Oh Pigeon

A birthday project

Marking a birthday in COVID times is not easy. Marking a big birthday is even trickier. For my 30th I had a ‘Festival of Sandy’ – there was a weekend away at the beach with multiple ‘events’ – food, swimming and generally hanging out with folk I loved. That was 10 years ago – and what a ten years it turned out to be.

For my 40th many ideas have been pondered and discarded as COVID shrank our world. But it was important to still mark the occasion with something that felt ‘me’.

So I did a star jump in the snow…

and put some words on paper…

The idea I settled on for marking my 40th was to take one of my favourite unpublished short stories and give it a cover, print it up, and make it a little PayPal button of its very own. Its not a book, its a booklet, and I am excited about it taking flight.

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‘Oh Pigeon’ is a short story set in a world that doesn’t exist right now in the UK – where you can go into a shop on the high street, have an encounter with a stranger, an encounter which maybe changes how you see the world. I hope when our COVID days have passed there will still be a high street left, for shopping and random encounters.

‘Oh Pigeon’ tells a story of three people on a stormy day in a shop on a city street. A frail pigeon brings them together to contemplate what it means to be displaced.

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When I first started writing this story the plight of those who find themselves ‘thrust out’ was on my mind.

It still is. 

Which is why £1.00 from the sale of each booklet will be donated to refugee projects.

Here is the cover… and the button to buy now.