These stories were all written from moments in real life that I observed, witnessed or was told about. I wrote them down the same day. They all have an element of melancholy in them.

~ Museum ~

A graphic artist I worked with told me that she and her boyfriend, who was a keen aircraft spotter, had been to see an aircraft museum in China which contained airplanes he had never seen before. She showed me some photographs - some of the craft looked very strange.

~ Adversary ~

I was on a bridge in a big city and the wind was so strong it was hard to walk against it. A man appeared who started to hit his own clothes out of extreme annoyance. I wasn't sure if he was aware that anyone was watching. Even though there was a lot of traffic passing by, only he and I were on the bridge.

~ Her sound ~

I once heard someone scream really loudly in the middle of the night. It sounded like it came from inside a house, and there was complete silence afterwards. I live in a quiet town, but sometimes people make loud spontaneous noises out of - I suppose - frustration, anger or other extreme emotions. The scream woke me with a start, I didn't know what it was and I watched my mind zip through a whole database of memories, searching for an explanation.

~ Cut flowers ~

This was written in a hotel in Bordeaux that we (my partner at the time) booked because it was cheap. We didn't know it was mostly used as a brothel, which must have been why we had strange looks when we didn't want to book by the hour. The room had a rusty iron frame with a shower curtain hanging from it. The bed, a rubber undersheet. Drug deals were going on outside the window and all night prostitutes rented the rooms hourly.