Titanium Sushi

Most of these very short stories were written by swordfish that had passed away about 5 minutes after becoming fossilized in a block of basalt. This created huge problems for nobody, and so no record can be found of their ephemeral existence. Nobody was later found in the mouth of an intergalactic crab that had decided to visit the Crab Nebula.
These startlingly diverse tales have been written over the past 10 years in three different countries (Germany, Vietnam and the UK). Some of the stories are satirical – indirectly and whimsically revealing the madness of the human race, some absurd and surreal, some are plain silly, others are warnings, and some are simply deadly remarks on our hyper-deranged modern societies.
The Nod is a surreal fantasy that challenges the very foundation of consciousness with unexpected and amusing consequences. Conversely, The Spoon Dogs and Shaving with Fish are extremely silly tales. Almost as silly, but inversely proportional to the surface of celery sticks, are How to Clean a Teapot and Titanium Sushi.
Other stories are very dark and probe the deeper realities people keep hidden or forever deny until the reality strikes them with the hammer of fate. These include A Kind of justice, The Charity Shop and Chronically Offended.
The Celestial Bureaucrats was inspired by my first year in Berlin, where I had to deal with more bureaucracy (despite being an EU citizen) than the rest of my 63-year-old life put together! The Banking Virus is similarly inspired and depicts my vehement loathing of all things to do with banking.
Rocking the Boat is a satirical comment on societal pressure to conform. It is about rejecting the superior mind. Society is constantly attacking the individual, the great, the eccentric and the unusual, despite the suspicion that these individuals are the foundations of invention, progress and indeed, its own salvation!
The Wombi and The Guinness Book of World Records are semantical word plays which expose certain philosophical assumptions. For example, there are thousands of ways to break world records but not many of them would be considered seriously. In the Wombi the question of who we should really worship arises!
In the short Life of a Gravestone and Waste, I examine the insensitive reality of the human race. Like Tom Waits once sung: ‘There is nothing kind about mankind…’
I also have fun with people’s personalities. In My Deadpan Wife and Tradition various social peculiarities are more or less explained…