Fire and Water

High Fidelity for post-student women coming to terms with their men and their bands A quirky battle of the senses for Ally, narrator with attitude and an unfortunate crush on the lead singer of Mr Big Homage in prose to the ultimate seventies band Free The Novel opens as the train door closes and Ally's day-long journey from Aberystwyth to Felixstowe begins.

The narration moves from present to past as Ally remembers details of her thirteen-year stay in Aberystwyth.

She arrived as a student to read English and now thirteen years later, she is leaving for the last time. "So what do you do? I'm in a band. Your Jonny's in a band. Everyone I ever see you with is in a band...Do you play anything?" "I drank some of my snakebite to buy myself time.

Reaching the bottom of the glass, I plumped for Pamela Morrison's preferred job description.

It hadn't done her any harm, unless you counted her heroin-related death a few years after Jim's." "I'm the ornament."