What were you looking for?

The hall was crowded with white-shirted, neck-tied, black-suited men talking to round-shouldered, thick-legged women in tight dresses and stiletto heels. The place had become a potpourri of high-pitched hysterical screams, large glasses of Guinness and swift looks at clefts and crotches.

And then you walked in. Crooked and crippled, wearing an anorak and a pair of jeans, you waded seamlessly into the midst of the black swamp of Christmas party goers and emerged unscathed on the other bank.

the passing of time

- Would you like a few samples of cream?, she asked as she shoved the mascara I had just bought into a bag.

- Why not?, I replied.

So she opened a drawer and chose a few tubes for me, which she threw in with the mascara, and then handed me the paper bag over the counter.

- Good day Madame, she smiled.

When I got home, I poured the contents of the bag onto the kitchen table: six tubes of anti-wrinkle cream.

pfffft pfffft pfffft

"Discontinuous Gas Exchange in Insects"

Annual review of entomology, 1996.

before he ate, in Dublin

He long lanky-legged into the pub, wearing a pair of trousers too short and a coat too small which revealed hands so large that each could have cradled a newborn in their palm. The lifeless white of his face clashed with the darkness of his clothes as he settled his long body in the far corner of the dimly-lit pub and ordered a bowl of soup.

Then something must have chilled him. A thought perhaps.

So he took a black woollen hat out of his pocket and smoothed it onto his head with his spider fingers. He sat, very straight, with the palm of his hands on the table, waiting for his soup. When it arrived, he produced a small book, opened it and - with both hands holding it - he muttered words that he found inside it. When he had finished, he closed it and did the sign of the cross.

He was wearing red socks.

were it not for the weather

Our paths cross almost every day. Somewhere between where we have come from and where we are going. I know what we are going to talk about. We have talked about it for almost a decade now. You wouldn't go past anyone without stopping to talk about it. And it's just as well it's there because I don't know what we would have to say to one another otherwise.

You come up to me with your head bowed, your hands behind your back and the brittle gait of a man who is becoming old. Your mouth opens slightly and I can see the tip of your tongue moistening your lips with anticipated delight as you approach. Once you have reached the same bit of space as me, you pause, grin and then you look up at the sky, shake your head, and say:

"It won't rain today."

what's best

You had drawn a heart with your red nail varnish on the mirror outside the kitchen. So I put an arrow through it.

the children's floor

Huge bright red, orange and yellow poppies lined the corridor. Two nurses were playing a ball game with a boy sitting in a wheelchair, his head shaved on one side and the look in his eye far away. Little heads were resting against pillows in every ward. Some with hair. Others with none. A father was making a call on his mobile, seated at the foot of his daughter's bed. A mother was cradling the side of her son's face in the palm of her hand.

And life just keeps rolling on outside. There's nothing else it can really do.

it only comes once

You sit every day on a polystyrene box blowing despair into a harmonica. You are not old. You are not handicapped. You're a gypsy. You spend every single day sitting at the entrance of an underground car park waiting for a few coins to fall at your feet. Winter, Spring, Summer and Winter, we greet each other when I walk past your pitch. You stop playing. You lower your head and smile softly to me. Then continue to blow the tunes only you can play. I raise my hand and smile back to you. And each time I do, I wonder whether this is what you really want out of life.