“Oh fuck off, will you Alex?” It was the first time I’d ever seen anyone having sex for real. The first time I’d seen a woman naked, come to that, though all I could actually see was a pair of long, smooth legs wrapped around Dave’s hairy backside. He had stopped thrusting to turn his head and shout at me, and I heard the woman – I think it was Katy, from finance – moan something to the effect that she would very much lik...

They say the hardest moment of a mother’s life is when her child leaves home. This was particularly true in the case of my eldest daughter, as I had to literally chase her out of the house with a broom. This wasn’t our family home, of course, and she had in fact been living as an independent woman for several years at that point. The house, however, was mine. One of the many properties I owned around Nottingham and rented...

I can’t assume you know the first thing about me. I can’t assume you know the story of how, on that day many years ago, I came to find myself lying handcuffed to Lisa’s bed wearing just a bra and stockings, covered in my own dried spunk and staring angrily at the ceiling. The three women who had done this to me – my housemates Lisa and Ellie, and their accomplice Janice – had been gone for hours. I had been mulling over t...

When I went downstairs that morning, I knew that today was the day. I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer. I had to say something. Lisa and Ellie were sitting at the kitchen table drinking herbal tea – fennel I guessed, from the aroma – and chatting idly. Both were already dressed, while I was wearing a dark green bathrobe. I’ve never been good at mornings – few musicians are – and after a very late night working on my...

You sit alone in a dimly-lit alcove to one side of the room, a tall green cocktail standing untouched on the table before you. Your clothes are dark and well-fitted, and place you towards the more affluent extreme of this humble establishment’s clientèle. Like all the – mostly – men in the room your eyes are fixed on the stage at one end, where a tall athletic woman with a smooth-shaven head is finally unbuttoning the lon...

Hailey's chair rolled back and hit the wall as she stood up. Her red stilettos marched out of sight. “Out!” she snapped. Vanessa and I exchanged nervous looks, then clambered awkwardly out from underneath the huge desk. Hailey was standing a metre or so away, filming our ungainly emergence on her phone. No one was entirely sure why Hailey worked here. She certainly didn't seem to do very much. One rumour said she'd been g...

People who work in offices often complain about the winter. Getting into work before dawn, leaving when it's already dark, their only sight of the sun glimpsed through thick windows. It's depressing. But at least it makes working late seem like less of a big deal. It's just as dark when you leave at nine in the evening as it is when you leave at five, and the winter evenings aren't all that much fun anyway. At least, they...

For AG, who asked… The principal protagonist in the tale I have to tell you is a woman by the name of Myrtle Mary Townsend. She prefers to be known as Myr, because the elegant, mysterious and slightly aromatic image that this single syllable conjures up is far more accurate than what you might imagine on hearing her given name. Her own story is long, complicated and for the most part obscene. It is enough, for now, to say...

It was one of those gigs where the music went straight from my eyes to my fingers with almost no intervention from my brain. Simple classical pieces and the occasional bit of mild, inoffensive jazz - nothing to capture the imagination, at least for the performer. To the elegantly dressed punters at the Paragon Club, SW1, it was merely a pleasant background tinkling sound to accompany their evenings. The piano I was playin...