Home of The Naughty Stories Series
As people said good night and Happy Christmas, David realised the moment he dreaded had come. He had to leave the office and drive on his own to an empty house on Christmas Eve. In his forty-five years on planet Zog he’d never had a Christmas on his own. His parents departed. The kids with …
It was a cold day, as he remembered it, sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. He had the chains on the wheels because where he was going to a friend’s log cabin for the weekend, there was a risk of ice on the road. When he saw the hitcher up ahead of him, he did not …
Martin and Celia were successful but discreet members of the Oxford Orpington Set. Martin, although living semi-retired in the country, still needed to cultivate his Hedge in the City. Celia, on the other hand, was a character from A Fish called Wanda. Frightfully British, terribly on it, but just not terribly aware. “Should we go? …
It was said of Reb Simcha Bunem of Pershyscha that he carried two slips of paper, one in each pocket. On one he wrote: “Bishvili nivra ha-olam: for my sake the world was created.” On the other he wrote: “V’anokhi afar v’efer: I am but dust and ashes.” Reb Simcha would take out each slip …
It is a well-known conceit of Italian life that both husband and wife are happy to take a lover or a mistress, but neither are willing to contemplate divorce, since neither wishes to upset the equilibrium in which the other lives. The case of the lawyer Pelligrini, esteemed colleague of Avvocato Cassa, who had arrived …
The traffic was in a slow burn, backed up about a hundred metres from the lights to the barracks. Cars drifted in and out of lanes; mopeds cheeked between lines of their own invention, and yet the filter right was still blocked. Finally, the old man lost all patience and started tooting his horn. “Cretini, …
A Cautionary Note When you enter the Garden, inevitably, and perhaps none too surprisingly, you will find that you leave something behind. When you are in the Garden, you may find – to your surprise or indeed unwittingly – something different. That something different you may take out of the Garden if you so please. …
On Choices In life, as in the Garden, one does not always have a choice. One is born into a family, one grows up in a town, and one goes to school. These are never our choices. But there always comes a time when one has to make choices. One can make a choice that …