Benjamin Evans - Author

Well, here it is folks. My final piece for the Creative Writing course with the Open University, which has received a 'Distinction' from the Board of Examiners. It must be good! The Action Hero I am pedalling towards a village. It’s a small village, with a few stone houses gathered around a shop selling statues, a church with a graveyard, and not much else. Beside me on the road there is a man walking. He has a tiny dog and is talking to it like it’s his wife. ‘You always do that, don’t you Lily. Every Saturday. Hurrummph. Ev-er-y Saturday.’ I wonder what has happened to his wife. I wonder if she died. I always think about this when I see a man with a dog. I keep pedalling and come to the centre of the village. It is a bit bigger than I thought - there is a pub and a green and a stream that rushes towards a waterwheel - and it smells funny, like our back garden on the day Grandma comes round for tea. I like that smell. I have seen a hundred villages like this i...

Sorry about the lack of input recently, but fear not, a bevy of exciting tales will be heading to these pages shortly. In the meantime, here's a short piece about running in the arctic: The Midnight Sun Marathon I have been dropped off at the edge of the world. A pair of trainers, a course map, a box of pasta, and the knowledge that I am about to run the most northerly marathon in the world. It is ten at night, the sun is still up and the lodge-house has gone out to get drunk. Welcome to Tromso in the Arctic Circle. Why am I here? The waters of the fjord shimmer in the light. My body desires sleep but my eyes are hypnotised. A yellow haze, that isn’t day or night - a lucid interval, where people walk in slow motion and wooden houses stand in rows of white. Am I awake? Bang! It’s too peaceful to run a race. Too simple. A thousand runners thunder across the island like blots of ink on a landscape painting, while seagulls sit waiting for fishing boats to return with t...

Hi all Its been a long break, which I have spent mainly running through mud and writing poetry. For more on the former I will soon post my new book entitled The Road Runner, but in the meantime here's some verse, recognised as 'very good' in my Creative Writing course. Paths to Enlightenment The Bus Stop Beneath the tors and moors of England I sit and wait for the bus to come. A stoic worship in a pagan shrine Amongst mags, rags and stench of humankind. Rains fall, plants sprout and stone becomes moss. My thoughts meander to a timeless flow. Then one day I hear a mechanic roar And a garrulous cascade thunder off the tor. A torrent of screams urging me aboard: 'Get on, we're late! Come on, open the door!' I withdraw inside the empty shelter To shield my soul in its dark embrace The Sign A rusting pendulum rocks on the breeze Creaking and squeaking like old man's knees. 'The centre of the financial world,' it screams Over a desert of discarded dreams. ...

This the short story that I submitted for my open university course, which has been described by my tutor as a 'magical and quirky' and 'reminiscent of the Witches of Eastwick.' Here it is anyway: The Single Vicars Club For ten years of my life I was an angel. You know - a proper angel with blond hair, perfect white skin and pink virginal lips, sent by God to do His work on earth. I don’t know why God chose me in particular. I know He works in ways we don’t understand. Maybe it was because I spent a lot of time alone. Maybe it was because my mother was dead and my father barely noticed I was alive. Maybe it was because I was smart and I would know what he wanted me to do. Or maybe it was because I was fifteen years old, had slept with over a hundred men and had never felt anything for any of them. Yes, yes I think that’s probably what it was. Why do I think this? Because the work that God wanted me to do didn’t require his usual recruits, like charity workers or clean c...

Yes, that was the exercise. A poem with alliteration on every line written about love for an object. Very trying, but it did mean that I got to let out some more confessions about the concerning relationship between my bike and I. Love on Two Wheels - A Poem Clunk clunk clunk Shifts will shank and slip Click click click Barings bounce and break Squeaal. Squeaaal. Pads rasp on rim Scratch, scratch. Saddle scrapes my crotch Handles hammer hands Wheelarch rakes the thigh Pedals pummel my shin You’re unreliable as a rat Painful as a piercing You hurt and harangue me, You make my stomach sick Yet my bike, my beau I love you For all the hurt and the pain When we pedal the peaks, We speed and fly on the freeway You make me live and laugh; Clamour and acclaim. We journey, one organ, one person. We join together, cycle and soul We are welded Amalgamated A bond unbreakable That’s why you are more Than a painting or ...