Fiction Tiny Stories
The Ferryman Who Waved at Every Boat
For years a river ferryman waved at every passing boat, including one kayak that never waved back, until one grey Thursday in March.
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Fiction Tiny Stories
The Casserole Dish That Never Went Home Empty
One blue dish, two neighbours and a low garden wall: for years it crossed back and forth, and it was never once allowed to make the trip with nothing inside.
Fiction Useless Inventions
The Tape Measure That Rounds Up Out of Kindness
A pocket tape measure that adds a little to everything it measures, so your sunflower, your child and your snowman always come out slightly taller than you hoped.
Fiction Tiny Stories
The Chess Game That Took Eleven Months and Two Strangers
On a stone table in the corner of the park, two people who have never met keep one game going, a single move at a time, whenever either of them happens to pass.
Fiction Tiny Stories
The Window Box That Faces the Bus Stop
A window box on the third floor of Aldergate Road is planted the wrong way round on purpose, so that the people waiting for the 47 have something better to look at than a shuttered travel agent.
Fiction Tiny Stories
The Man Who Swept the Empty Lido
The outdoor pool on Harbour Road closes every October, and every winter morning since, one retired swimmer has let himself in to sweep it for a summer that is months away.
Fiction Tiny Stories
The Allotment Where Every Tomato Has the Same Grandmother
Thirty-one plots, thirty-one opinions about slugs, and one single tomato that everybody grows, because a woman on plot twelve once dried seeds on a saucer.
Fiction Tiny Stories
The Library Book That Came Back Forty-One Years Late
A book about birds, borrowed in the spring of a year nobody at the library could remember, arrived back through the returns slot with a very long letter tucked inside the cover.
Fiction Tiny Stories
The Strip of Grass Between Number Nine and Number Eleven
For six summers, two neighbours who barely spoke each mowed a little more of the shared verge than was strictly theirs, and neither ever mentioned it to the other.
Fiction Tiny Stories
The Village That Says Goodnight to the Lighthouse
Every night at ten, the lighthouse on Gull Rock flashes twice, and every night, all along the harbour front, kitchen lights blink twice in reply, though the keeper left forty years ago.