Postcards from Kronk - the second collection of daily stories. (2025)

The small man starts his Powerpoint presentation, lights are turned off and a graduated blue screen with black writing appears: Objective : To ensure the private council discussions are kept private. The gathered men in suits nod to themselves. A click and the slide dissolves into a series of boxes moving medium fast from left to right revealing another slide with different words but the same font. Rationale : The words we speak by moonlight register subliminally as private. Deep down our neurons understand that what we say and hear is to be treated in confidence. The presenter looks towards the audience, it's hard to gauge their reaction in the light of the projector, another click and the third slide is revealed. there are no words, just a photograph of a wooden boat on a lake somewhere picturesque. Inside the boat are crudely cut and pasted photographs of the individual council members, their relative sizes awkward, ...

Back then I'd sometimes run as fast as I could, imagining my feet spinning the world as I ran, my potential limited only by balance not by strength. It was winter and I was lost, I remember the man that answered the door to me at 2am was in his slippers but acted as if my request for directions home was an everyday and welcome request. He joined me out in the night air and pointed at the tall tower of the hospital in the distance, 'head for that and then you'll be right'.  That night I'd ran home as the crow flies, through gardens, over hedges, breaking a minor bone in my ankle as I did. As I washed my face the next morning, removing the caked blood and taking a pair of tweezers to the embedded gravel I was thankful he had been so courteous.

Kyle wanted to be a Roman centurion but the the army wouldn't let him provide his own uniform.

The American authority have outlawed drone warfare on homeland soil but quietly approved its use for tracking criminal gangs into south america. The sound produced is imperceptible, a low drone resonating at such a frequency that even two to three minutes exposure causes the white and red blood cells to vibrate at different rates due to their relative densities. They intend to send it out in the dead space in the cell phone signals, those pings back and forth used for sms messages. That's the art in the operation : the drone senders need to be absolutely sure who is using the phone at any one moment. It starts at midnight and it shouldn't be too long before we know what happens.

"No more quick pints that turn into late apologetic phones calls, we move in together or I go window shopping." He wasn't listening properly and paused a few seconds too long, catching her eye Callum understood he'd have a lifetime to make it up to her but that didn't seem a bad deal.

The next big thing never arrives in towns like mine, buses full of city people drive in at the weekends to take photographs of us going about our daily chores. Growing up in a place like Delton makes you feel like an exhibit, a curiosity the circus had left behind. That was why, at Greg's leaving party, we were all nervous, he was 21, like us and had won a scholarship to the big fashion school in the city. He'd even been interviewed on the radio and everything, saying how he wasn't leaving Delton, that it was like a holiday and when he returned he'd make the town proud and put us on the map, once and for all. If you sit in the shadows for long enough the sun looks more a cancer - that was how Marnie put it. And that was how it felt - we liked our world, no matter how strange it appeared and weren't sure we wanted it to change. Greg never made it back to Delton, sent us a drawing for a portable scanner we could wear when we went ratting, told us it would be...

From inside the helmet Stuart Johnston felt like a little boy buying rizlas, any confrontation, no matter how tiny would shatter his belief. ' Sentamu is happy', He held his breath for a few seconds before the cheers began and his fear receded. 'You have worked hard again this year and now our time is almost here. No more will we hide like vermin, wait tables and scrub floors...' Stuart felt waves of pure energy surge from the crowd into him as the doors to the barn were heaved open and the fruits of their toil stepped forwards blocking out the moon. A communal gasp and then more cheering. 'Sentamu will lead you back to your rightful place-' Then, as the first figure fell forwards crushing those too slow or packed in tight, Stuart once more saw he was wearing a bucket.