Last December 17th, in the UK (and abroad on digital radio) some of you may have heard me on BBC Radio Four, promoting a wonderful new literary magazine, Notes From The Underground, which was launched that day and handed out free, across London by men in bowler hats, looking like pastiches of the famous Magritte painting.
Notes From The Underground is an enterprise started by Tristan Summerscale and Christopher Vernon. Tristan is the son of my English teacher at Charterhouse, David Summerscale, the one person in all my schooldays who gave me the confidence to believe I could be a writer. I owe David ( a brilliant man, who went on to become Headmaster of Westminster School), a debt bigger than I can ever repay, so it was great to have the opportunity to at least give something back, when I was asked if I could support the launch issue of this magazine by contributing a very, very short story!
Part of the ethos of Notes From The Underground is that people should be able to read something stimulating while sitting on the Tube, and the issues of the magazine contain a number of short and very, very short stories. Mine is two sentences long, and is called “Companionship” . You can currently view the video on the Notes From The Underground website’s front page. Click the Play button, turn up your sound, you will hear me reading it and see the brilliant animation with it!
If you have Windows Media Player installed, you can also download the short story here – but be warned – it’s a big (10mb) file.