Project Hillary

–I was watching the US Presidential Elections this week (like everyone else!) and when I saw this front page on the tube, I thought ‘What would it be like if Donald Trump was a really decent person?’-

08/11/2016: 08:15 pm (EST)

A large blonde man, wearing a red tie that drapes down his belly, sits in an imposing leather chair. The glare of the huge television he’s watching reduces the tan on his face and illuminates hints of a very large room expanding behind him in the dark. He’s screwing his eyes up slightly at the white-blue screen, watching a big map of the USA. A couple of states are coloured red, whilst much of the North-East Coast is blue. Slowly, he tugs the tie loose and lays it down to his side. With his other hand, he reaches into his inside pocket and pulls out a Smartphone.

    Along the bottom of the TV screen shows:

    The man glances at the TV, smiles, and starts a video call.

    “Hillary,” he grins, “are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

The End of the London Mile

–This ambulance looked very lost to me, and made me think about what could be going on inside, between the drivers. –

An ambulance comes down the road, sirens on and blaring, going approximately 12 mph. It’s in the back-roads of a cheap, but nice part of East London. Lots of one-way roads come off a main one, fringed by pedestrian crossings and cycle lanes.

One of the ambulance drivers is a middle-aged, very lined woman whose lips turn down at the sides. The other, the driver, is a slightly younger man, balding and sweating the underarms of his uniform dark green. He is very red in the face. The man’s eyes dart around every street and pavement whereas the woman’s stay straight ahead.

The woman says, “you always do this.”

His pupils and irises trail up into his eyelids for a moment. She keeps going.

Boy with a Sandy Face

-I drew this smiley face in the sand on Eastbourne beach with my old school friends. The oncoming tide made me feel a nip of melancholy that the sea was about to wash away the childish image.-

He came to me, running and rolling his head like a mad thing. Water spat from his hair into my eyes as I stumbled backwards over the sliding pebbles.

“No! No!” I waved my hands.

His head banged into my chest. We were ten so the height difference was in my favour. His wet, gritty face shook about, wetting and dirtying my sun top and neck. I laughed, hating him.

“That’s horrible. You’re horrible.”

Ryan grinned at me, his chin and cheeks red from where the sand had also scraped at him.