As a child, I went through a stubborn, rebellious and insufferable phase. This manifested in several ways which I will not expand on here.

For the purposes of this short piece, I wish to focus on the specific period of 18 months or so wherein I developed a hatred of the notion of the birthday.

What’s the point? I shouted, quite stubbornly and not a little rebelliously. It’s just like any other day.

I viewed it as the marking of an arbitrary thing, the passing of a specific number of days since a very specific biological event. The celebration of a birthday was a denial of a basic truth, a naive implication that things mattered, and that the mundane and the quotidian could be imbued with meaning.

Thankfully, this sanctimonious and insufferable phase of my adolescence was short-lived (but did sadly encapsulate two of my own birthdays).

I realised later than expected that to celebrate a birthday is to convey a collective happiness about two (categories of) things:

(1) What the person being feted has done in their time

(2) The fact that they are still kicking around

To say happy birthday to a living person, then, might be loosely translated as:

“Well done. I’m glad you’re still here”.

This is why cake, balloons, singing are profoundly important things, perhaps the most important things on earth. Tell the people who are still here that you are glad of it! For there are plenty of people who we can no longer tell.

We are proud of all the things we have done over the last three years. We have worked hard to curate what we hope is a welcoming (and frequently nonsensical) space for stories. Secondly, there have been very real challenges along the road where we considered whether we wanted to continue running these events.

In more ways than one, we are glad to still be here.

We hope you’ll come and celebrate with us next week. Thursday 15 October, The Blue Monk on Enid Street in Bermondsey. We commence at 7.30pm prompt.

And yes, there are ten discounted tickets here for birthday believers. Code is BELIEVE.

See you there.

Tickets here

Tickets here

Sweet beloved collective members,

Storytime is on the cusp of turning 3.

To celebrate, we are hosting a birthday party at a place very close to the heart of Storytime.

Yes, on Thursday 15 October, we’re heading back to the Bermondsey Arches for our first big event of the autumn.

We will be joined by old friends and new, there will be a mini-takeover by one of our favourite other nights in London, there will be a bumper open mic session and music.

Hats, cake, stories, music

Tickets are £10 for norms, £5 for Storytime collective members.

Tickets here

Head to the perks section of the website to get your code for half-price tickets.

And join the collective if you haven’t already.

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See you there.

Back in May at summer’s cusp, we ran an event in One Tree Hill near Honor Oak Park.

Please enjoy the full audio of that magical evening in something approaching podcast form. There is a bit of background noise from various birds chirping and planes flying over but hopefully that gives you a bit of atmosphere rather than any sort of irritation.

We don’t record or document our unplugged events, but this is basically what they are like.

If you’d like to attend our next unplugged, you’ll need to join the collective.

More stories to come.

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Collective Readers: Kofi Achina, Phoebe Wagner, Christine Lehnen, Nols Nathankski

Open Mic Readers: Ebun Sodipo, Aaron Oliver, Esben Alsted

Music: Poppy Rose

Hosts: Adam RW & Vanessa Woolf

We will, frequently and without warning, share random perks and gifts to our sweet beloved collective members. Many more to come but in the immediate (this evening) future… One such perk and/or gift is free tickets to our event tonight in Croydon.

If you’d like to join us, stories will begin at 7.30pm in the Clock Tower Cafe at the Museum of Croydon (approximately 10 minutes from East Croydon station).

A free ticket code for collective members is in the membership section below.

See you there.

Read more

Welcome, collective members.

The Storytime Monthly Story Writing Competition is a brand new and deeply exciting initiative wherein Storytime collective members may submit a story (fiction or non-fiction) of no more than 1,500 words with a new theme every month.

This theme will only be made available to paid members of the Storytime collective.

The writer of the best story will be awarded a cash prize of £100. They will also have their work published on this website and will be invited to perform a story at a Storytime event if they would like to do so.

All submissions will be anonymised before being judged by a panel of readers from the Storytime collective.

How to enter

This month’s deadline is 11.59pm on Wednesday 30 September 2026.

Submissions should be emailed to stories@storytimelondon.com with the subject line:

My Submission to Storytime Monthly Story Writing Competition: September 2026.

To make a submission, you will need to be a paying collective member. The theme is below the paywall for paying collective members.

