Home of The Naughty Stories Series
Born in Poole, Dorset, in 1965, Sedley Proctor grew up in London and was educated in Winchester and Nottingham. In the 1990s, he worked in fringe theatre and was involved in productions of Macbeth and Bertolt Brecht’s In the Jungle of Cities. His own play, Salt Lake Psycho about the notorious murderer, Gary Gilmore was put on at the now defunct Man in the Moon theatre in London, Chelsea. From the mid-nineties until 2013 he lived and worked as a teacher and translator in Southern Italy. In Italy he continued to experiment with his writing, devising an invented dialect, writing a blog satirizing the international politics of the early 2000s, collaborating on a screenplay with French writer, Claude Albanese, and performing his poetry in front of bemused locals and amused ex-pats. Apart from his own books, he writes under the aliases F. M. Frites and M. T. Sands.
Bruno was embarrassed to admit it but slowly he had become a snob. The first season he had become a ski instructor, he had been the life and soul of the town. It didn’t matter who they were, he was always ready to join the after party and keep going until the early hours. On …
“Though lovers be lost, love shall not.” Dylan Thomas As you may or may not have gathered, friends of Mary have provided the tarot cards that start each chapter. I ask Giorgio what he thinks of these kinds of systems. He makes a joke about necromancy, when I know he means cartomancy. Cartomancy or prediction …
The scene, to his eyes, was more like a scene at the beginning of the fourth act. The apartment was not that big: two rooms sparsely furnished. The ceiling, though, was extraordinarily high, and the windows were correspondingly tall. There were six or seven of them as the apartment was a corner one. Snow was …
What is that on your shoulder?” “It’s a mole. I should have had it removed.” “Why? I think it is rather wonderful.” “It is a blemish.” ‘We all have those.” “It is too obvious.” “Then, why haven’t you done something about it? You’ll be in and out in a day.” “I can’t. It’s part of …
Jessica was sitting in the carriage minding her own business when the man opposite her answered his phone in a loud and penetrating voice: “Finally, you got back… “Listen, I’ll tell you what I think, then you can tell me…” The man had just noticed his shoe lace was undone. He cocked the phone and …
John and Suki were having a whale of a time. They were all togged up with parachutes and about to jump out at 6,000 feet for their fiftieth jump. What a blast! They had their sports camera in the plane and were leaning out the open door of the aircraft filming. Then Suki dropped it. …
To put it bluntly, and you may notice Giorgio has his blunt streak, it’s time to close, he says. And since I have also drunk far too many cups of coffee, and eaten far too many of G’s club sandwiches; they are not club sandwiches. Be that as it may, I call them that to …
The trattoria was a small family affair, tucked away in the shade of a narrow lane in the old Jewish quarter. I sat down at a table on the pavement and ordered pasta with clams. The padrone brought me a carafe of white wine. For the second course I ordered frittura, little baby octopus fried …
I frutti proibiti sono sempre i piu dolci. Forbidden fruit is always sweetest. – Italian proverb Julia was touched. By chance they had found out that it was her birthday. Patrizia’s cousins and friends arrived. The chairs had been pushed aside and the tables laid out as a buffet with an abundance of Southern Italian …
In the first block of flats where I lived for two months while everything else was arranged or, as they like to put it here, sistemato, was a wonderful old gated lift. The lift had wooden panelling and glass windows decorated with deco motifs. At the back of the lift there was even a little …