Here in the uplands, we've our own ways of tracking time. The seasons and the equinoxes are easy enough; and the years are marked out in memories. The summer when the brook burst. That winter when the snowdrifts reached the church eaves. The dreary spring that was brightened by Alex's birth.

We don't mark the years with numbers. The gaps between the big midsummer celebrations are counted by the lifespan of a dog. Always a particular dog, and one is chosen the day after the previous ceremonies. Sometimes, that dog's bad luck will mean a handful of winters between the festivals; or it might be a decade or two. Time becomes fluid.

The skies are busy, more than they once were, but you can still make out the brighter stars. Alex asked why we use constellations from the old days, when we could make our own. The new constellations were painted on the side of the round-house. I love that the stars map out Lucy's plaits or Timber's puppies.

There aren't many laws in the uplands, but one is clear - calendars are banned. Although it's not been carried out in living memory, there is a death penalty for having one. Using numbers for years is a sin.

Background

This was a piece for the Todmorden Writers group. The style is inspired by Kakfa’s microfictions, but with a little world-building. Despite the mention of the death penalty, I think this is a cosy story.

Announcements

• Next Thursday I’ll be appearing at Rosy Carrick’s Poetry Gangbang in the Brighton Fringe. Lots of poets are appearing across the two nights and tickets are available online.

• Dan from Peakrill is off on tour with Crab and Bee, promoting their Matter of Britain book. Full details here. I’ll be catching them at Todmorden Folklore Centre at the end of June.

• I went to see Sinners twice this week. This will be looked on as a classic, and is well worth seeing at the cinema for the musical numbers alone. I’ve so much to say about this, but I’ll leave it till it’s off the screens.

Recommendations

One of my consistent sources for book recommendations is Warren Ellis. Recently, he’s shared links to a couple of interesting novellas by Benjamin Percy - short, pulpy books, available for 79p on Amazon.

The Human Bullet is about a man who wakes from a coma where he’s lived a fantasy of being a vigilante. Bystanders, which I read last week, is a gory horror story about a curse. It’s a fun and nasty little book that tells a good tale simply.

The book is published by Neotext, a digital publisher with an interesting range of short fiction and non-fiction works, several of which have been optioned for TV/film production. I’m currently reading their non-fiction book Paul is Dead, which takes an odd approach to the already-weird Paul McCartney death rumours.

The novella is a fascinating format. I’ve been amazed it hasn’t taken off, given that many people no longer have time for longer works of fiction. It’s something that’s intrigued me as far back as 2009, when Brighton’s Pulp Press released a range of novellas.

I can see the attraction of a long novel, something that threads itself through days and weeks of a reader’s life. But people’s capacity for those is limited. The novella offers something a little more sustained than a short story, that can be read in a single sitting or across a few. It’s also large enough for interesting experiments. The world needs more smaller books.