All right then mates, I don't mind saying it was a bad situation. Fucking bad, actually. I couldn't believe they'd just left me like that, the others. Well I'm a big bloke, you know, I'm hardly inconspicuous, and yet there I was anyway, standing around like a prize fucking lemon in the arse-end of nowhere, with nothing but shit trees and desert in any direction, as far as I could see. There was no pool, there was no caff, there were no proper facilities, in fact there didn't seem to be any sort of infrastructure at all.
At the Sacred Elephant Thai restaurant in a small Middlesex town near Heathrow, four people take their regular seats at a corner table by the window. It's an early Saturday evening in December and the restaurant is half full.
The pirates are inconveniently situated for the harbour, and this spring, they have begun to let everyone know. The situation, when the wind from the mountains sweeps the scent of pines over their cabins, gets worse day by day. The pirates are restless. They need the salt tang of the sea.
No one is sure what to do. Their swaggering is unnerving. The bars and supermarkets run out of rum.
Living here was shit. A month ago, just after they'd moved, he'd written that on a wall down the industrial estate behind Ikea: LVNG HRE is shiT. He'd spent ten whole minutes of his life writing it, in big black-and-gold letters, and he considered this to be time very well spent. He was proud of it. It looked dead good. And, of course, it was true. Living here was shit.
Ramesh would never know exactly what time his grandmother died on the flight from Mumbai to London, but he would always say it was the excitement of the in-flight meal that killed her.
Longtime contributors Niall Boyce, Jonathan Pinnock & Richard Smyth all have books out which you'd be well advised to buy, then read, then buy for others. All genres are catered for, from novels (Niall's Veronica Britton) and short stories (Jonathan's Dot Dash) to nonfiction (Richard's Bumfodder)
KATY LIAR'S DEBUT NOVEL
Liar Katy Darby's debut novel, a Victorian drama called The Unpierced Heart (previously titled The Whores' Asylum) is now out in Penguin paperback. It's had nice reviews in The Independent on Sunday, Sunday Times & Metro (4*).
OUR INTERVIEW WITH ANNEXE MAG!
They came, they saw, they asked us a bunch of interesting questions. Interview by Nick of Annexe Magazine with Katy of LL: here
