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Captain Morgan.

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 I spent the night with Captain Morgan and woke early the next day on the other side of Hollywood. My love affair with the Captain's rum had once again led to unrequited love and heartache. I do not know why I go through the same process every second evening expecting a different outcome. But I am aware I do.  This particular morning I am awake early, cannot face breakfast and so let my weak and defeated body bring me downhill towards the river. It is but gravity. The many steps of the old-town hill jolt my inner being. I am too old for this. I can see the river in full flood below and notice both the calmness and gun-metal- sludge colour of it. The black hood of a hangover slowed my thoughts and held me in a state of catatonic loss. Loss of the last night and probable mourning for future days to come. I was early to the river, an oily tide now stalled there. Nothing but a few, rusting hulks riding high in the port, proud despite their abandonment. I was looking up at one such...
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Prefab sprout.

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 Today marks the end of an era in my teaching life. The prefabs I've called home for the last ten years are being removed. In recent times my prefab has become 'the Leaky Cauldron', the Irish weather having finally penetrated the many layers of skin this old, temporary building has. There have been the inevitable four-legged visitors too as the prefabs became a tourist attraction. But generally this place, while resembling STALAG 17 from the outside, has in fact been the place where I grew up as a teacher, had the best laughs, and enjoyed awesome relationships with different year groups and teachers.  There is something about a block of prefabs. You are a little closer to nature, the weather and your fellow man. You can make it a little bit of yourself too. I added a coffee machine initially to beat the mid-afternoon slump and soon found myself making coffee for soaked or frozen students in Winter. I decorated as best I could with students work and my own posters and as tim...
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Smackdown

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 Sheamus. That was his stage name. You couldn't break into the big time in American wrestling without a stage name. And being ginger haired, ginger-bearded and pale as a dove led to the name Sheamus. Of course his real name was Wade O'Reilly but Sheamus looked way better on a billboard. He had more muscle than Gunther but didn't look like a Gunther. And he'd never pass as a Santos Escobar even if he lived near the sun. Like all the other 'stars' he had worked his way up. Jobbing for free in local matches and finally getting his break when he blagged his way onto a ten-match-ticket in San Diego that was televised in the wee hours one random Tuesday night. His phone rang and funny enough, hadn't stopped ringing in fifteen years. We all know wrestling is fake as fake can be. You spend more time in rehearsals than in the gym. You do however, have to be fit and strong and supple and with an inherent ability to bounce. Again and again and again. Sheamus looked in ...
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Lost phone

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 9.40A.M. Garda John Foley of the Avoca station notices a glint from the hard shoulder and pulls over his Traffic Corps jeep. If it is glass then he should remove it in case someone punctures. It is not glass. It is an IPhone. Garda Foley doesn't really care. He just wants to put in his shift. The back of the phone is badly scratched, the edges are beaten up, but somehow the screen is still working. This is as exciting as it gets around here. Last night it was a stolen car but really, nothing happens. Every day.  Out of curiosity Foley clicks the button on the right and lo and behold the screen comes alive. Years of instant decisions and quick thinking have turned Foley into a human computer. In less than a second he recognises the face on the screen. Isn't that Tim Dobb's kid? With some girl he couldn't place... but definitely Dobb's kid. Wait a minute, wasn't it Dobb's car stolen last night? Foley thought it out. Thought hard. His thinking cap was on. He w...
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Time capsule letter, somewhere in Belgium.

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I presume if you are reading this you have found the capsule and dug it up. I don't need to tell you that a desperate group of survivors buried it. If you know anything you know our last days have been beyond words. There is little time left now, I can hear the percussion of your rockets hitting their targets but a mile away. And if you are reading this you are one of those scum we call 'Losers'. Yes you have won the last world war but you have lost the planet in doing so. You are therefore a Loser. As I sit here in this broken, concrete water pipe [dry for years] and await my death I am filled with joy. Why? I remember the planet before you destroyed it. I remember a blue and green ocean. Can you believe it? Blue and green! Not the grey, dead seas we now have. I remember vast swathes of trees we called forests. They held wildlife and produced oxygen. They were huge and alive. But you have no idea what I'm on about, have you?  People cared too. I had neighbours that loo...
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The things they carried

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 As a bicycle messenger in the nineties I was amongst a group of misfits and outcasts that called Dublin's streets home. The things they carried were mostly determined by their habits.  We all lugged a waterproof canvas satchel around with the company's name on it in massive letters. CYCLONE or QUICKSTREAM or GO FAR. If the bag was a good design you could swing it from your back to your front as you cycled so as to reach inside for whatever you needed. Attached to the front strap was a two-way radio for receiving jobs or telling the dispatcher you had dropped a delivery. Somewhere in the bottom of everyone's bag was a rain jacket. We all wore helmets as it was stupid not to in Dublin back then. Most of us wore wrap-around sunglasses to keep the diesel fumes from buses and pollution particles out of our eyes. And we all had signature sheets to record and prove deliveries. Sean carried a u-lock on his handlebar. Ostensibly he could lock the bike to a railing quickly or, as wa...
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Kya Clarke LinkedIn Bio Jamie Hudson.

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 Hi! I'm Kya Clarke, successful author, artist, biologist and poet. I have based most of my life's work on my passion for my surroundings. I grew up in the marsh off Barkley Cove and have been nurtured by nature my entire life. Growing up in the marsh has given me a unique and vast lifetime of knowledge about wildlife and nature. I think this gives me an edge on everyone else in the industry and is the reasons my books have been so successful. I have been publishing books with the Harrison Morris Publishing Company from Boston Massachusetts all my adult life.
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