Mark Taylor

It was just a snatch, overheard as he passed: "That guy Jamie really butters my crumpets." That had to be good, didn't it? It's the butter that makes the crumpet. But it hadn't sounded good. It had sounded like "that guy

The first day back at the factory was like any other, stamping out thousands of blank brass scoppets. But now I was wondering where all the brass came from, and where all those scoppets went, and how they were cut and what they were used for. I had never used

Carstone said that they could never try him, for he had not twelve peers in all of England. He was right, of course. They held him on remand while twenty-four boys (doubled up in case of accidents) could be raised up to his degree of privilege and sunk down to

Gracie bought me a hot air balloon ride, three hours in a little basket in the sky. I thought there would be other people there, but it was just me and the pilot, and he jumped out a few metres up. I saw him scamper away, getting smaller and smaller.

It starts with a careful scraping of spade against tarmac, lifting the flattened body from the road. Then a hiss, almost musical, as the special pump gets going. A few moments of silence. The unscrewing of lids. The striking of a match. A crackle like treading on glass. And then

I had one foot on the railway track when the alarm sounded for the level crossing. I could keep on forward or I could turn back, and it was obvious which I should do. I would clear the crossing in a few steps and be on my way. But the

The sack of iron chain in the storeroom was too heavy to move. You would have to haul the lengths out and around the tight corner to get anywhere. In the bottom of the sack there were a few loose links, and those were all we needed for the job.

Grandma had wolf's teeth on the end of her knitting needles. It seemed to make things harder, but she wouldn't take them off. She said she ate up the wool and it turned to socks inside her, and then she wondered why nobody wanted to wear

Among the strange things that live at the bottom of the ocean there drifted a little lost starling. She didn't understand that she should be unable to breathe. She didn't understand that the terrible weight of the water should crush her hollow bones. She pulled herself