Sunday as it happened, I followed my usual daily routine: prayer, Bible, breakfast, all before deciding how to spend another day alone. And as the late summer morning smelt fresh from the previous night's rain, and with the sky promising to brighten, I decided on an early walk.      What better way to start a new day , a new week ? I thought, heading towards Main Street and the promenade beyond. Life's joys, even in this troubled world, tend to be simple when one lives in a small coastal town.      The streets were eerily quiet, and I realized that no traffic moved: no aged drivers heading early to the supermarket, having risen after a sensibly sober Saturday night; no boy racers tearing up the town's back roads in 1.2 litre dinky toys that boasted fancy tires and chrome exhausts costing more than the actual cars, neds and chavs burning off what alcohol and other drugs remained in their systems from the previous ni...

Despite both of us carrying 2G technology in our pockets, and because we never bothered to exchange numbers, bumping into John remains down to luck.      It'll most likely happen once or twice over the months of what we laughingly call a Scottish summer; when we might be graced with a brief window of sun under which we can occupy the high dugouts and watch over the Clyde with its array of islands.      Perhaps because of their impromptu nature, our conversations will go in many directions, cover a broad range of topics, where no reference is ever made, certainly by John, to the world of online. This is because he has neither computer nor internet at home – and why would he? He is of a world I also come from, of a way of being I once belonged to. Only, he has managed not to abandon it, unlike many of the rest of us.      John instead relies on rehearsing television news seen a decade ago, remembering a radio report broadcast la...

My turn came to answer the question put to each of us on the panel - the others being far younger than me - about if we’d ever secretly pried into a lover's online messages.      "When I was last in a relationship social media didn't even exist," I said. "In fact," I continued, "the only options back then were either to steam open envelopes very carefully or to listen in quietly to phone conversations from a landline extension in another room."      The other guests laughed, as did our talk show host; none of them quite believing the truth of the world before them. CC BY-ND 4.0 Russell Cavanagh Song of Solomon 8:6 - KJV

“Between ninety and four-fifty for a crown but I recommend an inlay at three-fifty.” His words breezed out as if we were of course equals participating in some healthy economy; sadly a notion no longer within my reach. So I aired my stand-by line oft used for levity and to hide embarrassment on such occasions: “I know I look rich but I’m not” - confirming with no trace of envy, “I’m not a dentist.” Though I have time to decide still, I suspect my now-over-sixty visage will transition closer to that witnessed in any Texas crack whore’s police mugshot as yet another late-life extraction proves inevitable. Anyway, I learned some time ago to accept how fate leads us all ultimately into a tomb-stoned sepulchre. CC BY-ND 4.0 Russell Cavanagh   Ecclesiastes 3:20 - KJV

A couple of packets came through my door when I was still laid in bed. I couldn't be arsed to get up and check what they were, even though postal mail is such a rarity these days.      So I lay there luxuriating, thinking it might be my invite at last for that most infamous medical procedure of our age - one I would decline, just as at the same time I wanted this hiatus to conclude.      But what had arrived actually turned out to be an annual notice of increase in local taxes and a polling card for an election I will not take part in. ("We're from the government, and we're here to help," the "nine words no American wants to hear" as President Reagan once famously said.)      A bit later after breakfasting on black coffee, orange marmalade and burnt toast, I went out into the morning sunshine for a walk.      Some ways along the street I became aware of a youth attached to a dog on the pavement behind me. I ...

Before long three squad cars and two sizeable vans pulled up. Out jumped several goons, leaving vehicle doors wide open a-la-Sweeney. But these weren't normal woolly suits. For a start, they looked too fit.      One of them, a superintendent or suchlike, wore a cap sporting not only the familiar masonic checker-board but also a mess of silver across its peak - presumably how he plugged his head into the mains electricity for recharging or reprogramming.      After a moment assessing the potential crime scene Plod-Senior walked straight across to where three of us stood apart from the crowd. Unconsciously screwing in what seemed to be a concealed earpiece, he barked, "Who is in charge here?"      "Nobody," answered Mick, calmly pointing over at the placards. "We're an anarchist collective. We organize cooperatively. No leaders necessary, sir."      Plod-Senior pondered Mick's unexpectedly gentle response. Ru...