My ex-girlfriend is there when I get home from work. I find her sitting on the couch, wearing nothing but a pair of black lacy knickers and one of my old shirts, rolling a fag in front of the TV.

After such a pleasant stay at the conference in New Mexico, where his talks had gone well, and everyone had been so kind, it was distinctly uninspiring to fly home to a wife whose love for him had long been in doubt.

Crib Goch is the hardest route up Snowden, it’s classed as a grade one scramble, which means that you can’t, or shouldn’t, do it in weekend sneakers, although I’ve seen worse.

That afternoon, she still believed that her father had not meant what he had done. Once the black cloud had lifted, as it always did, he would come to his senses and beg Mum’s forgiveness.

Perhaps I even saw it as a foretaste of things to come: the hopefully not-too-distant days when my destiny would be fulfilled, and I’d be a key inhabitant, one of the new history makers.

The crowd murmured as the rope was placed around the victim’s neck. It was at that moment the boy started crying. ‘Mummy, do something. I don’t want to die.’

‘Bloody hell!’ said Detective Constable Bright. ‘It’s a minefield!’ ‘There’s more …’ replied Detective Sergeant Dawes with a grimace.

I hate Interstates. They’re boring, dangerous, and packed with people who pay little attention to what they’re doing. I love two-lane roads: the ones that meander through the countryside.

Mrs. Henshaw, grey-haired and ancient before her time, resting her rheumatic twig fingers in her pinny lap, sat facing a large wall mirror and rocked the gloom away.

The forest looked ethereal in the light from the moon overhead. Ghostly, eldritch, like Dave had stepped into another world. The branches swayed with a slight breeze, and the leaves rustled out a mellifluous harmony.

On the first day of ninth grade, Fitzhugh Hardee Rainwater met the girl who immediately took up permanent residence deep in his heart.

Bertie had heard of a place we could go, somewhere we could live in peace, safe from our winnings. I’m not sure it exists.

Dolan’s first weeks as a correspondent hit him hard. Not the work, but the weirdness of it all. He kept thinking it was scripted somehow as if Vietnam in ’72 was written for him as a parade of absurdities Rod Serling would love..

You could tell by the way she got off the helicopter that she wasn’t having any funny business. Perhaps she’d heard about the chap who’d been sent over to get their chakras realigned. He was effing and blinding by the time he left.

Ever since he had dropped out of college, ended up in a seedy area of the city, and found a part-time job at a bar, he had no desire to play it or write songs.