Hi — I’m Nicola. I was born in the northwest of the UK and I tell people who ask that I am from Manchester — it just gives me more kudos and is a lot simpler — and I do support Man U. Sixty years later, France is my home. …

A pebble’s perspective. — A long, straight, precise cut and the sea is divided from the pale sky. A solitary sail tacks its edge. A bird wheels. The stones hold their breath under a stab of sun — and, for a moment, every one of the millions of pebbles on this beach shines in…

(Nothing to do with the interminable wait for aid) — 5.22; Awake — taut with waiting… They promised us a deluge at 4 am precisely — a storm to cleanse, restore order. I had chicken halfway to my mouth when the siren yelped from my phone — a Mediterranean Event. Some biblical thing this way comes — and you’d better…

Reality v cognitive dissonance in an abandoned house in Nice. One Wednesday, she takes a different path. This one leads to a compact wonderland of artisan objects set in tableau in an old, abandoned house in Nice. Immersive theater (created by a young artist) to lose oneself in — play…

A justification of an estrangement. — Disdain from a mother is the cruelest thing — a soaked-in bed-sheet stain of shame — where it is always you, never she, to blame. The background stench of untrustworthy memory persists as evidence that something was rotten — will not be forgotten like the non-explanation, the non-hug. Once —…

Conversation with a fellow artist — The other night, I visited an old student at her first exhibition. The work is mostly bad — but her determination to make a living from her doodles shines through — radiating — blinding otherwise indifferent passers by into handing over cash for postcards. She talks of suffering — she…

A Poem

How we use time is up to us in the end — and, in the end, it will hula round to the inevitable because there is always a beginning, a middle — and occasionally, a reprieve! — It’s an abscess — not life — just a fact, A putrid hole of matter that has stopped me in my tracks. Time has gone on the offensive — relentlessly bombarding the ancient armature that holds me upright. Bunches of nerves sprout impotently from the once plastered facade — now…

is whatever you want there to be. A Poem. Regard, Victor — look! Bronze bust gazing impassively at the iron sea before: a slice of pale sun cuts silhouettes of waiting battleships from the lowering sky. Behind, shutter-blind, timid dwellings link arms — defying the inevitable…In between — a garden…