My Friend Mike

My Friend Mike

The phone rang. “Hi! This is Mike, a neighbour of yours. I read the blurb you posted about your writing in the mailroom. Can I buy you a coffee?” Without thinking, I agreed. Did I make a mistake? Mike was so ordinary. If you gazed into his face for an hour, you’d...
The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead

“The mandala – the Buddhist Wheel of Life – revolves through six realms. The inhabitants of the Hungry Ghost Realm are depicted as creatures with scrawny necks, small mouths, emaciated limbs and large, bloated, empty bellies. This is the domain of addiction, where we...
Surigao Jones

Surigao Jones

8 December 1996. The whole world was mesmerised by a penny stock company based in Alberta, now worth US $6 billion — from nothing. Anecdotes abounded in small towns and villages across the province of burgeoning millionaires on every street, thanks to stock they’d...
Sagrada Familia

Sagrada Familia

A tram struck him down one evening on his way to inspect the work-in-progress at the Sagrada Família. No one recognised the old man in dishevelled clothing. As he carried no identification papers, he was presumed to be homeless, taken to a paupers’ hospice and left to...
Heroiam Slava

Heroiam Slava

Battered by the never-ending waves of gloom and doom — the skeletal images of starving children in Gaza, the doubling of Trump’s tariffs, the pounding of Ukrainian cities — I woke up exulted to hear: David had risen against Goliath, destroying a third of Russia’s...