drinkmum

Part 24: Socks on the floor

February 6, 2022 AA Moore 0

Now we’re open for business, the gateway to jarring, juddering noise. A racket in a straightjacket. A hullabaloo. Curved south like a tragedy mask. Such excessive theatre! Reminiscent of your first break up from your first love, so laboured in retrospect. Arms flap and twist. Fists beat and pull. Fingers read more

frank-squash

Part 23: Frank in Wonderland

December 23, 2021 AA Moore 0

The sun attempts to rise while Frank addresses the squash bottles, summoning the troops, by flavoured rank – Orange, Lemon and Lime, Summer Fruits – then as an assembly. They obediently soak his daily pep-talk into their juices, take the buzzing babbles and animated cap taps dutifully into their days read more

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Part 22: London, I love you.

November 28, 2021 AA Moore 0

“There!” Frank jabs the blue, sketches the lofty towers with a pressed finger; “Oh!” Outside the soaring constructions of Canary Wharf whip past, rubbing palms and chafing council flat views. Low-lying stars, clustered light years away from kitchenette thirty-centimetre sinks. Spangled dreams where Columbians parade, fired-up and fuelled-on then burnt read more

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Part 21: Out and About

October 5, 2021 AA Moore 0

She gnaws the sappy goo about in her cheek cavities with excessive vigour. “Where’s the after party?” fixing us with lengthy-lashes. One raised, cropped eyebrow. “WE HAVE CHILDREN!” Clifford blurts, loudly out of no-where, causing us both to spring back, twitchy. As well as being factually incorrect, this is also read more

kitchen

Part 20: Kitchen Raving and Misbehaving

July 14, 2021 AA Moore 0

He clasps the grenade high, for predetermined, maximum impact he has chosen his yoghurt. The upper hand, quite literally. A cut of fish finger goes in, a few taunting chews then escapes down, under his smirk. A little chuckle – “UH-OH”. My mouth spasms but no retort, my eyes scream- read more

snugs

Part 19: Hotheads and Snotbots

May 17, 2021 AA Moore 0

I start here with blue spray, flickering silently up black brick and falling on the nose of a curious parker, yanking the curtains as he leans from his top window, hungry for a bit of midnight theatre on the Neighbourhood Watch. Tired and locked-down, craving some of that community action, read more

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Part 18: Running into One

April 10, 2021 AA Moore 0

Ancient bulbs poke and nudge softened dirt, warmed by the foundations of a first heat, buried in snow and forgotten, way back when in a prehistoric stage of life. These circles and phases are born and die, the calendar a flip book, as Frank’s development rapidly charges forward. One week read more

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Part 17: The World According to Frank (at 10 months)

March 1, 2021 AA Moore 0

The dub siren resonates and everything explodes illuminate like Christmas, a blinking spaceship. Daddy is always pointing out in films and on TV the use of mundane sound equipment for NASA-style dial-and-knob contraptions. Top-level secret spy apparatus, the gear running the whole operation back at HQ. That’s what it looks read more

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Part 16: I didn’t choose mum life, mum life chose me

February 7, 2021 AA Moore 0

Cotton fleece drifts across a blanket of newly cut green, Easter blue above and below he floats so you cannot see his legs. I climb rapidly to pitches only bats can hear, shriek like a crazy lady, hysterical squawking and frantic scrabbling for long-lost marbles. It’s a fuse-lit hormonal reaction, read more

us

Part 15: Adventures of Mumbot & Beanbot

January 22, 2021 AA Moore 0

Life had begun to open out an inch, to climb sluggishly from canon-deep sofa grooves, wriggle gracelessly from firm-set arse prints and detour from the jaded triangle of fridge to kettle to TV, the X almost scratched cleanly from the PlayStation remote. On Monday 19th October I drove to meet read more

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Part 14: When we going Out Out?

October 14, 2020 AA Moore 0

Concrete crumbs trickle down shady beams, down tag-licked wobbly pillars, down jelly legs, rendered catanionic by deep, dark bass frequencies that rattle an echo in the skull and continue to scatter brain cells five days after. In amongst the peeling paint and pitch-black fire escapes they dance to hard, industrial read more

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Part 12: He joined the party in unprecedented times

August 16, 2020 AA Moore 0

In the afternoon we snooze inside a barricade of cool patio shade, a solid no-neck bouncer safeguarding Frank from the wavy heat. Like two cats curled, spooning toasty fur that has retained the sun, dreaming of long, lazy days. Days that meld and scramble in fact and order. Reggae floats read more

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Part 11: When Alice met Frank

June 29, 2020 AA Moore 0

The hospital bag trickled its entrails across the carpet, a moat surrounding a citadel of snacks that had conquered the coffee table, a fortress of sweets and peanuts, turrets of rice cakes, protein bars, raisins – all the items that had been packed and not eaten. The plastic changing mat read more

franks-birth

Part 10: And Then There Were Three…

June 11, 2020 AA Moore 0

Sometime inside the early hours, in the cool, still blackness of expectant bedroom walls, it was there. As if in a dream, unable to pin down the start, an ache was rolling about inside my belly, lurching onwards and reversing in waves. Not knowing how long since the moonlit paint read more

new-house

Part 8: We were together. I forget the rest.

