My stories have appeared/are forthcoming in The Signal House Edition, 3:AM, La Piccioletta Barca, Ink Sweat & Tears, Sky Island Journal and in the US/UK journal LITRO. 

When No-one Understands You But You

I heard there once lived in Norfolk a philosopher whose philosophy was so strange that absolutely no-one understood it apart from himself. Like one of those indigenous tribes, whose last remaining speaker lives on a mountain somewhere with their elder sister, and no-one can speak their near-obsolete tongue. He taught his philosophy in a local college, and the classes always started out big, all the kids loud and full of curiosity, but like a murder mystery everyone disappeared, one by one, until there was only a solitary student left.

I never met this philosopher, but I heard many things about him. He was an extremely garrulous, social, superficial man half of the time. He behaved in social gatherings like a cheap politician, saying meaningless things and making compliments no-one really believed. He threw parties in his flat so loud his neighbours got a court order against him. He had an affair with another man’s wife and then tried to get his job. It was rumoured he had an illegitimate child somewhere in the county. I never knew my own father, and sometimes – on top of a double decker bus winding around the city centre, or sitting in a café, staring out of the window at a family standing on a corner – I found myself wondering if it was him.

He wrote his entire philosophy down in a book, and it was abysmally but widely reviewed. Then somebody translated it into French, German and Korean. In France and Germany it was equally panned, but in Korean everybody said it made perfect sense. He was even invited by two universities there to give a lecture, but he never went.

He died last year. I only saw him once. He was coming out of a chemist’s in Norwich, not looking too happy about something extremely specific. I couldn’t tell whether the source of his consternation was an illness or some sort of emotional disturbance, but if I had been able to, I have the feeling I could have understood his entire philosophy.