Heart & Sole (Where Terms & Conditions Apply‪)‬

‘I so longed to brush his cheek with my finger, to put my lips to his, to kiss him awake, to touch him as someone more than a pal with the aching tenderness that coursed my immobile body.’

Neil Raffan exposes his personal vulnerability, both emotional and physical, through Lost in translation and What Phou respectively; whilst other more robust entries focus on the likes of vascular dementia and carmine bee-eaters, family hiatus and travel heaven.

‘What was debt anyway? It had no emotion. Letters, cheques, pieces of mail, some more aggressively worded than others. Where was debt’s heart and soul?’

This is an eclectic collection of shorts with titles such as Buffet and Lanes, Woodside contract whist, and The Maiden Stone amongst others.

And oh yes! Harvey, from At the of age of 37, is back in Botswana, but without Bryce … ‘Here in the Okavango the spring leaves fall, in preparation for the summer rains. How weird and wonderful is that?’