There are no set criteria - good stories come in many different forms and shapes. Points will be awarded for originality, experimentation and creative risk-taking.

Winners will be announced the following week.

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Read more

Over the almost three years we have been running Storytime, there has been a good deal of debate over the intentionally unclear definition of the word “collective”, our collective, and why or how someone becomes a part of it.

The loose understanding was:

If you have read at Storytime, you become part of the collective.

This applied to both curated readers and open mic-ers.

Quickly, it became clear, this was inadequate.

What of the people who come to the nights, bring their light and their energy, but do not wish to read?

What of those who have not yet been lucky enough to have their names pulled out of the open mic hat?

Surely, they too are of the collective?

What of the team that runs the nights, designs the posters, runs the door, invites friendly folks and folky friends?

Are they not part of the collective?

Of course, yes, they were and are.

This prompted more intense bouts of existential interrogation. Does a collective obtain meaning by virtue of having an in-group or an out-group? Does inclusion and/or exclusion extend to codes of behaviour, with those who chant noisily being included, while those who wish to sit pleasantly, quietly and alone in the corner, being viciously shunned even though they too are (less conspicuously) deriving a sense of calm and fulfilment from being at the night.

Perhaps then these arbitrary assignations have no real power. Can something intended to be inclusive continue to be so if it is defined along exclusionary terms?

I do not have the answers to these questions.

What I do know is that Storytime is a club and a collective for like-minded folks to gather frequently, meet, tell stories, play music, make merry, etc.

We also want to grow, run more nights, and give more people the opportunity to read, perform, gather, spread the Storytime magic.

So, you can now become a Collective Member for £6/month.

This will give you access to:

(1) Storytime Monthly Story Writing Competition

As suggested by its pithy title, this is a monthly story writing competition. There is a monthly prize of £100 for the best story.

To enter, you must submit a maximum 1500-word story by the last day of each month on a given theme that is only made available to Collective members on the first day of each month. Points for creativity, experimentation,

The writer of the best story (judged by appointed members within the collective) will receive a £100 prize each month and will have their story published on the website. They will also get a headline slot at a future Storytime.

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(2) Unplugged

Collective membership also gives you access to tickets for our monthly unplugged events. Only members will receive event details. These nights will be monthly and have secret headliners, secret locations, with no phones or recordings or photographs taken. This has been a lovely series over summer and will now continue on a monthly basis.

There are also some additional and extremely exciting Perks:

Collective members will receive 10% discount codes for all events tickets and will receive full access to all stories read at the night here on our website. We will also upload all photos from the nights in the subscriber-only parts of the website. Depending on interest, we will also roll out membership cards.

Finally, the first ten sign-ups will receive a free Storytime hat.

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Why are we doing this?

We want the collective to expand and do more. We think that official membership of Storytime - where you get access to special competitions and event and content - is the best way to do this.

Also, very bluntly, we need a sustainable source of income for Storytime to pay the people who run the night in order that they are able to continue running it and also to pay our readers and performers as fairly as possible.

If you want to help us build the night to continue and to grow, consider signing up for £6 / month and formalise your membership of the collective.

Unplugged Volume #1 was fun. Let’s do it again but this time with friends - we’re collaborating with beloved @connectionwithwonder for this one. Thursday 27 August, 7pm, a free evening of storytelling and music under the stars. No phones, no cameras, nothing captured or documented. Email us on stories@storytimelondon.com to confirm your attendance and receive location information.

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The summer has been steady as we make plans for the autumn. Our most recent Storytime took place on the fateful Thursday after England exited the World Cup in predictably hilarious and heartbreaking fashion. We gathered in a shaded part of Queen’s Wood in Highgate.

This is a secret place, a special place, a hidden gem, a literal wood with trees and all that not ten minutes away from the Northern line. How this exists is a continual source of wonder to me. What is all the more remarkable is that so few Londoners seem to be aware of it. It is a literally ancient wood, described in the 1100s by William Fitzstephen as part of “a vast forest, its copses dense with foliage concealing wild animals – stags, does, boars, and wild bulls”.

Mystical, magical, and a perfect place to host our first Unplugged.

As previously expressed on this page, we are leaning into the content and digital side of things with some of our other events. This is to spread the good word of Storytime and storytelling in London more generally. We want to grow our night and online is a good (and largely free - financially at least) place to do this.

