Harrogate Hymns: A Short Story Cycle

Eight short pieces of nonsense prose from a spa town, written in a kind of English that has been left out in the rain. A food delivery becomes a litany. England lose a semi-final in a flat above the Stray. A young man loses his fear of God in the crypt at Ripon, a Scottish granny gets her wee cup of tea at Bettys, a drunk man mislays his why in the freezer aisle at ASDA, and for one fortnight a year the blossom comes out on the Stray.

Nothing much happens, which is the whole of what happens. Following the lead of Finnegans Wake, Thomas Rabies folds Harrogate’s streets, rivers and dialect so they spill across the page in bursts of phonetic play; one word often wears two or three coats at once. The Nidd, the Ure and the Skell run through the language as much as the landscape.

Click to see the reading notes.