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David Charters: 'Aspirins always remind me of heart failure,' she said, breezily

IT WAS to me a strange environment. I skulked along the chilled and soulless aisle to the supermarket’s cash-point with the startled and up- reaching gaze of a porcupine, who has just strayed into a balloon parade. Read

David Charters: A good cup of tea is always to be savoured

ALTHOUGH his head’s dome now shines shyly under the sun of summer holidays, his spectacles are rarely free from the dust of the basement archives from which he plucks curled photographs and crumbling words, telling of the way we were then. Read

David Charters: I have always believed in ghosts. But they haunt people, not houses

DO YOU think ghosts move from house to house on a whim like those ambitious young executives? Read

David Charters: Hope you were watching up there...

IT IS my belief that the Big Man can see anyone he chooses down here on Earth, as clear as a bride’s smile on her wedding day photograph. Read

David Charters: Do you know who has the same birthday as you?

THE telephone trilled from its perch on the table at the bottom of the stairs with the persistence of a lost child. Read

David Charters: There are many ways of dealing with strangers who call to discuss money

DARKNESS chilled the night down to the marrow of the old trees, which moaned, heaved and shuddered against the anger of the wind, sweeping from the river across the hooded town. Read

David Charters: How do they know that fish can count?

"WHAT a chump!” said my wife, as she sat at the dinette table in a rather fetching pair of pyjamas, examining the final offerings from a raspberry-red box of chocolates, which had been shaped into a romantic heart for St Valentine’s Day. Read

David Charters: The Obituarist's job is to tuck his subjects safely into Heaven

"THE job of an obituarist is to see his men and women safely tucked-up in Heaven,” I thought while sitting on the floor, sprinkling my woollen bedsocks with gently scented talcum powder. Read

David Charters: Somewhere up in the sky, I heard an angel chortle

PERHAPS, in those slow-smiling, biscuit-dunking moments of warm sighs, you can imagine the pink and blue angels in Heaven sitting at their desks with wings neatly folded, chortling behind their hands, as God shows them his design for the cocker spaniel. Read

David Charters: Endangered species rarely seen by the eyes of men. Women call it an ironing board

SWOLLEN bags of cloud, in every shade of weeping-grey, teased the sky over the village shop, where the bear-like man stood, thinking. Read

David Charters: Raise your glasses to romance

"PEOPLE with an eye for such matters say she’s a bit like Brigitte Bardot,” volunteered my pal Brian, as he drew on the cunning of a stoat to persuade me to join him and his girlfriend in a foursome. Read

David Charters: Fate places us all in profoundly embarrassing circumstances

AN EXPRESSION of limp despair settled on the face of “Pimples” Perkins, the office’s surly tea-boy, when he was told that his right leg was to be tied at the knee and the ankle to the left leg of the lightly-scented Tobias Fernley-Trout, finance director, so that they could together enter the three-legged race in the inter-departmental-bonding section of the company’s annual sports. Read

I am always suspicious of the people who overtake me on the escalator

THE soaked coat was twice its normal weight and a long, slow drip stretched from the brim of my corduroy hat, as I drooped on the hall carpet, after a foray into the village. Read

We shall, in the words of another man at another time, stay forever young

STRANGERS often ask me for directions. This is a mistake, as they soon discover. Read

Turned out nice again?

"THERE is a lot of it about,” said the man with a tremble in the flush of his face, which told of the sad and steady slip in the level of gin in his bottle and a certain world-weariness. Read

I know where you are, God. But do you know where I am?

THE round moon was smiling high above the village on Boxing Day morning, but still you could see the lights slyly winking around the mouth on the face of the automatic bank in the wall, as the balloons of festivity slowly puckered. Read

We often learn that one person’s loss can be another’s gain

BACK in our village, where the breath of time blows again on ancient faith, the people known as bricks, because of their industrious ways and sturdy manners, looked at the heaps of chestnuts to be roasted, at the wine to be mulled and at the sheets of carols to be sung in fervent voice, before the switching-on of the festive lights. Read

Christmas: A crazy mix of the sacred and the vulgar

FLORENCE, or Flo as she is known to those dear to her, was a stalwart in the office before the flibbertigibbets, now strutting around the place with their mobile phones and bottles of water, were even twinklings in the eyes of their parents. Read

I think you will find that they are talking about another type of skunk

WINTER’S sudden coming is felt in the dark reaches of falling night, when newly soaped skin goosepimples to the creep of the cold and the kind old priest’s voice quavers to a high-chant, behind the dripping trees in the brick church, where men and women rustle in their pockets for the collection coins. Read

At that moment, I drifted into a very strange dream

BENEATH a sulking sky, anxious faces peered from the shadows, windows and doorways. “More rain on the way,” they said. Read