But we think it is very important to retain some mystery, some of the unknown and unknowable aspects of a night where people come together to converse, read and listen to stories and play and hear music.

This is why we have set up Unplugged.

At these events, you will be asked to switch off your phone, no photos or recordings will be taken, and we will exist exclusively in the space for the short period of time that we are together. There will be secret readers, secret musicians and secret locations to come in the months ahead.

All I’ll say of Unplugged Volume #1 is that it is my favourite of the nights we’ve organised over the last three years. There was a warmth and a calm to the space and it felt very special. Thanks to all who attended and helped create the space with us.

Unplugged Volume II will take place in a secret East Central London (E1W) location on Thursday 27 August. Email us at stories@storytimelondon.com to confirm your attendance and receive the exact location.

Next week, we are running a night in collaboration with the Museum of Croydon. Perhaps it’s because it’s summer, perhaps it’s because we’ve never run an event in Croydon before, but the night is currently set to be attended by a very small number of lovely people.

In acknowledgement of this fact, and out of the debt I feel I now owe to you for reading this far, there are 20 £1 tickets here with the code THANKS4READING.

Snaffle while you can.

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Hello, yes, finally, the time has come to justify our little night and argue for its continued existence in a multipolar, increasingly incandescent world.

Storytime is a night where people tell stories1. It really is as simple as that.

Sometimes the stories are true, sometimes they are not.

Sometimes it’s all open mic, sometimes it’s entirely curated.

Sometimes stories are told accompanied by music, sometimes entirely through mime.

That last one is admittedly rare but the point stands: all varieties of storytelling are welcomed and encouraged at our night.

We are not doing anything new or ground-breaking.

We did not invent storytelling and nor did anyone else. It is a key part of the history of our species and our emergence from more primitive modes of being to the chaotic, confusing, wonderful and terrible lives we live today.

Anyone who lays claim to storytelling as a mode or means of expression is either a fool or a charlatan. We are simply adopters and custodians of an ancient behaviour. We are a species of speakers and listeners - these things predate and will long outlive any modern trends to remain stranded in your room.

We want to keep building what we do to make Storytime more of an ecosystem than just a night. That is why we will continue running our main night once a month but have plans for a series of spin-offs and satellites as the year progresses. These are intended to cover different parts of the city and give different people more opportunities to tell their stories. They will also allow different members of our collective to put their own stamp on different versions of the night.

We will be building out everything we do online here on our website, hosted by the glorious folks at Substack. There will be story competitions and workshops coming rather soon…

I sometimes wonder about why I’ve continued running the night as it has become increasingly financially illogical for me and mentally, creatively and administratively draining. A seductive and quite viable explanation in my lower moments is that it is all one big ego trip and I enjoy being the centre of attention. That is probably at least partially true. But I think more important is to have a sense of home and warmth. I have always struggled to know where home is, having moved around quite a lot as a child. I can’t really confidently claim to be from London or Auckland or Cumbria or anywhere else that I have felt attached to over the years.

More importantly, I come from the people I love. And Storytime is now the biggest hub for those people. So I suppose that’s the point of Storytime: to have a space that is warm and receptive for people to share stories that they have crafted.

Or - to find a home.

We hope you’ll join us at some point. See you at the night.

NB: We’re running one tonight at Pedaller’s Corner. Come along and join us.

NB #2: You can also still RSVP to volume #1 of Unplugged next week by sending us an email.

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Look, here!

This is how much fun you might well have if you attend a Storytime. You could well be one of these cheery and delighted people who truly and genuinely appear to be having a lovely, wonderful, natural and keenly engaged time.

We don’t regret this and must lean into it to a certain extent. In an increasingly visual media ecosystem and with no budget or meaningful financial backing (and while trying to both keep ticket prices at £10 while also paying our readers as fairly as possible), we would stymie more people finding us if we swore off it altogether. We would like to build Storytime as something of a movement and the things we place lightly upon the World Wide Web will help do this. Similarly, this Substack is a useful and moe substantial way to communicate with you, our dear collective members.

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We admire and envy those who swear off social media completely to live happily in the woods forever. We are not brave enough for this more extreme course of action just yet.

HOWEVER.

The moment itself must always be the most important thing. There is a slight sense of perpetual compromise when everything is documented.

