It Seemed Small at the Time

That Was the Week That Was: July 28 – August 3rd

It didn’t look like much at the time. But it knew exactly where to land.

A biscuit tin goes missing.
A sticker gets colored in.
A dinghy tips too far. A mast catches on something buried.

None of it felt like much—at first.

But this week’s stories remind me that meaning doesn’t always arrive announced.
Sometimes it turns up uninvited—carrying a biscuit tin. Or a sticker. Or the silence that comes after a splash.

Sometimes it sneaks in sideways, carried on the back of something small.
A ritual disrupted. A question left unasked. A pause before your name is called.

The Queen Vic Incident (Narrated)

In The Queen Vic Incident, a long-scowled-over biscuit tin disappears from the church hall and turns into a full-scale moral inquiry—half petty rebellion, half quiet reckoning. Behind the rock buns and rota sheets, a deeper tension simmers: the cost of holding on to rituals no one quite remembers how to release.

The Sticker Stayed On [Narrated]

In The Sticker Stayed On, a man walks into a party, unsure what he’s signaling—and gets mistaken for something he didn’t mean to project.
The misread is almost comic. Almost.
But beneath the laugh, something lonelier: the ache of being seen, but not quite rightly.

Chapter Eleven – Holding On [Narrated]

Holding On: Chapter Eleven brings us back to the hospice, where David and Rachel sit beside their father’s bed.
There’s no confrontation. No breakthrough. Just the trembling effort to be present when nothing can be fixed—and maybe that’s the most honest kind of love there is.

Until It Wasn't

Then there’s Until It Wasn’t: a heatwave. A capsize. A mistake that felt like joy until it didn’t.
I hadn’t planned to tell that story—but it surfaced. And it stayed.
The boots stayed too.
Some moments don’t dissolve. They just settle.

None of these pieces shout.
But each one listens.
To what lingers. To what gets misunderstood. To the way small things lodge themselves in memory—quietly, stubbornly, and for good.

So maybe that’s the real thread this week:

The sticker stayed.
The tin returned.
The boots still full.
It didn’t look like much at the time.
But it knew exactly where to land.