ONE of the skills of a good writer is to be able to make familiar things strange and new to the reader.

Martin Brindle, 50, is co-director and performer with Hand to Mouth theatre which has been based in Southampton for 20 years.

The company has performed regularly in Hampshire theatres, festivals and schools, and abroad.

He enrolled on a creative writing course at Southampton University to discover whether he had any hidden talent.

He is married to artist and musician Su Eaton and has two children.

In the letter below Martin describes a well-known landmark in Southampton through the eyes of a little boy lost there from a faraway place.

He writes to his mother in bewilderment of the strange things he sees. Can you tell where he is?

Dear Momma,

There is a big noise like the wind blowing but you don't feel it on your skin, and there is a storm noise of talking that is always around. The storm is all echoes and you cannot hear a sentence.

Everything is glass, everything is metal, everyone is moving. There is no laughter.

There are doors, many doors you can go in and out and sometimes the doors they know you are coming and the doors bow before you and the doors they wave you in.

You can touch any shiny thing you want, but Momma, never take them shiny things out of the door. Many rooms have clothes and these rooms have white still bodies, bodies turned to stone I think, some with no heads and those with heads have no faces and those with faces have no life. This is what happens to you if you take the shiny things out of the doors again, I think.

In the middle of this big big place is a space for drinking if you have the money and I smell coffee, Momma. There are metal snakes that give you water if you are brave enough to put your mouth to their mouth and push hard on their heads.

There are many bodies walking. Many of them have earache or toothache I think, Momma. They hold stones against their heads to make them better but it makes them worse. They go crazy and talk to themselves, I think.

There are many many bodies walking, but I do not know if they are real people like you and me. I think they are dead, I think.

Am I dead. Momma? They are pale ghosts in this big big house. They have caught the sunshine and put it in bottles on the walls. There are pieces of sky a long way up, above where they eat and eat and drink and drink.

There is no real ground under me, everything is hard, everything is shiny. They have taken the plants and trees and put them in shiny pots, tiny pots too small for roots, I think. There is no fruit. Remember Daddy say 'No Roots, No Fruits'?

There are some children but they are not happy and the ghosts they hold on tight to the children, and they take them up the moving hill where you do not walk but you jump quick when you reach the top.

The big ghosts are fat, and I think I know why, Momma. They are eating the bad children in the place at the top. They hold them tight, I think , so they cannot run. They take them to the top and they eat all the children when they would not be good.

What did I do Momma that was so bad? When they see me will they eat me? I do not want to be ghost food in this place. I know what they call this big big place Momma, I heard a ghostman say it.