When Alice Met Nibber Snapwell
Alice had met many curious creatures in Wonderland, but none quite so official as Nibber Snapwell, Junior Assistant Mechanic of Metaphorical Vehicles, who insisted that even impossible cars must be inspected for whimsy, wobble, wonder, and excessive adventure pressure.
***
Alice bent down slightly, for Nibber Snapwell was standing on an upturned flowerpot and appeared to be taking his height very seriously.
“Are you a mechanic?” she asked.
Nibber straightened his thimble hat.
“I am a Junior Assistant Mechanic of Metaphorical Vehicles,” he replied. “There is an important difference.”
“What is a metaphorical vehicle?”
“A vehicle that may be going somewhere, meaning something, or doing both at once.”
Alice considered this carefully.
“That sounds rather difficult to repair.”
“It is,” said Nibber proudly. “Ordinary mechanics tighten bolts. I tighten possibilities.”
He held up his brass dipstick.
“This measures oil, imagination, road confidence, excessive wobble, and whether a car has begun to think too much about its own purpose.”
Alice looked around the little workshop. There were maps pinned to the walls, lanterns hanging from hooks, jars filled with spare question marks, and a sign that read:
GLOVE COMPARTMENT BETWEEN HERE AND THERE
“Have you repaired many impossible cars?” she asked.
Nibber glanced at his clipboard.
“Seven cars, two flying carts, a nervous omnibus, one wheelbarrow with ambitions, and a teapot that insisted it was a ferry.”
“And was it?”
“Only on Thursdays.”
Alice smiled.
“And what is wrong with the Crazymad Writer’s Fiat?”
Nibber lowered his voice.
“It is not broken.”
“Then why does it need a mechanic?”
“Because,” said Nibber, tapping his clipboard gravely, “it has started wondering whether being a car is enough.”
Alice looked thoughtful.
“In Wonderland,” she said, “things are often more than they first appear.”
“Exactly,” said Nibber. “But the trick is not to become so many things at once that one forgets what one was to begin with.”
Alice nodded.
“So the Fiat does not need to change into something else.”
“No,” said Nibber. “It needs to remember that a car can be magical and still be a car.”
At that moment, somewhere behind the workshop wall, a horn gave a small uncertain beep.
Nibber sighed.
“There. Do you hear that?”
Alice listened.
“It sounds worried.”
“It is,” said Nibber. “Come along. We had better reassure it before it turns the boot into a ballroom.”
Alice followed him towards the glowing doorway marked THIS WAY TO BALLYKILLDUFF, while Nibber marched ahead with his brass dipstick raised like a sword.
“And Alice,” he added over his shoulder, “whatever you do, do not compliment the glove compartment.”
“Why not?”
“Because it will open up.”
The door swung wide.
Beyond it, Alice saw the Crazymad Writer’s garden, the giant gunnera leaves, and a cream-coloured Fiat 600 sitting very quietly indeed.
Too quietly.
Alice smiled.
“I think,” she said, “this is going to be one of those days.”
The Bank of Imagination – 500 Imagi Crowns
Stories, dreams and ideas
The Bank of Imagination – 500 Imagi Crowns
Legal tender in Wonderland
Alice in Sunbury 1964, a free eBook download.
During the long summer of 1964, Alice arrives in Sunbury-on-Thames expecting nothing more exciting than warm pavements, rainy bus journeys, and afternoons beside the river.
Instead, she finds impossible lanes appearing behind garages.
Clocks begin losing seven minutes.
A white rabbit carrying a pocket watch waits upon the station platform.
And somewhere beneath the Thames, hidden between the ordinary world and another stranger one, something has been waiting many years for Alice to remember it.
As Sunbury slowly slips between decades and Wonderland begins bleeding quietly into suburban England, Alice is drawn aboard the mysterious Midnight Express and into a forgotten world of missing moments, drifting memories, silver rivers, and impossible tea parties beneath willow trees.
But Wonderland is changing.
And so is Alice.
For some things lost in childhood are not truly gone.
They are only waiting to be found again.
Alice in Sunbury 1964 is a nostalgic, dreamlike journey through memory, grief, wonder, and the strange magic hidden quietly inside ordinary places. A timeless riverside fantasy filled with glowing stations, vanished summers, and the lingering echo of paper boats upon dark water.
The Tumblewink of Ballykillduff
The Tumblewink of Ballykillduff
It began, as such things often do, with something so small that no one thought it worth mentioning.
Mrs O’Doolin’s teacups.
They had always hung in a neat and sensible row beside the dresser—handle to the right, pattern facing outward, each one minding its own business in a most respectable fashion.
Until one Tuesday morning (or what strongly insisted it was Tuesday), she found them all facing the wall.
Not broken.
Not fallen.
Simply… turned.
“Well now,” she said, after a pause long enough to consider the matter properly, “that’s not how cups behave.”
