About

TrickshotsForAmateurs is the short stories and articles of freelance writer J Patrick Barton. Mr Barton appreciates all kinds of feedback and bases his sense of validation on his traffic figures. As a highly stressed individual, J Patrick Barton requires this transitory sense of validation to reduce his abnormal heart rate, so if you like, comment, reblog or follow him, you are genuinely adding years to his life.

Which is really just prolonging the inevitable of course. But he’s not a bad guy all in all, and he deserves it, maybe. He’ll take what he can get.

J Patrick Barton would like me to mention that he donates money to Friends of the Earth every month. If that sways you in his favour at all. He’s not trying to impress you or anything. He’s just saying, if you’re on the fence about J Patrick Barton, that’s something you can factor in.

Although really, he only set up the standing order because one of those charity reps- it was a woman, called Esther- stopped him in the street, and then deployed her hard ball sales pitch. It might not have worked, but he clearly had nowhere else to be, and he’d already walked past her once, which felt rude. Also he was holding some Croissants and a Chai Latte from the patisserie by his house, so he couldn’t really lie about being broke. Not to Esther. She would have known.

Esther told him all about the bees, which are being killed off by pesticides containing neonicotinoids, which he actually knew already from an episode of Shared Planet– or it might have been Costing the Earth- on BBCRadio 4. But he didn’t tell her that, because she seemed to enjoy her work, and she had a certain hippyish charm, and an Ipad with illustrations. So now J Patrick Barton gives £5 per month to the bees. Down and out bees, orphaned bees. Rehabilitated bees.

Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yes, J Patrick Barton will live forever if you share his writing with enough people. And if he lives forever, the amount of money he will ultimately be donating to the bees is infinite. So if you don’t spread the word about J Patrick Barton… you’re killing bees.

Dick.