3p short story by Phil Clark

Villages is one of the stories that perhaps falls more in line with the stupid and absurd that I tend to write. It's amazing where a bit of inspiration can come from. I think the springboard for this particular story was bred from a bit of banter, horseplay and "4 in the morning bullshit." It starts off quite serious I guess, taking the form of an internal dialogue from a character who let his dad down when he was younger to farm and eventually turn the land into an English country village (there's some reverberations of Knut Hamsun's 'The Growth of the Soil' in there), and then eventually his bitterness at having his dream dashed by a government process of registering and subsequently naming his connurbation. This part doesn't turn out great for him.
In terms of the stuff I write this story is a little lighter, well certainly lighter than some of the prose that I have strung out on the page, stuff that has come directly from the dark recesses of the inner mind, but for me, that's part of the fun of writing.

For more information on Phil Clark & his writing, please visit www.myspace.com/philclarkfiction