There should be some moments that are preserved and kept sacred, protected from the prying eyes of a camera lens or any other form of documentation.

So we announce Storytime Unplugged Volume #1, a new and indefinite secret series of storytelling and music nights that will take place around the city in several secret locations. Phones, cameras and all other systems and methods of documentation other than the written word are outlawed. You may also of course transmit news of the night by way of oral storytelling. For example, you could say to a colleague the following day:

Went to an event in the woods last night, no phones allowed, nothing. Everyone properly in the moment. Good, it was.

You slurp your tea with feigned insouciance, scorching your tongue. But you care not! For the news is important and must be shared.

How did people know you were there? Responds the colleague, baffled.

You lean forward.

They didn’t. They just have to believe me.

And now you might allow yourself a tentative grin, as your mind returns to the golden evening that took place, an undocumentable and undocumented few hours in a sacred outdoor space, where stories and songs were shared between a very small number of people in a highly meaningful spot.

Now you find yourself amidst a blissful reverie, a noontime stupor, and your colleague with whom you were conversing has wandered off to send an email, drink the latest pitiful instalment of their Pret subscription, and converse jealously with your other colleagues.

I think they went to a sex party in the woods last night, they might say.

Let them talk! Let them think what they want. For you will know that you were there for Unplugged #1. And only those in attendance will be able to speak to its great vibrancy, its purpose, its refulgence, and its significance.

Storytime Unplugged Volume #1 will take place on Thursday 16 July at 7pm. The first will be free. If you’d like to come, send us as an email and you will receive the relevant information and the password.

Before then, we present SCÉALAÍOCHTA with Johnjoe Irwin & Luke Macpherson next Friday 10 July. This will be a night inspired by the Irish tradition and will be lovely. Tickets are here.

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Good morrow dear Storytime folks,

This is the first edition of what is intended to be a weekly notice board.

Notes, reflections, meditations, ruminations and various other multisyllabic synonyms to project some sort of aura of intelligence.

We will gather ideas and updates from the thriving storytelling and poetry community in London and beyond. We are lucky to be a small part of this community and would like to use our platform here on Substack to spread the good word.

My personal notes from the week are limited. It has been hot here in London, hotter than ever before. For some, this has instilled a sense of good cheer. For others, grumpiness abounds. On the Bakerloo, I sat next to a man sullenly sweating through his grey and woollen suit, retaining a stubborn ambivalence about the unfolding year, he tutted and grumbled under his breath as roaming packs of schoolchildren boarded eating soleros and exchanging tidbits of gossip.

Such are the contrasts of the London in the heat. Don’t be a sullen sweater.

Go and have a solero instead.

When it comes to plugs… There is only one place to start… I am very excited about our solstice event this evening. We’ve got a bumper crop of incredible readers from our collective and a magical musician in the shape of Isaac the brave.

It’s our first outing in Peckham.

There will be air conditioning.

Doors 7pm, readings start 7.30pm prompt.

I will be telling a story about a protracted text exchange and host Leo Flanagan will be sharing a Tombry Tale or two.

Get set. Final tickets here.

Notice Board

As this is the first edition of the notice board, we have not had nearly enough time to solicit submissions.

However, I do have one plug for the wonderful Dean Atta.

I was lucky enough to interview Dean for a separate project that I am launching next week. He is an absolutely delightful human - charming, funny, wise and reflective in the way that only the very best poets are.

Praise Dean!

Dean is running a crowdfunder for a very exciting poetry and music project by him and Antosh Wojcik. It is entitled I Don't March to That Drum takes poems from Dean Atta’s forthcoming poetry collection of the same name and sets them to music composed by Antosh.

Dean’s poems celebrate his Blackness and queerness while acknowledging the challenges other Black and queer people have faced and continue to face worldwide. The show is a rallying cry for love and solidarity, urging us to stand together but march to the beat of our own drum.

Dean and Antosh are seeking to raise £5,000 and are offering highly desirable rewards of 1:1 creative consultation sessions, feedback on your poetry, prose, or scripts, and executive producer credits on the project.

Get involved here.

Support the project and claim your reward by 1 July 2026.

Get involved, support Dean, and get feedback on your work from one of the best poets working in London today.

We’ll be back next week for some more notes and reflections.