March 1, 2020 AA Moore 0

Lying dormant, hibernating from the frostiness outside, a sofa slow cooker gently simmering away, wrapped up in a TV glow and feeling those now familiar belly rumbles, a bubbling hot pot cuisine. “You’ll know when you feel him,” I’d been told, but these miniature suds and somersaults hadn’t felt like read more

gender-reveal

Part 7: Gender Reveal

December 30, 2019 AA Moore 0

“And you wanted to know the gender?” The sonographer asked coolly, an afterthought, as she finished calculating every inch of Nugget and I replied with a faux-casual “Aha”, the only air my seized-up breath could push out, held in expectancy. It was always a given we would find out the read more

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Part 6: Everything Changes

December 19, 2019 AA Moore 0

Tugging unsteadily at his t-shirt sleeve, shifting awkwardly inside the gaze of several parental eyes, the tiny boy with the sandy scruff starts to sing. A miniature chorus collects about him, swaying within a spell of tunefully high, pre-dropped voices;    “There’s a new life in front of my face, read more

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Part 5: When We Saw You

December 8, 2019 AA Moore 0

Gritty, murky flecks dispersed and stuck on gloss, bouncing synthetic hospital light with every curl, as her decorated nails traced the sketchy outline of an alien form. Hunched low and gawking, woman and man stopped in time, transfixed by three black and white prints. A girl again, pouring over a read more

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Part 3: Carnival Mourning

November 13, 2019 AA Moore 0

Anticipation woke me early, my heart banging rapidly-out a reggae beat, jam-packed jots of shuddering low-end frequency licking open my eyes. Skanking figures dissolved from the night time dance into the day, a splash of Wray and Nephews remaining like a wet dream. Carnival morning is better than Christmas morning. read more

meclifford_amsterdam

Part 2: In a tent, under a lorry, feeling like A King

November 3, 2019 AA Moore 0

In the pause, that silence that followed, our fridge stood humming innocently between us, brightly decorated with the alphabet, a jumble of words sprayed head to toe like the multi-coloured yawns of several poets. The slightly charring smell of fish, mixing in the evening air, made me almost lean against read more

meclifford

Part 1: Bun that Baby Talk in the Oven

October 24, 2019 AA Moore 0

The BBQ crackled out, as the heaped plates of food were left lounging in the sun, free game for the wasps who instead reclined lazy and drunk under rum cups. In the afternoon-long-shade and full satisfaction, the conversation turned, as it always did with this particular group of girls, to read more

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The First Time (2)

May 2, 2019 AA Moore 0

“Are you looking for an arrangement? Would you care for another cocktail?” Air caught inside the two with the same intonation, some American inflection and a smile inside each syllable. He drained the flute, tipping the glittery, syrupy sap down the gullet. The waiter materialised for the re-fill, poured, nodded, read more

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The First Time (1)

April 2, 2019 AA Moore 0

It was in the Clapham Grand, on a floor like treacle. Just a scalp with matted brunette sweat, stuck across his eyelids. He was a disembodied cranium bobbing on a ball pit of gelled and slicked-back cruisers. That one. He was just a forehead on a dance floor. “That one,” read more

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Lidl (Shepherds Bush)

June 1, 2018 AA Moore 0

You appear on my front step with a box of food in your arms, smuggled rations, you check your blind spot to see if you were followed. A red face, dressed in your army coat, you’ve been at war. Left years ago, with the promise of fixing fajitas, came back read more

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disappear here

November 2, 2017 AA Moore 0

Dig your nails right in, fizzy cola top, carrying a sheep on your head, old style, like a shepherd from the bible innit? He’s grinning super-cute and wide, looks like an adolescent Michael Jackson with that mane, cotton wool cloud full of storms, dig your nails right in girls, don’t read more

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Midnight in Tesco

August 13, 2017 AA Moore 0

Ribena Fingering the box, Ribena dents in a corner with her nail. The Chemist doesn’t run 24 hours so, hair piled, she shoves the compressed cardboard inside her coat and moves her slippers like cross country skis past the skeleton in blue performing the midnight wash. He exhales a low read more