It seemed a shame to throw it away when it had cost so much. I put it out on the pavement with a ‘PLEASE TAKE’ sign, but the next day it was still there, and the pavement was cracked, and three dead sparrows were lying on the ground. I put it up on Facebook Marketplace and got threats and abuse until I closed my account. I heaved it into the car to take to the charity shop. The engine blew fould purple smoke. But it had cost so much. So I kept it.

I fell asleep the moment the train started moving. When I woke there was snow on the ground, and dolphins playing in the bay, and a sunset like the world was ending. I opened a window, and my lungs opened like a flower. I was on the wrong train.

It would take at least three days, they said, to get used to time without timepieces. Her phone and watch were in a little lockbox in the cabin. There were no clocks on the walls. There was not even a distant churchbell: just the moving shadows on the hillside, the boil of a pot of water, the gentle heartbeat in her chest. She would eat when she was hungry and rest when she was tired. After her fourth meal she lay down to sleep in the night. She woke to see the sun drifting backwards in the sky.

Eventually the boss relented and gave us half a day off on Sundays. Tom pulled the thorns from under his fingernails and Jane put a salve where the ropes had rubbed him raw. Half of us thought it was wrong to lay hands on him; the other half thought it was wrong to stop when he’d given us so little. None of us were happy. But next time, we’d have half a Sunday to think.

One of my pound coins turned out to be two euro, so I couldn’t get on the bus, but the little café at the corner accepts euros so I got an espresso while I thought about the job interview I was missing. I was almost certainly coming out ahead: two hours and half a bus fare saved, and if I’d gone I would only have got the job. It was the grumpier of this sisters at the counter that morning, and I asked her if they needed any help. She laughed in my face, and gave me a free cantuccio.

Once upon a long drive the road got a little windier and the weather got a little windier and I, squeezed in between my cousins in the back of my uncle’s car that sloshed round the road with a luxurious softness my mum’s didn’t have, didn’t know about carsickness until it was flying out over the centre console. My uncle wasn’t happy but I got some on the windscreen and that was the first thing I ever did that impressed my cousins. Later that holiday they gave me my first cigarette, and my first booze, and I threw up for them twice more, like it was a circus act. It’s the happiest I ever was.

At the end of my big coastal walk I ended up back where I started. It took twenty years, doing that walk in parts, and everyone cheered when I put my foot right back in my young man’s footprint. There could be a beauty in it, I thought. You come back where you’ve started and find you’ve changed. I practiced thinking it, in case anybody asked. But nothing had changed except that little town sliding further into the sea.

The dragon had lived a good life, untroubled in the free skies. He had flown over mountains and oceans, and seen his hatchlings take wing. Now he was old. His armour was thinning; his fire burned lower; the strength in his wings and claws and tail was fading. He ate little. He spent his days sleeping in the cave and watching from the hill. The heroes would be coming soon.

It was the last night of the big reunion tour. There was a buzz across the city, like you could hear the amps humming right across town. Folk had come to town from all over, half of them without tickets, just chancing it. All the talk was of the gigs they had been to back in the day. And nobody but me seemed to have noticed that there was no back in the day. Six months ago, nobody had heard of them. But that was no fun, so I bought a T-shirt and sang along.

Three weeks into house-sitting, Jane discovered a plant she hadn’t noticed. Sure enough, there it was, on the back page of the owner’s meticulously typed notes. They called it Steve. Jane hadn’t noticed the back page, either. It was definitely too late to save Steve, but she followed the instructions anyway for the one week until they came back. They were very nice about it. A year later, they asked her back, and Steve was the only plant still there.

Gary at work is sending me mad. He won’t stop going on about when he was a great wise tree. I’ll say I’m a bit tired, and he’ll say, Oh, when I was a great wise tree I drew my power from the earth and the sun, you should try that. Whenever someone new starts, it’s twenty seconds before he’s slipped it into conversation, I’ve been here ten years but time goes quicker now than when I was a great wise tree. He’s got it on his LinkedIn. It’s not industry-relevant experience, Gary, and you’re not a great wise tree anymore.

There were three cubes, and you had to choose the one that was perfect. That was the whole process. If you chose right, you got in. If you chose wrong, you didn’t. They said they wanted people who could see the world as it really was. Sami reckoned it was a con: they just picked who they liked and used the cubes to justify it. She got in no problem.

They had baked the cat into a cake. This didn’t seem sad or horrifying, which is what made me think I might be dreaming. Sometimes in my dreams I don’t feel the things I know I should, and unlike when I am awake, I notice. The cake looked delicious, except for the tail sticking out of it. I thought I had seen some thing like this once on the telly, maybe One Foot in the Grave, and that was where I must have dreamed it up from. The cat gave a big stretch, breaking out like a chick from an egg, and started licking crumbs from his fur. He didn’t seem too bothered, either.

They had baked the cat a cake, but the cat wasn’t allowed any, which didn’t seem fair. It was bad enough we didn’t know when his real birthday was. Mum said cake wasn’t good for him, but it isn’t good for people either, is it? Dad said he wouldn’t like it. In the end we put a little forkful in his bowl, just so they could prove he wouldn’t eat it. He licked it clean and he didn’t even get a tummy ache. I thought that meant everyone could be happy. But for some reason it just made mum and dad angry.