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

Sweet I'm tasting everythings fresh and rancid, dodging the hoardes of people and chasing the flies, right into my gulllet. Blinding the noise and the smell and the sounds in this manor. Needed to mix with a better class of riff raff, escaped the grass and the cows and down the drains I go. Sharper than before up top but camouflaged by a duller coat, my gums ripped from aluminium cans but the broadest smile. Come here, look into my eyes, I can't promise not to bite.

We were all 17, caught between two worlds not sure we wanted to be adults having seen first hand the mess they made of things and each other.  On friday evenings we'd go down to the dunes and play Colditz in the dark. Most of would run off and hide whilst a guard searched for us by torchlight;  if you were seen you were placed in Colditz and had to wait to be rescued. Later, when it grew cold we'd go to the pub for last orders,  sand in our hair and out of breath. Those of us that looked younger ordered cokes and we'd sit in the snug and sharethe pints of beer.  On Friday July 31st I was late out so ran straight down to the end of Blakely to where the dunes began and stopped as an unfamilliar shadow crawled towards me. The end of the road,  the whole area had been boarded up with metal sheeting, I read the words "compulsory purchase" and left to find everyone else. The following week we went to the pub at 7 and soon after that we went our seperat...

The boy playing piano wants to stop. The old man with the frisbee tried to get him to stop but was attacked and had to retreat, the three sisters dressed as kittens turned off the lights but the piano glowed from inside and the music continued. Inside the lavish grand piano a core of pure uranium pulsed; the boy knows he has to play to stop it from going into a meltdown and so he does. Outside, in the fields the farmers grow radioactive plants, ferns and wheat to provide nesting material whilst a cure is composed. They fight regularly, the farmers, with those that can't take the music any more but can't give up, they can never give up.

The small man starts his Powerpoint presentation, lights are turned off and a graduated blue screen with black writing appears: Objective : To ensure the private council discussions are kept private. The gathered men in suits nod to themselves. A click and the slide dissolves into a series of boxes moving medium fast from left to right revealing another slide with different words but the same font. Rationale : The words we speak by moonlight register subliminally as private. Deep down our neurons understand that what we say and hear is to be treated in confidence. The presenter looks towards the audience, it's hard to gauge their reaction in the light of the projector, another click and the third slide is revealed. there are no words, just a photograph of a wooden boat on a lake somewhere picturesque. Inside the boat are crudely cut and pasted photographs of the individual council members, their relative sizes awkward, ...

Back then I'd sometimes run as fast as I could, imagining my feet spinning the world as I ran, my potential limited only by balance not by strength. It was winter and I was lost, I remember the man that answered the door to me at 2am was in his slippers but acted as if my request for directions home was an everyday and welcome request. He joined me out in the night air and pointed at the tall tower of the hospital in the distance, 'head for that and then you'll be right'.  That night I'd ran home as the crow flies, through gardens, over hedges, breaking a minor bone in my ankle as I did. As I washed my face the next morning, removing the caked blood and taking a pair of tweezers to the embedded gravel I was thankful he had been so courteous.

Kyle wanted to be a Roman centurion but the the army wouldn't let him provide his own uniform.

The American authority have outlawed drone warfare on homeland soil but quietly approved its use for tracking criminal gangs into south america. The sound produced is imperceptible, a low drone resonating at such a frequency that even two to three minutes exposure causes the white and red blood cells to vibrate at different rates due to their relative densities. They intend to send it out in the dead space in the cell phone signals, those pings back and forth used for sms messages. That's the art in the operation : the drone senders need to be absolutely sure who is using the phone at any one moment. It starts at midnight and it shouldn't be too long before we know what happens.