OPENING  GAMBITS

1. After his death his body received the standard postmodern examination.

2. There was no hope for her: she truly believed that Dalston was the centre of the universe.

3. Giant, odious toadstalls had been found in a forest north of the town and a public health warning had been broadcast on national TV.

4. This is the story of Alan, a 243 year old Greenland Shark.

5. She was on the phone organizing a delivery of 1000 litres of compost when she looked out of the mullioned kitchen window and saw Colin, the postal deliverer, wearing a mask.

6. Catastrophising was his favourite word but this time the threat was real.

7. Never underestimate the power of a small angry child with a full size cricket bat and a precocious allergy to Polite Fiction.

8. High above the city a murmuration of starlings was swaying, concaving, bulging like rapeseed oil tilted in a pan.

9. It was here, beside the nave of St. Mary’s Church in Slowmarket, that the Suffolk Situationists had their first meeting and scrawled their infamous slogan: NO GUARANTEE OF DEATH FROM BOREDOM.

10. Light rain fell across the city, the first for over three months, and the people held up their hands and opened their mouths.

© Daniel Pounds