Tom Wiggins, Letter Carver & Writer

Dad!  Dad!...I can't work it!...I've read the manual...It has loads of foreign words...I am reading the English section!...Words like "Mains Charger" and "Socket"...It sounds unreasonable to me...Wait for what?...Power?...Honestly, dad.  You aren't making any sense...How on earth can they expect me to wait?...And what are these dangly white things?...Ear what?...You are joking, right?...There is no way I am putting those  in there ...And this is something granddad did for fun?...I'm just saying it's unprincipled...All I'm saying is that perhaps that fruit company should have stuck to making fruit.           

Today's cryptic crossword in today's Citizen went better than expected.  This is usually slightly more difficult than The Sun's cryptic, and I'm usually left struggling after half a dozen clues.  But today I managed to do half of it: 12/24.  I sat in the garden while I did it, so perhaps it was a combination of sunny weather (rather restorative after such a long winter!) and St. George's Day - a dragon of a puzzle, albeit half-slayed.  A few clues in particular made me chuckle: 23a: Right in the middle of the cemetery (4,6) Answer: Dead Centre As far as cryptic clues go, this was quite a straightforward one.  Easy to work out but a nice little pay off.   16d: Forty five and not yet married? (6) Answer: Single As you can see from my scribbling at the bottom, numbers within clues usually suggests that roman numerals should be used, so I wrote "XLV" to see how that would fit into the answer. Then it dawned on me that a 45 is a r...

I had always hoped that there would come a time when a beautiful and articulate young woman who, upon graduating from university, would return home to live with her parents while she set about planning the next stage of her remarkable life.  If I was ever lucky enough to meet her, I had always wondered what drink she might order if she had accepted this man’s invitation of coffee.  It was a particularly fresh Sunday morning in February.  We had agreed to meet at 11 o’clock.  I had cycled in spite of the cold.  It didn’t snow, but the air was manufacturing something close to it.  The atmosphere was sharp with ice, found its way through my gloves, drying out the base of my fingers.  I arrived forty minutes early.  Seagulls circled over an ugly, concrete sea.  I muttered a curse to each and every one of them.  A man was cleaning the frontage of the jeweller’s shop next door while his son secured the ladder at the bottom.  I cou...

He considered his  breathing for a second  and replied, Everything, over  time, becomes  beautiful.