Route Online

Sarah Butler – Rainbows Seen From The Air Are Complete Circles

Short Story. When an older man steals a cinnabar button off a vulnerable young singer’s coat, a strange, ephemeral alliance is formed. She follows him down Kentish Town Road to a house filled with colour and the possibility of change. From Wonderwall. Read by the author.

• Rainbows Seen From the Air (20:59)

Michael Nath – Significant to Bradley

Short story by Michael Nath. Bradley cloaks his life in mystery and is highly sensitive to his own significance. This delightful character’s eccentric behaviour is met with varying degrees of tolerance and appreciation from his colleagues. From Wonderwall. Read by the author.

• Significant to Bradley (18:58)

Wayne Price – There is a Saviour

Short story from Bonne Route. Leyden, divorced and in a quarrelsome relationship with his student son, reluctantly embarks on an embarrassing cross-country drive from Edinburgh to Kettick in the rain to move his son’s sixteen year old live-in girlfriend back to her father.

From Bonne Route. Read by the author.

• There is a Saviour (36:27)

Guy Ware – The Temptation of Pogo

Short story. A playful satire which follows the fortunes of Pogo, an imaginary friend who is manifested in the brain of his current client as a little fat boy in a sailor suit, an image that troubles him greatly.

From Ideas Above Our Station. Read by the author.

• The Temptation of Pogo (16:40)

Ian Clayton – Taproom

Ian Clayton spends the day being regaled by Arthur ‘Sooner’ Millard in a Featherstone taproom.

From Bringing It All Back Home. Read by the author.

• Taproom (29:22)

Ian Clayton – Young Man Blues

The story of the night that Jimi Hendrix played Ilkley starts in John Entwistle’s Cotswolds mansion.

From Bringing It All Back Home. Read by the author.

• Young Man Blues (15:58)

Michael Nath – La Rochelle

Michael Nath reads from his novel La Rochelle. Mark goes out shooting in the Devon countryside with Frank Whitby and the regulars from the Henry IVth, an activity he declares to be ‘eminently better than thinking’. (10:15)

• Better Than Thinking (10:15)

Pippa Griffin – Next Door

Short story. A couple on holiday lay awake at night and listen to the couple next door having sex, prompting each of them to consider their own relationship.

From Bonne Route. Read by the author.

• Pippa Griffin - Next Door (15:44)

Christine Cooper – What Am I Doing Here?

Short story. Cerys is carving out her life in Soweto, working in an orphanage, when an email from her sister back home in Wales brings bad news about her grandmother, forcing her to confront her feelings about home and what she is doing with her life.

From Born in the 1980s. Read by the author.

• Christine Cooper - What Am I Doing Here? (25:42)