Deep in the north, beyond the withered arm of the M1, there is a town where the people catch stars out of the sea, a silent, somnolent market settlement sagging onto a barricade of pebbles that line up in loose file against the dark mongol waves. And every new years day, the people head out in fleets of dinghies and mute anticipation, and dip rods of slow silver under the diaphanous bleakness. And within the same minute up they spring, cold and white and terrified like mad geese in the eccles cake purple night, before they are placed inside of heavy jars and ferried back to hum in basements or dangle like bangles off the angles of cornershops through the year. The star fishermen don’t make a big deal of it, if you ask them why they do it, they’ll shrug and say ’”tis a bloody job”, and the town stays sleeping off the edge of the damp downs its precious cargo hidden from genocidal eyes. And there are women in that town with bosoms like nebula clouds, lilting between pubs in the maze of winter, spangled in leopard print flags and chuckles, and necklaces made of burning hydrogen...

[Written for the Bristol Old Vic blog. Original article here .] When I was little, I had a board game called Never Ending Stories (nothing to do with the furry-dragoned, slightly disturbing kids movie of the same name). A player would place a hexagonal tile down on a board and attempt to improvise and tell part of a story that corresponded with the picture on the tile, then the next player would do the same, steering inevitably towards either a Happy, Sad, Surprising or Scary ending. This game was a delight for the more verbose and attention-seeking members of my family (me), who would go for minutes on end stringing loosely connected fantastical events together, and a bit of a chore for the more reticent and shy (my grandma and great aunt), who would consistently try and close things off with a quick “and then it rained and they all had to go home”. I suppose it was one of those seminal gifts, like Beckham getting a football or Paxman getting a My First Interrogation Kit. In my first year of University, me and a cabal of other Creative Writing students got together on Thursday evenings for Board Game...