By the time the village had gathered its thoughts (which took longer than usual, as several of them had gone slightly missing), other things had begun to occur.
Mr Hanrahan at the signal box discovered that the 9:15 had arrived at 9:15… but from tomorrow.
Jimmy McGroggan insisted his ladder now had one extra rung, though no one could agree where it had come from.
And the sheep—always a reliable measure of reality in Ballykillduff—had arranged themselves in a neat row that appeared, upon closer inspection, to be alphabetical.
No one knew quite how sheep managed such a thing.
Least of all the sheep.
It was Alice who noticed it first.
Not the changes.
Those were everywhere.
No—she noticed the feeling.
That quiet, delicate sense that something had just passed by… not loudly, not boldly, but sideways, as though it had slipped between one moment and the next without troubling either.
She was standing by the hedgerow when she saw it.
At first, it looked like nothing at all.
Then like a scrap of ribbon.
Then like a small, glowing tangle of things that did not entirely agree on what they were.
It drifted—not forward, not back—but slightly aside.
And as it passed a fallen leaf, the leaf stood up straight.
The twig beside it, however, forgot what it was for.
“You must be a Tumblewink,” said Alice, quite calmly.
The creature did not answer.
But something about it… smiled.
Not with a mouth, exactly.
More with the idea of a smile.
Alice stepped closer.
“You’ve been tidying,” she said.
The Tumblewink shimmered.
A button appeared where there had been none before, then vanished again as though it had remembered it belonged elsewhere.
“Yes,” Alice continued, “but not quite properly.”
At this, the Tumblewink gave a small, pleased sort of flicker.
They walked together then—if walked is the correct word for something that moved by gently disagreeing with where it had just been.
Everywhere it passed, things improved… and did not.
A crooked fence straightened itself, while the ground beneath it shifted just enough to make it unnecessary.
A lost glove reappeared—on the wrong hand, worn by someone who did not remember owning it.
A sentence begun by Mrs Fitzgerald—
“I always thought that perhaps—”
—finished itself somewhere else entirely, inside Mr Hanrahan’s head, who responded aloud with,
“—it was the teapot all along.”
No one questioned this.
“Why do you do it?” Alice asked at last.
The Tumblewink paused.
For a moment, it became very still—so still that it almost became nothing.
Then, quite gently, it rearranged the air.
Alice felt it rather than heard it:
Because finished things cannot wander.
They stood in silence.
In the distance, a sheep tried to remember whether it was before or after another sheep and decided it rather preferred not to choose.
Alice looked about her.
Nothing was quite right.
But nothing was quite wrong either.
And somehow… the world felt wider for it.
“Will you stay?” she asked.
The Tumblewink flickered.
For just a moment, it gathered itself into something almost clear—a small, warm shape, like a memory that had not yet decided to fade.
Then it drifted.
Not away.
Not toward.
But between.
The next morning, the teacups were facing outward again.
The clock told the correct time.
The sheep had returned to their usual and entirely disorganised ways.
Everything, it seemed, had been put back as it ought.
And yet…
Mrs O’Doolin would later insist that her favourite cup felt warmer than the others, though she could not say why.
Mr Hanrahan occasionally answered questions no one had asked.
And Alice—
Alice sometimes found herself pausing mid-step, certain—quite certain—that she had just missed something important.
Something small.
Something warm.
Something that had been there…
just before it wasn’t.
And if, on certain quiet evenings in Ballykillduff, a thought goes slightly astray, or a moment feels just a touch unfinished—
no one worries overmuch.
They simply smile,
and leave things… almost as they are.
Because somewhere nearby,
a Tumblewink is still at work.
If you are missing Christmas…
The Christmas That Came on the 4:32
Sunbury-on-Thames, December 1964.
The frost arrived early that year, settling itself politely on the rooftops as though it had been invited weeks in advance. By mid-month, every hedge wore a thin white collar, and the river—slow and thoughtful at the best of times—seemed to move only out of habit.
Twelve-year-old Peter Hargreaves noticed things like that.
He noticed the way the milk bottles chimed faintly in the cold mornings.
He noticed the smell of coal fires drifting through Green Street.
And, most particularly, he noticed trains.
The 4:32 from Waterloo was his favourite.
It wasn’t the fastest, nor the most important, but it had a certain… pause about it. A hesitation. As if, just before arriving at Sunbury station, it considered whether it ought to go somewhere else entirely.
Peter mentioned this once to his father.
“Nonsense,” said Mr Hargreaves, without looking up from The Daily Express. “Trains don’t think. They run to schedule.”
But Peter wasn’t so sure.
The Parcel
On the 22nd of December, the 4:32 arrived under a sky the colour of old tin. Peter stood on the platform as usual, hands in pockets, breath puffing like a small steam engine of his own.
The train slowed.
Stopped.
Waited.
And then—this was the curious part—no one got off.