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Dear Storytime Collective,

As we approach our third annual summer solstice celebration, I wanted to write a short note on the significance of the summer solstice to Storytime and subtly suggest successive sessions over subsequent seasons.

Enough of this utter nonsense!

Why the solstice?

A noted and highly viral poet friend of mine once scoffed and mocked at our marking of the winter solstice.

Great for reach! He mocked, as he gave me a wedgie and attempted to shove my head down the toilet bowl. Why don’t you just call it the Christmas party?

Stop that! I pleaded.

In that case, I partially agreed with him, though I resented the way in which the point had been expressed. The winter solstice is most definitely a more enigmatic and recalcitrant creature, representing as it does the nadir of daylight in a year, a shrunk and withered excuse for the time unit we call a day. The summer solstice a more proud and regal thing, not aloof but most certainly enigmatic, standing discerning at the height of the year, looking over the heads of all the slightly shorter days clustered around it, and the much shorter ones either side in February and November and all those sorts of months.

There is something seductive about the ancient nature of the solstice. But we at Storytime are not especially pagan or of any faith or persuasion other than a commitment to whimsy and delight. The fixation goes further than that and on to the real astronomical and unarguable fact that this is the longest day, when the earth is tilted closest to the burning ball of gas that sustains us. All methods and instruments of measurement (calendars, clocks, abacuses, hourglasses) are absurdly recent by comparison to this mythical fact of the universe.

Long before the species is what it now is, the solstice was itself, and long after we have been reduced to rubble by the chitterings of insecure men, so the solstice will remain. It is an acknowledgment that people of all faiths celebrate many of their own festivals of significance dervised from the same source - the movement of the earth through space and the seasons as we complete our daily rotations through another annual ellipse.

The solstice then allows us to commune and gather with humility in the face of our immense insignificance, tell stories, play music, be together, be silly, be earnest at the true and ancient midway point of another ghastly, wonderful, tremulous year. Insist that all these things are important - deeply, deeply important - as important as anything as ridiculous and impermanent as a human life can be.

The first summer solstice in 2024 was the first time it really felt like we might be building something important - our biggest crowd ever at old beloved Enid Street Tavern and a magnificent assemblage. The summer solstice in 2025 felt like another step. Our first sellout night, and again a tender yet febrile atmosphere in the room with a truly exceptional array of readers from our collective. Diversity is important not only in how people identify and present themselves but also the tone and textures of their voices. We lean towards humorous and absurdist at our nights but the night as a whole is meaningless if we don’t have a wide chorus of different keys, notes and perspectives. This night underscored this perfectly - with a whole range of excellent, moving, hilarious and beautiful stories from across our collective.

On then to Friday 26 June 2026, wherein we have taken on the mantle of wandering bards of London, finding a home wherever we might tell a story. There is a burgeoning poetry and storytelling space in London and we are proud to be a part of that. Anyone who implies that a storytelling night is an original idea devised in the last few years has a fundamental misunderstanding of the human experience. We are not doing anything original or new. Rather, we are the inheritors of an ancient tradition.

We have some familiar voices and many wonderful new ones to join us as we mark the solstice in Peckham on Friday 26 June. I am honoured to be co-hosting the night with my close friend and co-conspirator, Leo Flanagan. It’s going to be a special one.

You can get your tickets here - there is a half-price discount for ten lucky readers who have made it this far in the letter.

Get set.

Love,

Adam

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Friday 26 June 2026: Storytime Summer Solstice at Peckham Levels. Tickets here.

Friday 10 July 2026 Storytime presents SCÉALAÍOCHTA at Pedaller’s Corner with Johnjoe Irwin and Luke Macpherson. A night of heart and home inspired by the Irish tradition. Tickets here.

Thursday 16 July 2026 Storytime Unplugged Volume #1. No phones, no cameras, no documentation. Just stories and music. Secret location. RSVP only.

Thursday 13 August 2026 Storytime at the Museum of Croydon. Tickets coming soon.

Friday 4 September 2026 False Idah EP Launch at Morocco Bound Bookshop in Bermondsey. Tickets coming soon.

Audio production by Iona Lowe.

Story and reading by Adam RW.

Originally read at the Storytime Winter Solstice on 20 December 2024.

