What have you got time for?

9 min read

The Verger

He unlocks at seven and locks at six and in between the building is nobody's and everybody's.

Moods: Cozy Heartfelt

8 min read

Two Hundred Metres of Hedge

You cut it almost through and then you bend it over and it does not die. That is the whole craft and it takes a winter to believe.

Moods: Cozy

7 min read

The Reading Group That Never Finished a Book

Eleven years. Ninety-four books chosen. Four finished. The group considers itself a success.

Moods: Cozy Funny

9 min read

The Last Delivery

Eleven customers left on the round. The dairy says that is not a round. He has one more thing to do first.

Moods: Cozy Heartfelt

11 min read

The Girl Who Fixed the Clock

The town clock stopped in 1998. Everyone has an opinion about it. One person has a screwdriver.

Moods: Cozy Twist ending

9 min read

Bell Ringers

Eight bells, eight people, and a piece of music that takes three hours and cannot be recorded.

Moods: Cozy

8 min read

Ice Cream in February

The kiosk opens Easter to September. It has opened on one February afternoon every year since 2011.

Moods: Cozy Heartfelt

11 min read

The Ferryman of Loch Torran

The bridge opened in 2019. The ferry still runs, four times a day, carrying almost nobody.

Moods: Cozy Heartfelt

9 min read

Marginalia

She buys second-hand books for the notes in them. One handwriting keeps turning up.

Moods: Cozy Twist ending

9 min read

Night Bus

The N92 runs four times a night and carries, most nights, the same eleven people.

Moods: Cozy Heartfelt

7 min read

Three Minutes of Ari

The haircut takes eleven minutes. The conversation takes eleven minutes. Only one of them is why anyone books.

Moods: Cozy Funny

11 min read

Room for One More

The table seats eight. There have been between eleven and nineteen people at Sunday lunch every week since 2014.

Moods: Cozy Funny

11 min read

The Baker’s Dozen

The thirteenth item is free, has always been free, and is the subject of the longest-running dispute in the family business.

Moods: Cozy Funny

13 min read

The Wednesday Swimmers

Six women, one cold lake, every Wednesday since 2009. Nobody has ever suggested moving it to a warmer day.

Moods: Cozy Heartfelt

8 min read

Feeding the Five Thousand

The rule is that nobody asks why you came. The other rule is that everybody chops something.

Moods: Cozy Heartfelt

9 min read

The Last Video Shop in the County

Nine hundred DVDs, one till from 1998, and a proprietor who has stopped pretending this is a business.

Moods: Cozy Heartfelt

7 min read

Pashmina

Stall 41 has sold the same eleven items for twenty-two years. Her customers do not come for the eleven items.

Moods: Cozy Heartfelt

7 min read

Room 12B, Ask for Denise

The form requires a document that no longer exists, issued by an office that closed in 2011. Denise has a workaround.

Moods: Cozy Funny

8 min read

The Cartographer’s Mistake

Every map publisher hides a fake street to catch copycats. Hers went further than that.

Moods: Cozy Twist ending

7 min read

The Lending Library of Things

You can borrow a hedge trimmer, a wallpaper steamer, or a gazebo. What people actually come for is harder to shelve.

Moods: Cozy

9 min read

Night Shift at the Observatory

Four hours of cloud, one thermos, and a colleague who has been dead for six years and still leaves notes in the log.

Moods: Cozy Dark

6 min read

Grandmother’s Recipe, Version Fourteen

Fourteen index cards, fifty years apart, one dish. What changes between them is not the recipe.

Moods: Cozy Heartfelt

7 min read

The Complaints Department

Desk 4 handles complaints about things the council does not administer. It is the busiest desk in the building.

Moods: Cozy Funny

7 min read

The Bus That Waits

The 6:14 leaves at 6:14. Except on Thursdays, and except for one passenger, and nobody has ever asked why.

Moods: Cozy Heartfelt

12 min read

Nine Lives of a Municipal Cat

The cat has no owner, four names, and an official parking bay. The council has stopped fighting it.

Moods: Cozy Funny

14 min read

Low Tide

Every August, for eleven years, they met on the same stretch of sand. Neither of them ever suggested it.

Moods: Cozy Heartfelt

6 min read

The Bread Man of Alder Street

Nobody on Alder Street orders bread. It simply arrives, and it is always exactly what you needed.

Moods: Cozy