STUFF HAPPENS

Raising boys

Against the mountain weather Jake is wearing a balaclava. Braced, completely concentrated, Jake is inching down the piste, he is eight and his thighs are wobbling with the effort, so that sweat licks down his red hair and his little skis rasp on the ice. Keep going Snake! I shout. You’re a beauty. Waiting for […]

by Alex Hickman

Leaving Switzerland

Beneath luminous mountains runs the black autobahn. It is dawn and I am going along with my right hand on the steering wheel and my left reached back to hold my daughter’s hand. She is sitting still, staring through her dark window looking out for the year ahead, thinking of what has just been, of […]

by Alex Hickman

New Year’s Day

Today, right at the beginning I hung the heavy bag. I bought a good jute rope and slung it over a high branch of the yew, my boys helped me out. I found the bag loaded with pain and a generosity all of its own, a guarantee of what life may give up if you’re […]

by Alex Hickman

Boxing Day morning

Lying in bed listening to my liver sing to my kidneys songs of destruction and of joy. Listening to the shallow breathing of the girl in my bed, the baby girl, our Christmas girl who I did not drop last night nor did I offend her after most of a bottle of champagne burgundy, three […]

by Alex Hickman

A night detour to avoid the steep sides of the Downs

Blindfolded by your mother you do not see the high moon, whole villages behind pickets of wasted trees, their captive churches. The white road slow between the darkness and the Christmas lights. Without God or fear we carry you, and each mile brings us closer to a motorway junction, the black hospital approaches swept and […]

by Alex Hickman

Still waiting for Poppy

Training done with and the pool deserted I took a deep breath and exhaling cornered myself in the deadly quiet of water. Its emptiness, the bright blue distance like nothing you might imagine. I sat still, a sluggish thinker the oxygen curdling in my adult lungs. All the time I was down there I thought […]

by Alex Hickman

Waiting for Poppy

Long questing days the anchor raised we longed to ground in territory we could not find. The anxiety about money which frayed and rowed, the hateful to and fro. We kept going. II The steel-shod boots of men their paint-fouled radio filled our new house with other music. Where now our bed is assembled was […]