TOMORROW

Their correspondence continued. His grandfather had resolved the question of the caps lock button and now deployed it at appropriate intervals. But now, he encountered other inbox issues for he was inundated with pitches and recommendations. Though his knowledge of the underlying technicalities was admittedly limited, he found himself increasingly optimistic about Bitcoin’s prospects. As an optimistic octogenarian, he was open to overtures made by some of the more fringe political parties. And, though he had been contentedly married for sixty-two years, Gramps was intrigued by the content of emails with banners bearing the words

HOT

RUSSIAN

WOMEN

Obediently, he would forward each such email to Greg, accompanied by a What do you think of this one? on the line above.

Greg now had to ensure he did not check these at work. After a quick scan, he would reply, Gramps, it’s spam, stop clicking on it.

But Gramps could not understand where they would have obtained his email address.

They must be friends of friends or something, he replied.

Gramps, no… there are massive databases with these things. I’ll set up a rule so they all get deleted without you reading.

But I might want to check them? Gramps asked with a question mark.

No Gramps, Greg said, just leave them.

A pause then in their correspondence.

Alright, said Gramps finally.

These were not the only issues. Gramps found himself exploring the formatting boxes, pushing the text into a range of fonts and effects.

“Fuck’s sake”, Greg would whisper, as an email zoomed in from Gramps with a slow motion, sparkly reveal of a message in comic sans font size 196 that read: Next door neighbour’s dog been hit by a car.

How does he even do that? Greg murmured to himself. “I literally would not know how to do that if I wanted to”.

Is it alright? Greg replied.

Nope, Gramps replied, in Verdana, font size 8, dead.

Gramps ventured further into the settings box, discovering the delay send button and clicking it indiscriminately. Greg emailed one Sunday about a visit the following day and received the reply from his grandpa, a one-liner reading: “Looking forward to it” three and a half weeks later.

In more irritable moments, these things enraged him, and he wondered why his older relative could not learn how to effectively program the machine. But in smaller, and more significant ways, he came to rely on their emails.

“Not doing that well this week, Gramps, off work. Struggling a bit. Hope you and grandma are well”.

Gramps tended not to delay his replies to these.

Sorry to hear it, boyo. Look after yourself. Work can wait. Take good care. Get outside if you can. Lots of love from both of us.

This was good advice from the older man. But somehow, Greg lacked the requisite combination of will or ability. And he sank down and denser, further still. Their emails could elicit a brief smile but something had stopped filtering through. Dissolution, not quite there, standing in queues, walking to work, checking his phone.

Not sure about tomorrow, Greg tapped out to his grandfather, sorry gramps.

He lay down at night, staring at the ceiling, truthfully not thinking of much at all, kitchen floor cool against his back. The pre-emptive guilt a shield against the blade, contemplating his father having to drive the half an hour or so, parking carefully, getting out and pausing momentarily to lean on the roof of the car, heavy with it, to tell them. The prospect of his own responsibility for that moment was what held him back most times, right wrist upturned to the fluorescent light, left hand shaking, before dragging himself to bed.

Gramps slipped away quietly on the morning of his favourite sort of autumn day, clear blue, ice in the air, leaves ablaze in the trees, mushrooms clustered on rotting oak. Greg had not received a reply to his last email. There was some clarity in the grief, something sharp about the jobs to be done. But as days passed, the compression returned. There was a funeral, he knew, he had been, pushing himself into a dark enough suit and making a quiet speech. But the fabric and substance of the day, Greg could not comment on. He retained nothing of it.

The days cracked and popped as they shrank, as if they were releasing something. He would wake to check the time at some inexplicable hour, drape a limp hand across his forehead and roll over, try to sleep, push it back, wake in the evening, spend the night on his phone. He knew now that there would be no more emails, no warming buzz, no more requests to screen messages from would-be brides or business partners or tell an uncle something or help with the attic room. His inbox was empty.

Then there was one, a little red “one” above his inbox icon early on a Saturday morning, from his grandfather’s email address. Greg assumed it was an administrative cock-up or a tone deaf prank from a cousin. But then he saw it was titled TOMORROW (all in caps) and he remembered his grandfather’s adventures with the delay send button.

Hello boyo, Gramps said, in lower case, sorry to hear you’re still not feeling well. I know you’ve seen a doctor and I hope that it is useful. I know it helped your mum for a time. I’m not sure there’s much I can say but.

Gramps had pressed the enter button twice here.

