A selection of my work is below. My short form work is usually gentle humour, observational pieces, and first-person stories. 

The following story was written for a Story Slam , so it is paced for live performance rather than as a written piece and the grammar, punctuation and layout reflects an informal style, intended to be spoken rather than read on page.

This is a story about eggs, and it ends in the Rock Island Diner in Meadowhall Shopping centre in 1991.

Where my story begins is a little more complicated.

But it ends in the Rock Island Diner.

The restaurant was in the mezzanine of the shopping centre food hall, themed as a 1950s diner. There was a plastic replica of a 1950s sky blue Chevy Bel Air outside the door. It seemed like the closest I would ever get to the American teen movies that I loved.

Every few hours or so, the music would go up a few decibels and the wait staff would climb wearily onto the counters to perform a choreographed routine to a 1950s song. Rockin’ Robin or somesuch.

That’s where my story ends.

So where should I start it?

I think I’ll start it with the leggings.

About three years previously, aged fifteen, I saved my pocket money and bought a pair of leggings, and a brightly coloured sweatshirt, with a vivid applique design.

When my mother saw my new outfit she said, “Is that the thing now? It’s very gay.”

Yes, for the younger folk here, my mother’s generation did describe brightly coloured clothes as being very gay. It had nothing to do with sexuality, she just meant that it looked fun.

But, god, did I wish that she would keep her voice down in C&A.

Within a week, my mother had bought an identical pair of leggings, and an identical sweatshirt, and she wore them all the time. I did not like this. I stopped wearing mine.

I did not understand at the time that my mother, who was then in her late fifties, was in search of an identity.

She had spent most of her life caring for three children. She had suffered multiple miscarriages, and crippling post-natal depression which - misdiagnosed and treated with the wrong medication - lingered for years.

Now that I, the youngest, was on the point of leaving home, she wanted to grasp life with both hands. She wanted an identity.

I understand that now.

I also understand my fifteen-year-old self. However much my mother wanted an identity, I was quite determined that she should not have mine.

If I made a sandwich, my mother would say, “Can you make the same one for me?” Well, fair enough, yes of course I could.

But sometimes I would make a sandwich for myself.

And my mother would arrive in the kitchen later.

“What did you put in yours? How many tomatoes? Which bread did you use?” and then she would make an identical sandwich.

Often I would deliberately forget an ingredient, and mention it later when my mother was eating her sandwich, “Oh yeah, I forgot, I put black pepper on mine.”

I said this just to mess with her.

It was petty and juvenile on my part.

But then I was a teenager. Being petty and juvenile was pretty much my full-time job.

It all came to a head one morning, when I had just made myself a boiled egg with toast soldiers.

“Can you make one for me?” my mother asked.

I refused. I was going out, I was busy, whatever.

“I want one, too,” my mother said. “How many minutes did you boil yours for?” she asked me.

I refused to tell her. “I don’t know,” I said.

“You must know.”

“I don’t remember.”

“But I don’t know how long to boil mine for.”

“You must do. You’ve made boiled eggs hundreds of times.”

“I want one like yours.”

“Why? Just boil it the number of minutes you usually do. You must know how you like your eggs. You’ve made eggs all these times, you must know. And this is my egg. I’ve made it the way I like, you make your eggs the way you like…” It all poured out. “You copy everything I do. You wear what I wear, you talk to my friends. You’re not me. You can’t take over my life, you can’t be me.”

Ugly tears. Slammed doors.

Later on I had an awkward conversation with my father, “You’ve upset your mother.”

The atmosphere at home was unbearable. I went to stay with my sister for a few weeks until things blew over.

It was not spoken of again.

Until the Rock Island Diner, years later. I went shopping with a family friend.

He was quite an odd, lonely man. He had been at medical school with my father, and having never married or had children, he retired early and moved across the country to buy a house close to my parents.

That day, he and I wandered around the shops together, and then we went to the Rock Island Diner to have lunch.

We had been chatting all morning.

Over lunch, I remember that he paused for a moment before asking, quite carefully, “Bec, can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“You won’t get upset?”

I had no idea where this was going. “What is it?”

“Well, your parents warned me about something, and I can’t stop wondering about it.”

“Warned you about something?”

“Apparently I should never mention eggs to you.”

“Eggs?”

“Yes. They warned me that if anyone mentions eggs to you, you become hysterical and start screaming at everyone.”

“They said that you can’t mention eggs? It was not about eggs,” I said. “It was never about eggs. It was about my identity. It was about my right to exist as a person, a real person with my own thoughts and my own clothes, and yes my eggs, my own fucking eggs!”

His face fell. He looked a little frightened.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“It was never about the eggs!”

“No, no, of course it wasn’t. I’m sorry, Bec. I shouldn’t have mentioned eggs. I mean, I shouldn’t have...”

The more I protested, the more scared he looked.

I’m almost the same age now as my mother was back then.

She died nearly ten years ago, suddenly, at Christmas.

So, Mum, I hope that you can hear me now -

I boil my eggs for exactly four and a half minutes.

They need to be room temperature so I warm them in my hands if they’ve been in the fridge.

The water should be on a rolling boil and I use a slotted spoon to lower them gently into the water so they don’t crack.

Feel free to ask me about it, any time.

The following story was written some time ago, but it's a good example of my tone of voice when writing a first person piece in my first language. 

There are people who have lived in London for twenty years and never become a local. They don’t know their neighbours, except by the noise they make. But of course you can learn a lot just from that.

We used to have a couple of neighbours, long since departed, (not departed this life, you understand, just departed further up the property ladder) who started arguing every evening at 8.30pm. They reached a crescendo around 9.30pm, just as I was lying in bed wondering when my husband would get back from work and how many times our baby would wake up in the night. I found myself listening to them in the manner of a radio play. I couldn’t help myself; it was as loud as if they were standing right next to my bed. They argued about some shoes she bought, and about his endless DIY, and about whether she listened to him properly, and whether she didn’t listen because he wasn’t very interesting (she had a point there, I felt). It was a bit like ‘The Archers’ if ‘The Archers’ featured young urban professionals with too many power tools. I got hooked, and when my husband came in from work he’d ask ‘So, what’s the latest? Is she going to let him put those shelves up or what?’. We didn’t get out much at the time – couldn’t afford the babysitter.

They complained once about the noise of our baby crying. I was tempted to point out that surely if they could hear the baby, then did they realize that I could also hear them? But like a toddler ‘hiding’ by putting their hands over their eyes, they hadn’t grasped the concept of object permanence as it pertained to their downstairs neighbours.

We never really got to know those neighbours. It was awkward, because we knew too much already without asking them over for coffee and banana cake. And we weren’t impartial. We were both definitely on ‘her’ side. My husband held a grudge over a DIY-related mishap that caused our baby’s nursery to flood at 2am, and said only: ‘I’m glad she gives him earache, the drill-happy fool’. For my part, I couldn’t be doing with a husband who was forever faffing about with the decor – it was a small flat, just how many shelves could they need? And he shouldn’t have started on her shoes. We’ve all bought ill-advised footwear on credit, and a gentleman wouldn’t have mentioned it.

I like all of our neighbours now. Even if the young man upstairs has just started… to learn the trumpet. Ah, well.