Danny and Michael, two boys growing up with a single mam in the post-war industrial north of England, won a lot of hearts with their cheeky, irreverent face on their hard lives in my collection of stories, Meridian. They are back, older, maybe even wiser, but certainly bursting with just as much life and laughter, in a new collection of stories to be published soon. Others tales range from the socially inadequate Sydney man who finds a Russian bride on the internet in My Beloved Man, to an Aboriginal family burying of a pet dog, along with some secrets.