Hugo Williams

At six the cup of tea is set down. How the cup of tea is set down. Quietly, or with suppressed fury. Jim looks at the face of his wife sleeping and decides to be horrible. The bathroom was cold. He forgot to put on the fire.

He crosses to the window in a rage and draws the curtains back. How the curtains are drawn back. Gently but firmly, or practically ripped from their hooks? Jim thinks her...

Ten, no, five seconds after coming all over the place too soon,

I was lying there wondering where to put the line-breaks in.

Trying to persuade about fifteen Creative Writing students (Poetry) to put more images into their work, I was fiddling in my pocket with an old contraceptive packet, put there at the start of the course and long since forgotten about.

If you...

You wouldn’t think it to look at me, but I was a hot property once upon a time to my sponsors, Johnson and Johnson Baby Oil.

I reached the final of the 1980 World Powerboat Championship – myself, Lucy Manners, Werner Panic and the rest.

I was going for the record of no hours, no minutes, no seconds and I reckoned I was in with a chance.

I was dancing the Self-Portrait along inside...

Jim returns to his favourite Carnaby St boutique circa 1966 and nods his shaggy head. ‘Hi, Barry! Hi, Stu! Got the new flares in yet?’ The two Goths behind the counter in Plastic Passion have heard about people like Jim. One of them looks out a pair of tangerine elephant loons left over from his father’s ‘Chocolate Taxi’ scene and throws them to Jim as a joke....

When I grow up I want to have a bad leg. I want to limp down the street I live in without knowing where I am. I want the disease where you put your hand on your hip and lean forward slightly, groaning to yourself. If a little boy asks me the way I’ll try and touch him between the legs. What a dirty old man I’m going to be when I grow up! What shall we do with me? I promise...