Smokes and Birds: Recent Episodes
Brian
A podcast series of stories from the book "Smokes and Birds" told in the dulcet tones of the author himself, Mr James Simpson
Cave Painting
Two Neanderthals, Gimlet and Grinder share a cave. A story of high self-opinion and mis-placed pride. The feckless Grinder is in love with the moon, but what happens when she pays a personal visit to their sub terranean home?
Drumming
A quintessential Northern tale, set within a contemporary creative writing group, exploring themes such as violence, segregation and commonality, through the eyes of Hooch, who struggles increasingly, to make sense of his feelings.
Still Life/Night Jarred in Colettes
Reality or dreams, fact or fantasy? These are visual, existential stories of disconnect and loneliness set in New York and Paris, prompted respectively by Hopper and Anquetin
One Mother’s Love
Faced by his mother’s marriage to con artist Bob Black, Kenneth Speck, a man with learning disabilities, resorts to unusual measures. He tells his own story to crime correspondent, Henry J Crabbe.
Derry Red
Why be a prisoner of history? Much more interesting were Stalin’s aspirations, as he set his heart on owning the walls of Derry. A story of espionage and high stakes for Russian spy Gorsky, aka John Williams.
A story of identity in pre-partition Ireland. Even as hemispheres begin to shift, Penelope Pendlebury, ragtime pianist and hostess par excellence throws a party in the hope that, somehow, all will be well.
This prize winning light-hearted story delves beneath the surface to reveal a murky, extravagant and surprising tangled world growing, literally, below the floorboards of a student let.
Molly, a bright little girl interviews her Grandpa about bee-keeping. She wants to know about the queen, the workers, and especially the drones, which have big backsides. But there are more on her mind.
Set on the eve of Ulster Day in 1912, Sammy McClure has his own reasons for not wanting to sign the Covenant next morning, but Bumper Irvine, his foreman in Harlands, has other ideas.