There will be birds and if they write your name in the sky then you can get on the buses and if they don't you have to die on the floor.
Joe DunthorneI don't know if I've come of age, but I'm certainly older now. I feel shrunken, as if there's a tiny ancient Oliver Tate inside me operating the levers of a life-size Oliver-shaped shell. A shell on which a decrepit picture show replays the same handful of images. Every night I come to the same place and wait till the sky catches up with my mood. The pattern is set. This is, no doubt, the end.
Joe DunthorneMost people think of themselves as individuals, that there's no one on the planet like them. This thought motivates them to get out of bed, eat food and walk around like nothing's wrong. My name is Oliver Tate.
Joe DunthorneI find that the only way to get through life is to picture myself in an entirely disconnected reality. I often imagine how people would react to my death. Mr Dunthorne's quavering voice as he makes the announcement. The shocked faces of my classmates. A playground bedecked with flowers. The empty stillness of a school corridor. Local news analysis. . . . The steady stoicism of my parents. . . . Candlelit vigils. . . . And finally, my glorious resurrection.
Joe DunthorneJordana is in the umpire's highchair.
I walk under the rugby posts and on to the tennis courts, stopping a few metres in front of her, in the service box.
Her legs are crossed.
I wait for her to speak.
'I have two special skills,' she says.
She pulls a sheaf of papers from under her bum. I recognize the font and the text boxes. It's my pamphlet.
'Blackmail,' she says.
She holds up her Zippo in the other hand. I can tell that she has been practising this.
'And pyromania.'
I am impressed that Jordana knows this word.
'Right,' I say.
'I'm going to blackmail you, Ol.'
I feel powerless. She is in a throne.
'Okay,' I say.
Tags: teenagers oliver-tate pyromania blackmail submarine jordana-bevan
To us and a wonderful evening of love making.
Joe DunthorneOliver, we’ve got something to tell you,” Dad says, dumping a cardboard box full of garden waste into a toad green mangler.
Unlike the doctor, when Dad says we, he means we because Mum is omnipotent.
“Who’s dead?” I ask, shot-putting a bottle of Richebourg.
“No one’s dead.”
“You’re getting a divorce?”
“Oliver.”
“Mum’s preggers?”
“No, we—”
“I’m adopted.”
“Oliver! Please, shit up!
Tags: young-adult
I am running low on solutions.
Joe DunthorneI took a photo of us, mid-embrace. When I am old and alone I will remember that I once held something truly beautiful.
Joe DunthorneOld people only say that life happens quickly to make themselves feel better. The truth is that it all happens in tiny increments like now now now now now now and it only takes twenty to thirty consecutive nows to realize that you’re aimed straight at a bench in Singleton Park. Fair play though, if I was old and had forgotten to do something worthwhile with my life, I would spend those final few years on a bench in the botanical gardens, convincing myself that time is so quick that even plants – who have no responsibilities whatsoever – hardly get a chance to do anything decent with their lives except, perhaps, produce one or two red or yellow flowers and, with a bit of luck and insects, reproduce. If the old man manages to get the words father and husband on his bench plaque then he thinks he can be reasonably proud of himself.
Joe DunthorneTags: humour welsh oliver-tate teen-angst
« first previous
Page 4 of 5.
next last »
Data privacy
Imprint
Contact
Diese Website verwendet Cookies, um Ihnen die bestmögliche Funktionalität bieten zu können.