Platform
TITLE: The Infidel’s Son by Aziz Hakimi
POSTED: 23.01.2012
POSTED BY: Jemima
“Where have you come from today, sir?”
The bald middle-aged officer in a blue uniform casts a suspicious glance at me from behind his crescent shaped glasses before flicking through the pages of my passport.
“Amsterdam.”
“And what’s the purpose of your visit to the UK?” he asks, not looking up.
TITLE: Vietnam Postcard by Daniel Cooper
POSTED: 08.09.2011
POSTED BY: admin
Like a lot of fast-developing countries, Vietnam is rife with contrast; you can find beauty and squalor, new wealth and deprivation and, of course, the high-stepped paddy fields. This layering lends itself to dramatic tension. The imported cars and other capitalist baubles sit atop the old communist structures, which defied the occupying American forces who effectively relieved the French colonialists. Vietnam emerged as the ideal location for the latter part of my novel because it could weave together the two narrative strands of my plot. The setting allowed me to pick the themes that amplified my protagonist Natalie Chevalier’s back story – her post-colonial French father, her career in a West Coast US technology scene influenced by the Sixties counter culture that turned Vietnam into a touchstone. Natalie finds herself investigating the same sex trafficking that her father was reporting on when he went missing in the country during the 1990s.
TITLE: T-shirt Weather by Lucie Brownlee
POSTED: 16.05.2011
POSTED BY: admin
Lucie Brownlee is a freelance writer and linguist. Her brilliant story T-shirt Weather (see below) was shortlisted for the Guardian’s 2010 short story prize. Her previous lives include teaching in France, bookselling in Bristol, waitressing in Sydney and a foray into Gateshead’s local government. Now living in North Yorkshire with her husband and young daughter, she has recently completed her first novel.
T-shirt Weather
The countryside stinks. It’s all cow slosh and sheep cack, you can’t go anywhere without messing up your shoes. Dad lives in the countryside, and me and Colette have to go every summer for a whole week. Dad picks us up one at a time because his car’s only got two seats. It’s red and goes really fast and Mum says it’s a bloody joke.
Mum always makes out she’s dead-heading the roses when we leave with Dad, but we know she’s trying not to cry. But then Frank arrives in his silver Sierra and she perks up. Frank has a big moustache and wears brown slacks with a crease down the front. I like Frank because when he laughs he throws his head right back and you can see the gold horseshoe he has instead of teeth. Colette hates Frank and always writes rude words in the dust on his windscreen.