Firstly, I did some research and you were right, the Peruvian royal family doesn’t even exist. Thank you AGAIN (in capitals) for helping me with the emails.

I am always very grateful.

If this had been a conversation, Greg would have sensed Gramps on the cusp of struggling to say something.

Tender isn’t weak. It makes you what you are. And that means many, many (the second many was inexplicably in superscript) people care about you. I am at the top of that list.

You might not be quite where you want to be. And I’m sorry about everything that’s happened. But - two dashes, new line, font change.

I am very proud of who you’ve become.

I can’t promise you that things will definitely get better. But please just make it to TOMORROW (the word had been capitalised).

And see where you get to from there.

Lots of love,

Gramps

PS. We’re both on our sick beds at the moment - sleep terrible. Trying to sort those damned settings buttons how you showed me - hopefully this will get to you later this morning so it doesn’t wake you up. Send me an email when you get this.

Greg wiped his screen. 9.20am on 21 December. The days were getting longer.

Huge thanks and credit to Iona Lowe for audio production and editing.

Story and reading by Adam RW. Full story below.

Please get in touch if you enjoyed this new format and want us to do more.

TODAY

There were a number of less notable differences between Greg and his grandpa. Greg’s warm embrace would be met by an uncertain pat on the back from his older relative. The ease with which Greg said “I love you” would be greeted with a sombre nod and a single “yes”. Greg’s commitment to whimsy, his grandpa’s taste for order and calm. These were all by the by, a standard and predictable set of contrasts that would not look out of place in your average dining room.

But there was one fundamental difference between them. And this was his grandpa’s insistence on shouting.

WE ARE WELL

THANK YOU

Two lines. No punctuation. Phone calls, increasingly infrequent, face-to-face meetings even rarer now with the busyness of day-to-day life. So they came to rely on emails to communicate. But his grandpa did not appear to be aware of the existence of the caps lock button. So every exchange took on the appearance of a terse tennis match, Greg gently lobbing small invitations to his grandpa who then smashed them back in his face.

Sorry for the slow reply, Gramps,

Greg would type in the proper case and tense, as if his own style might serve as a gentle hint to his grandpa on the correct means of expressing himself.

Things are a bit crazy at the moment. How are you getting on, how was your weekend?

Two hours later:

IT WAS GOOD

Enter, enter.

THANK YOU

Then, another email, five minutes afterwards.

HOW ARE YOU

Hours later in the pub, Greg would flick open his phone and look down at the email before sighing and hastily stashing it away. He pulled out it back out at the end of the weekend and tapped out a quick few words in response. His grandpa fired back.

BOUGHT FISHCAKES AT THE SHOP TODAY

Nice! Greg replied some two days later. He allowed himself an exclamation mark in some attempt to match his grandpa’s tone.

How were they?

Proper case, question mark correctly sitting at the end of the sentence.

Grandpa came back.

NOT BAD BIT HOT ON THE INSIDE THOUGH

BURNT MY MOUTH

Greg chuckled. A few hours later. What are you up to today?

GETTING MY PROSTATE CHECKED

Ah!

Greg paused, unsure of how to respond with the requisite level of seriousness.

Hope it goes well, he typed. Smiley face.

DON’T WORRY JUST A CHECK-UP

THE DOCTOR IS A NICE CHAP

And so it went.

Greg could not help but be slightly confused by these exchanges. Because by hand his grandfather had been an excellent writer of letters, punctuating them with great distinction, displaying a full mastery of the usage of upper and lower cases. But these modern methods of communication seemed to do something to him, render him unable to convey himself with the gentle precision that was his trademark in normal speech. What was it in a computer’s keyboard and screen that transmogrified him into something less. Greg was unsure. He did not have the time to come to a firm conclusion.

Weeks passed and their correspondence slowed. But on a morning in the height of summer, Greg opened his phone and scrolled down through a cluttered inbox. There sat within it tickets, bookings, marketing assaults, photos, reminders, maps of life. He descended passively, a waiter in an elevator, until the bell dinged as he reached a single glistening unread email from his Grandfather.

It was titled TODAY. Quite naturally, all in caps.

TODAY IS 8 HOURS AND 49 MINUTES LONGER THAN THE SHORTEST DAY

OBVIOUSLY THATS NOT RIGHT - BOTH DAYS ARE 24 HOURS LONG

It was still all in caps. But he did not hear him shouting anymore.

