No make up. No tights. No stockings. No short skirts. No trousers. No hair dye. No rocking rolling devil music. And, most certainly, no boys. Just tell the truth, shame the Devil, cross your legs and say no. Ah, those Carmelite nuns knew how to party though, simpering bashfully beneath their wimples when the jagged jaw of the parish priest came a calling. Rock on Sister, for you are indeed the bride of Christ Himself and the blessed one turns her eyes only heavenward as the fires of desire stoke the flames in your soul.

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My mother interrupts her own pause. "Morris dancing? Are we going to a display of morris dancing then?"
"Morris dancing?" My sister's voice manages to pass through several registers of incredulity in just two words. I can feel her eyebrows arching through the back of her head.

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"It's Whit Sunday, you know" my mother said, pausing to look at me meaningfully over the top of her glasses before dropping her eyes to examine the black leatherette menu once more. Quite why she bothers to read the menu is unclear; it never changes and she always orders the same thing anyway. Quite why she also bothered to remind me it was Whit Sunday I'm not sure either. It's a long time since I went to Sunday School.

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Being British, I ought to remember if the summer of 1987 was a good one weather-wise. But I don’t and it might have rained every single day for all I cared. Because I was 18, I’d just left school, the ink was still wet on my pink paper driving licence, I had the keys to my mother’s rusty old brown Renault 12, a pocket full of cash from working in a bar and the coolest cool black suede jacket this side of James Dean.

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At one level, The Philosopher and The Wolf is a highly amusing and deeply moving memoir of the life and times of one man and his wolf. As both grow and mature and change - jobs, homes, continents, girlfriends - they provide, for each other, the only constants in each other’s lives. We watch Brenin as he grows from fluffy cub into 150lb adult; we observe his training and his interactions with dogs and other people; we prowl with the wolf as he hunts rabbits and chases birds as much as we see his human companion hunt jobs and chase girls.


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I talked to spiders a lot as a child. My mother says how she would often find me holding one in my little girl hand, chatting away and telling it stories. A conversation with a spider is necessarily a one-sided affair, the lack of reply compensated for by their great hanging around listening abilities.

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The first thing that I noticed about Jackie was her necklace. It was spun from strands of fine beige yarn, three or four or more criss-crossing threads each strung with buttons and worn close to the neck choker style. Every button was a different colour from its neighbour – pale pinky pinks to sky vapour blues, soft sage greens to earth cool ochres – each round, and perhaps the size of a penny piece.

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Dogs are not in the least self-aware and Kaos is oblivious to the tatty matted tufts that protrude from his hind quarters and look like an ill-made wig from the cash strapped props department of a repertory theatre company.

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Just another day of kicking cats and chasing vapour. Of listening to egos clash and empty platitudes placed like bandages. Of digging nails into palms beneath the desk top and trying not to yawn.




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Andy sat back in his swivel chair and steepled his palms together on the desk, index fingers pointing forward as if about to shoot an imaginary laser gun. It was his ideas signature move; if he’d been a cartoon character instead of our boss, a little light bulb would have pinged and flashed in a cloud above his head.


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