I’d been on the road for over three weeks, always staying in motels. I’m an IT trouble shooter with a big part of Oregon to cover. It was Halloween and as a large Hen Party was assembling in the lounge bar of my hotel, I decided to walk into town to a topless bar I’d visited before called The Palace. In times gone by it had probably been a spit-and-sawdust beer hall. In 2020 it was a noisy disco cocktail bar, with table s...

My police interrogators used the hackneyed ‘good cop, bad cop’ technique at my three interviews. “Didn’t you realise how dangerous it was to go bathing in the lake after dark?” “Why was Mrs Reinhart-Hernandez not wearing any clothes?” “Had you both been drinking?” “Why didn’t you report the accident; there are numerous Help Point telephones located in Green Park?” I certainly got off extremely lightly at the Inquest. Alth...

As 2020 marked the 150th anniversary of the death of Charles Dickens, I had decided to take a trip to London to visit the famous writer’s old home, which is now a small museum filled with Dickensian memorabilia. Sadly, I’d picked a busy day in August for my visit and there was very little elbow room in the cramped four stories of this narrow Victorian townhouse. I sought temporary refuge in the attic nursery, mercifully f...

Paris; 2020. I had been wandering around aimlessly for more than an hour, after finding the Gare d’Orsay art museum was closed because of the Covid-19 Lockdown. I’d come to Paris expressly to study the famous museum’s furniture collections for my doctorate back in London. Frustrated, I headed for the old station buffet, which thankfully was open for business – though thronged with similarly-disappointed tourists. I found...

Voyeurism: the practice of gaining sexual gratification from watching others when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity. That cod-psychiatric definition (lifted from an internet site) was good enough for me. My reclusive middle-aged neighbour, Madeline, I’d decided, was most certainly a voyeur. I’d been fascinated by the Peeping Tom phenomenon ever since seeing Hitchcock’s ‘Rear Window’ back in the 1950s: a rather...

We had eyed each other several times across the classroom but hadn’t spoken. We were both on a poetry appreciation weekend, which was being held in a large Victorian mansion in the Shropshire countryside. She was a tall, slim redhead, aged around thirty-five, I’d guessed, although my guesstimate turned out to be seven years adrift! She had a lovely array of freckles which arced across the bridge of her nose. “Before we st...

My three week stay in Barcelona, where I had been studying Spanish at a language school, was coming to an end. I was still commuting in from Monjuic by Metro, though sadly there were no more ‘rush hour ravishments’. Many of my fellow students on the course were ‘swots’; they’d been sent by their firms back home and were determined to succeed academically. One exception was a German lesbian named Greta, invariably wearing...

Summer’s interruption of my law school studies in London meant that I was going to be at a loose end for more than six weeks. My father, a successful Indian businessman, suggested that I might take myself off to Spain. “You know you’ve always wanted to be fluent in a second language and there are excellent private language schools in several Spanish cities. I’m happy to pay.” I needed no second prompting and by the end of...

The only people seated at the marble-topped bar counter were Gina and Geoff. They had struck up a friendship on an internet dating site and at Geoff’s suggestion had decided to try a weekend break in Venice, which neither of them had ever visited. With a flourish, the barman finished the elaborate preparation of the two special cocktails which Geoff had ordered. “Signora, signor – due Bellinis!” he proudly announced. Thei...

“Guess what? I did some naughty internet shopping the other night,” my new part-time house help Alice announced with a wicked smile as she arrived one morning, her lovely bra-less titties bouncing up and down beneath her green T-shirt. She flipped a tiny package onto the kitchen table and began the washing up. “What is it?” I asked. “See for yourself.” I undid the string, slid open the small silver box and removed its tis...

“Your Russian is in the restaurant!” the young Mexican waiter called out to Nancy, as she was finishing her snack supper in the kitchens. “Let him wait. I haven’t eaten all day.” Nancy was in her mid-30s and beginning to show her age. She’d been a hat check girl, a barmaid, a waitress and was now the Tropicana’s resident hostess, splitting her ‘earnings’ 50:50 with the bar’s domineering Syrian boss. “I wouldn’t keep him w...

The opening of our town’s new tattoo parlour ‘Apocalypse Now’ was splashed across the front of the local community newspaper. I strolled past one morning to check it out as a tattoo had long been on my bucket list. The cool black, chrome and mirrored interior gave the appearance of a trendy men’s barbers; a far cry from those sleazy back street shops which did anchors on the arms of old sailors! I was greeted by a pretty...

When I first opened the front door I hardly even noticed her she was so tiny. Barely 5 feet tall, she was wearing bright orange sneakers with yellow ankle socks, a white T-shirt and the shortest blue denim shorts I’d ever seen. “Hi, I’m Alice, but most folk call me Ali,” she said by way of introduction, with a refreshingly open smile. “I’ve come about the home help job you’ve advertised in the corner grocery store. Is it...

Professor Charles Fernside sat alone in the Champagne Bar of London's Eurostar terminal at St Pancras Station, awaiting the announcement of the departure time of his train to Lille. Once in France, he would catch the night sleeper to Venice. The connection was seamless and unhurried and he was surprised to find that, at 8 o'clock in the evening, the train's dining car was barely half-full. He took a seat at a table laid f...

Tom heard the courier van’s exhaust as it reversed into the driveway. “That’ll be the new electric hedge trimmer I ordered yesterday on-line,” he called back as he headed for the front door. His wife Kitty was curled up asleep on a rug on the floor under the kitchen table. The cheery young van driver placed the package on the door mat and offered a touch-screen tablet, over which Tom waved an index finger by way of signat...