Postcards from Kronk - the second collection of daily stories. (2025)

Ernest Bordonni understood the difference between cartoons and reality with great clarity approximately four seconds after spotting the giant black circle painted on a wall, his passengers unfortunately never reached this moment of epiphany although, truth be told, most didn't live long enough to regret it.

Uncle Parnie never knew the right thing to say, right up until the moment we poured that first spadeful of soil into his mouth, the great galoot.

The reforms that led to two thirds of education workers leaving the profession are the only reason that thousands of incompetent and discredited former teachers have found themselves pardoned for their previous misdemeanors. The move, miraculously popular with those that own news corporations has been christened the  ' second chance' philosophy and we see now, our prime minister, bathed in moonlight  dislocating his jaw to feast on live mice.

We are hidden, waiting for the spacemen to leave their capsule. Only God in heaven can watch over us as we watch over them, those with shifty eyes let no man put us under, I say a prayer for myself and check the others. Wait. Cometh the hour cometh the cosmonauts.

I f I move my head more than a couple of inches either left or right it hits the side. My knees are damp and the smell of wet denim fills the space I occupy. Behind me I can hear the biting dogs that deny retreat and ahead I can smell a featherbed of upturned robin redbreasts. I have two maps in my pocket consisting of a few pencil lines which have been rubbed out and altered many times, one is marked ‘Half Nelson’ and the other ‘Front Lawn’. I came upon them by following messages left for me in a series of empty cigarette packets in the Midlands over a period of three months. And now I’m in a ventilation shaft somewhere in a provincial hotel.

This has been a long time coming. Martha went missing on Thursday and didn’t show up till the following Friday. When she could offer no explanation for her absence her husband gave up asking and after a couple of days it didn’t seem to matter. This has been a long time coming. The bag that was found wrapped round the childs neck had lain for three days in the police station whilst they wondered what to do with it. Eventually Vince used it to carry home the sandwiches he hadn’t ate due to an expensive expenses account lunch his wife wouldn’t hear of. Somewhere in it’s tiny ridges lay scrapings of skin, small as plancton.

Frank Doughty, newly elected Member of Parliament under the alternately vicious agreement lined up three bullets in front of me. 'pick one, you have a complete free choice' He, like many of the new breed, have a reputation for playing games, bamboozling with so much contradictory yet important sounding information that by the time you leave you've forgotten why you were sent in the first place. My hand went left and then conspicuously to the one in the centre, finding my way into the rules of the game. 'I have to say, before you make your final decision: one of the bullets has a name on it, underneath, where you can't see' he turned his hand upwards to demonstrate, 'and if you pick that one, someone will be shot' The background noise disappeared and all I could hear was two heartbeats, his much slower than my own. Whilst eating another spoon of ice cream I studied the scene; the new pro risk taking democratic manifesto dictated a way out of ...