For the Love of George

Each week, we pick a short fiction piece from our Fairlight Shorts archives to feature as our story of the week. This week, we’ve chosen a story about biology by Guy Jones.

Guy Jones was born in Manchester and brought up in Glossop in Derbyshire. He did an Ecology degree in Wolverhampton before settling in Nottingham, where he worked in the community and voluntary sector. In 1998 he set up Hothouse Theatre in Nottingham, a community theatre and film project using the creative process as a tool for personal and community development.

Guy is now the writer in residence for Hothouse Theatre, and has written several fringe-style plays and short films for the theatre. He is the editor of two online magazines: Oh My Nottz, an online magazine which is used as a focus for the creativity of young people, and Writer’s Block, an online magazine supporting, promoting and publishing written work from Nottinghamshire and beyond. He also writes and self publishes short stories via Smashwords and occasionally perform poems on the Nottingham poetry scene.

‘For the Love of George’ explores the difficult choices that we must make.

Enjoy!

They’ll be painting the park fence soon.  It could do with a new coat. They do it every now and then. There must be a list of fences they have to paint pinned up on a wall somewhere. They probably do nothing else day in day out but paint fences. Not exactly an interesting life, painting park fences. Of course, there may be a closed season for fence painting, just like there is for football, and just like football it’s probably far too short.

Sorry, did you say something?

Can I deliver?

Oh! You mean the reproduction Queen Anne desk.

The one you’ve been trying to buy for the last half hour.

Of course I noticed. I was just teasing. I’ve been looking at the fence. Don’t you think it needs a new coat of paint?

Deliver? The trouble is I can’t leave the shop. You’ll have to wait for my husband to get back.

Well, that depends on how you look at it. His body will probably get in at midnight.

But his mind won’t actually get here until the morning…

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