BUT TODAY - THERE ARE 8 HOURS AND 49 MINUTES MORE DAYLIGHT THAN SIX MONTHS AGO AND SIX MONTHS TIME

IT IS AN UNLOVELY NUMBER

THERE DOES NOT APPEAR TO BE ANY SPECIAL SIGNIFICANCE TO IT

BUT STILL THE THOUGHT - NOT THE NUMBER - WARMS ME

THAT THE DAY CAN MORE THAN DOUBLE IN THE SPACE OF SIX SHORT MONTHS

NEED TO REMEMBER THIS

WHEN IT GETS COLD AGAIN

AND I KNOW THE LAST FEW YEARS HVE BEEN HARD FOR YOU AND I HAVE NOT BEEN VERY GOOD AT SPEAKING TO YOU ABOUT IT

BUT I MISS YOUR MUM EVERY DAY

I THINK WHEN SHE WENT THAT WAS ALMOST IT FOR ME

I KNOW YOU SHOULDNT HAVE A FAVOURITE BUT

Grandpa left this line unfinished.

SO I AM SORRY

BUT

I ALWAYS LOVED THAT SHE WAS BORN ON THE LONGEST DAY

Greg wiped his face and looked up at the sky. He had never relished the length of the solstice, each extending second a reminder of what the day had been. He paused for a moment then typed back.

Thanks Gramps. I really appreciate that. Lots of love to you and Gran. Coming down next weekend - looking forward to seeing you both.

Ps. There’s this thing called the caps lock button in the middle on the left hand side of your keyboard. It helps you switch between cases. You can probably Google it - but otherwise I’ll show you when I’m down.

Gramps replied instantly in the proper case:

I know, he said. Just wanted to make sure that you could hear me.

Mac Goodwin is a writer from Manchester, currently living in London. He writes poetry about family, nature, and mental health.

Temi T is a Spoken Word Artist born and raised in South London. She debuted in 2021, and has since headlined on stages globally. Spoken Word Poetry for Temi began in the form of self-reflection and the journey of finding her true identity amidst chaos of life. Her poetic style fuses consciousness, internal rhyme and humour to take the audience on an experience of raw emotion.

Hosted by theadamrw.

Rachel’s Substack is here and her Instagram is here.

Leo Flanagan is a Lancashire born actor and writer as well as Artist Director of the theatre company Gutter Street. Leo has worked on a wide range of projects across TV and film including: Doctor Who, Gentleman Jack, Waterloo Road and the Irvine Welsh film ‘Creation Stories’. Gutter Street curates regular writing and creative events across London as well as producing multiple interconnected plays and short stories, all set along one long fictional Red Road. The tales shared at Storytime are part of a larger project titled ‘Molitor’s Fables’, a collection of stories written by fictional author and resident of the Red Road, E.F. Molitor. Follow Molitor’s Fables on Instagram and TikTok or Gutter Street on Instagram to find out more.

Maia Watkins is an actress, poet, author & reiki, sound practitioner from West London. Whilst recovering from a brain haemorrhage Maia wrote and released her poetry collection ‘The Dressing Gown Poet: Life. Loss. Love’ which can be brought on Amazon. Maia won best female spoken word poet 2024 for the Wordplay and Flow Awards and has also performed her poetry for Sofar Sounds London.

Hosted by theadamrw.

Grace Gachoki

Through the art of poetry, Grace loves to tell stories that live within her world and the one around her. She’s been sharing her work since 2022, performing at shows and gracing theatre stages. Grace has two poetry collections out, that can be found in the link in her bio.

Tim Foley

In his poetry and photography Tim visits his inner and outer worlds. Exploring the nature, people and things that live in them. He is working to raise up voices of poets who are healing in poetry in his ongoing project Write Speak Recover. Which features portraits, poems and stories from poets in any form of recovery.

Jakey Newton

Jakey is a Northern writer, theatre maker, and producer with an affinity for the absurd. They achieved a Masters in Dramatic Writing and have since then gone on to co-create Dawn Train Theatre Company, which is now into its third production. Jakey received an OffComm award for their debut play, Breast Baring, back in 2023, and is currently working on multiple projects tackling themes of identity, queerness, and masculinity.

Hosted by theadamrw.