My mother's world was quiet and hypnotic. I was staying with her for a couple of weeks in my childhood home on the Norfolk coast. You may have read the previous stories from this time; Mum's Friend Dorothy and Grace and Danger. They give you an idea of what this small town was like and more specifically how my widowed mother and her widowed friends passed their days. The fact was they didn't do much; they were coasting th...

After my blissful encounter with Mum's friend Dorothy (see the story of that name), I still had a week to go in my little Norfolk hometown, staying in the family home and bored out of my skull most of the time. It was a seaside resort in the days when British people mainly took their holidays in Britain and all you did was take the train or jump into the car and a few hours later you were by the sea. It might be cold, it...

Twenty years had passed since that terrible evening. Twenty years in which lives had been repaired, if not healed, and had branched off in different directions from how those involved had intended. I had moved away, because I had been about to do that anyway. I wasn't running from anything, or at least I didn't think I was. I just had a life to lead. I was 20 when it happened and I had ambitions to pursue – ambitions whic...

The raging inferno that was my relationship with Sadie blew itself out when she fell in love with Kira. For a few weeks we were the perfect triangle (see my previous story, Three-course feast.) I was the dependable caucasian man (I think that's a description they would agree with), Sadie was the fiery BBW and Kira was the subtly sexy, enigmatic Asian woman. People say that trios never last because two always form a strong...

The conversation with Sadie was more straightforward than I had imagined. We had met three times after finding each other on an adult dating site and had come to like each other in more ways than one. Finding chances to meet was not easy, because although we both lived in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, I spent a lot of time on business in the neighbouring island, Tobago. For her part, Sadie was unavailable sometimes, for reason...

One of the recurring pleasures in my life is finding dormant women, by which I mean those who are attractive enough and may have had a bit of sexual action in the past but have allowed it to slip into the background. They are the mother or grandmother, the teacher, the librarian, the bus driver, the university lecturer. They are defined by their occupation, and the fact that they are fully functioning females has become o...

Vera sat back in the comfort of her new sofa, a beige velour number with billowing cushions at head height and on the arms. It was something you could sprawl on, stretch out and laze, without banging your elbows on a wooden bit put there purely for decoration. She clearly felt like the lady of the manor, an ice-filled glass of Kahlua on the coffee table in front of her as she sat with one knee hooked over the other, sligh...

I’ve been looking at Maria since she started working here a month ago. I’ve been hanging around the aisle where she’s stacking shelves. Twice when I’ve been doing that, although she hasn’t looked directly at me, her hand has gone inside her shirt to adjust her bra, which I always think is a sign that a woman has been made conscious of her body and particularly the sexual parts.  I’ve found myself standing in the queue for...

It was Neema’s skin that really attracted me to her. I had met her years before and she seemed nice enough, but as she was a colleague of my ex-wife, I hadn’t lingered over any thoughts about her. Then one day, I helped her as she struggled to get out of our very small car and I felt her upper arms. She was Guyanese, with fabulously dark skin that had a sort of sheen to it and felt like silk. And her upper arms were soft...

It was an autumn evening in southern England. The air was still quite warm but the light was fading early now. I’d just eaten a salad of lettuce, tuna, penne, and baby clams, which may be my own invention but I’ve been making it for so long I can’t remember where the idea came from. On top of that lot, you just squeeze a lemon and drizzle some olive oil, no need to mix them in advance. And you can add other things if you...

It was a typical little family scene at this tearoom terrace on the south coast of England. A young woman, still young enough to be called a girl, and with the acne on her right cheek to prove it, was trying to get her very young daughter to eat a piece of fruit cake. The toddler had a glass of Coke to wash it down and the mother had the same. They were a couple you could find in any town in the UK. The mother was of medi...

Once upon a time there were three Guianas: British, Dutch and French. They were on the north coast of South America. Then the British one became Guyana, as the Brits ignored local tradition and applied their own spelling and pronunciation. The Dutch changed theirs to Suriname, for reasons best known to themselves, or at least their historians. but the French retained their original name for their part: Guyane Francaise. F...

I enjoyed my time as a researcher for the Post Office, partly because of the work and party because it was a big office with a lot of women. That means statistically it is more likely there will be one or two that you will find attractive and, equally, some who will fancy you. If your tastes are as broad as mine, “one or two” is more like ten or twenty, and so it was in that place. Women of all shapes and sizes, aged from...

It was a time I always looked forward to: Tuesday night with a group of friends, mainly women, who got together at Nadia’s house to talk about whatever we wanted. It had started out as a church group, but as time had gone on and people had dropped out and others, non-Christians, had joined, it had changed slightly. It was now a forum for grown-up discussion of anything from politics and world events to sex, although it ke...

“Hi,’ said the woman in the big black Elton John sunglasses. It was Melissa, a Colombian friend. I had taught her two sons English. She and her husband Gilberto were fellow ex-pats and we met up from time to time at ex-pat events. Melissa ran a small spa in a hotel in Paramaribo, Suriname, and every time we met she would invite me for a free treatment from a menu that ranged from manicures to full body massage. I had no d...