The man had wondered before how old he would be when he felt old. He was not old now, but he felt it as he pushed the door. It was unlocked, like all the doors, of which he might have chosen any, except that this one, belonging to a secluded house atop a rural hill, had held a certain appeal for him. Perhaps it was that even from a distance the house looked as if it had once been lived in. He stepped into the cool embrace of the damp air that lingered about the hallway. The light in here was dim, the few beams of sunlight that penetrated the dirty window above the door and squeezed their way between the man and the door-frame being absorbed by the musty carpet. This house had definitely been lived in, loved even, but now it was what might once have been called a ‘fixer-upper’.

The man walked through to the first room on the left, which had once been the living room. As he entered he saw a spider dash across the floral white settee that looked as if it had been worn-out for a long time. It must have been comfortable though, must have been sat in hundreds of times as the family gathered around the TV that now sat impotently against the wall to the side of the fireplace. The man put down his backpack on the sofa as he went to inspect the TV, his body distorted along with the room as he moved closer to the reflection on the lifeless grey glass of the screen. For a second he fancied he could see reflected behind him the family who had lived here, sat together on the settee and its two satellite floral armchairs, but he knew no one was there, so he did not turn round. Instead, he continued staring into the dull grey screen.

(more…)

I got bored of animé for a while, but now I like it again, and part of the reason I like it again is that I rewatched Makoto Shinkai’s works She and Her Cat (which you can watch here), Voices of a Distant Star and The Place Promised in Our Early Days (aka. Beyond the Clouds), five, thirty, and ninety minutes long respectively.

There are several aspects common to all of these, such as a relationship between a boy (or a cat) and a girl, a theme of separation and longing and getting on with life in spite of them, and a sort of intangible sentiment along the lines of “I am here / awake / alive” or, rather nicely put at the end of She and Her Cat, “this world… I think we like it.” There is also this incredible purity of vision in each of them that comes from the fact that, the first two at least, were almost exclusively the work of Shinkai who wrote, drew, animated, and voiced She and Her Cat and Voices of a Distant Star himself, with his wife providing additional voices and his friend composing the music.

(more…)

Read Part One

“So there’s this girl,” Matt said suddenly, having taken a sip of his tea and now clasping the mug with interlocked fingertips.

Wondered why he was quiet so long. Here we go.

“She works in Sainsbury’s.”

Her.

“You wrote a story about her.”

He nodded. He always gave Viccy his stories to read. She liked guessing which bits were real and which bits he had made up.

“I gave her a rose.”

February. Valentine’s Day. Bunch of roses from Jack. Dinner out. Chocolate mousse for desert. No more or less than a girl could expect. Some time between the sheets afterwards. No more than a boy could want. Wish he was. But I get too snappy at him this time of month, always can’t keep his hands to himself. Can’t blame him. I would too, if I wasn’t. Talk to him later. See him in a couple of days.

“Oh.” (more…)

Sometimes she wanted to beat her fists against it. But how could one beat one’s fists against life? She threw the puzzle across the room and it splintered against the wall, sending shards of transparent plastic flying and minute silver balls skittering across the floorboards. Her stomach was cramped and it agitated her. She picked up her digital pen and drew another few lines, almost haphazardly. The window went blank. Frozen again. Need a new computer. She growled and hit the keyboard. Processor’s fault really, or the graphics card. Maybe just a new graphics card would do, cheaper. Birthday at the end of the month, could ask Daddy, or Mother.

(more…)

Jenny lay with a paperback novel open across her breast, staring at the lazily swaying leaves above her. She could hear the whine of a remote-controlled plane from across the field, changing in pitch as it banked and swerved. Beyond that came the gentler, resonating sound of a ball striking a bat; the sound of a father playing cricket with his children. On the grass next to her sat Mike with his knees drawn up into arches. He was watching a dragonfly as it flew up the incline, hovered a few feet from his face, then darted away over the trees.

“Dragonfly,” he said.

“Mm?” said Jenny.
(more…)