Short stories, made up. Everything else on this site is true, or trying to be. These aren’t.

  • Church time. A clock repairer sets a village church clock right after forty years of running eleven minutes slow, and finds out what those eleven minutes meant to one woman.
  • The hinge. A hedgelayer starts on an overgrown hawthorn hedge, and six yards in the woman from the other side comes out in her pyjamas to say it’s hers.
  • Left luggage. A clerk at a ferry terminal holds on to one unclaimed suitcase past its ninety days.
  • The envelope. At a seed library where nobody ever brings seeds back, someone returns an envelope of lettuce seed with an apology written on the front.
  • Minutes of the last meeting. An allotment committee finds that a plot let to a dead man is being dug at night, and decides what to do about it. Committee minutes.
  • The last 43. A bus driver on a route’s last night watches his regular passenger not get off at her stop.
  • Keys, as found. A house-clearer lists the keys left in a kitchen drawer for the executor. A numbered list.
  • Found: one glove. A neighbourhood group argues about whose glove it is, until someone says why it keeps moving. A group thread.
  • Lentil soup, with notes. A card that three generations have written on. An annotated recipe.
  • Lost property. Two people share the book on a baths’ front desk, and one man keeps forgetting his towel. A ledger.
  • Held for bus. A ferry changes skipper, and the 4.40 keeps waiting on Thursdays. A ferry’s log.
  • Lane two. A woman who has counted her lengths by the man in the next lane for six years has to share a lane with him.