The doors opened, but the carriage nearest Peter remained empty. Completely empty. No passengers. No luggage. Nothing at all.
Except for a single parcel on the seat.
Peter glanced up and down the platform. The stationmaster was busy arguing with a man about a missing umbrella. No one else seemed to notice.
So Peter did what any sensible boy would do.
He stepped into the carriage.
The air inside was warmer, faintly smelling of leather and something else—pine, perhaps, or snow. The parcel sat squarely in the centre of the seat, wrapped in brown paper and tied with red string.
There was a label.
It read:
“To Whoever Notices First.”
Peter swallowed.
“Well,” he said quietly, “that would be me, then.”
The Opening
He took the parcel home under his coat.
His mother was in the kitchen, humming along to the wireless while peeling potatoes.
“You’re late,” she said.
“Train was… thinking,” Peter replied.
She nodded absently. “They do that this time of year.”
Peter blinked. “They do?”
“Mm,” she said. “Now wash your hands.”
That evening, after supper, Peter sat by the small electric fire in the sitting room. The Christmas tree—slightly crooked, decorated with glass baubles and tinsel that refused to behave—glowed softly beside him.
He placed the parcel on his lap.
For a long moment, he simply looked at it.
Then he untied the string.
Inside was a small wooden box.
Inside the box…
…was a bell.
Not a large bell, nor particularly shiny—just a simple, brass handbell, the sort one might find in a railway office long ago.
There was a note tucked beneath it.
Peter unfolded it.
It read:
“Ring this only when something has been forgotten.”
The Missing Thing
At first, Peter couldn’t think of anything that had been forgotten.
Everything seemed perfectly in place.
The tree was up.
The presents (or what he assumed were presents) sat beneath it.
His father had even managed to find proper Christmas crackers this year.
And yet…
There was a feeling.
A small, quiet gap in things. Like a word on the tip of your tongue that refuses to arrive.
The next morning, Peter walked through Sunbury with the bell in his pocket.
Something was off.
Mrs Dalrymple at the post office wrapped parcels carefully—but didn’t smile.
The baker sold mince pies—but didn’t hum.
Even the church bell rang—but somehow sounded… empty.
Peter stopped by the river.
“What’s missing?” he asked aloud.
The river, as usual, declined to answer.
So Peter took out the bell.
He hesitated.
“Only when something has been forgotten,” he murmured.
He thought of Christmases past—paper chains, laughter, his mother singing, his father pretending not to enjoy it but always laughing at the worst jokes.
And suddenly, he knew.
“It’s the feeling,” he said.
“The proper Christmas feeling.”
And with that, he rang the bell.
What Came Back
The sound was small.
Clear.
And impossibly distant, as though it had travelled a long way to be heard at all.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then—
The air shifted.
A breeze—not cold, but crisp—moved through the street. The frost on the hedges glittered brighter. Somewhere, someone began to laugh—properly laugh, not just politely.
Mrs Dalrymple looked up from her parcels and smiled for no reason at all.
The baker began humming again, loudly and badly.
Even the river seemed to move with a little more purpose.
Peter felt it most of all.
A warmth—not from the fire, not from his coat—but something deeper, older.
Something remembered.
The Return Journey
On Christmas Eve, Peter returned to the station.
The 4:32 arrived exactly on time.
This time, the carriage was not empty. It was full of people—chatting, laughing, carrying parcels and stories and all the small chaos of Christmas.
But on the same seat…
There was space.
Peter stepped inside and placed the bell back where he had found it.
“Thank you,” he said, though he wasn’t entirely sure to whom.
As he stepped off the train, the guard gave him a curious look.
“Did you leave something behind, lad?”
Peter smiled.
“No,” he said. “I think we got it back.”
The train doors closed.
The 4:32 pulled away.
And just before it vanished into the winter dusk, Peter could have sworn it paused—just slightly—as if satisfied.
Afterwards
That Christmas in Sunbury-on-Thames was remembered for many reasons.
For the cold.
For the snow that finally came in the early hours of Christmas morning.
But most of all, though no one quite said it plainly, it was remembered for feeling right again.
As for Peter…
He still watched the trains.
And every so often, when one lingered just a moment longer than it ought to…
He would nod, very slightly.
Because some things, he knew now, did not run on schedules at all.
The kitchen didn’t just smell like spices; it smelled like treachery.
The kitchen didn’t just smell like spices; it smelled like treachery.
Arthur Thorne, a baker with a temper shorter than a sourdough starter, stared at the tray of Hot Cross Buns before him. He had spent twelve hours meticulously hydrating the dough, sourcing currants from a specific hillside in Greece, and piping the flour-paste crosses with the precision of a neurosurgeon.
Then came the “Reviewer.”
The Incident
The local food critic, a man whose palate was as dry as his personality, had just taken a bite and muttered the forbidden word: “Ordinary.”
Arthur didn’t just get mad. He went volcanic.
The Dough: He slammed his fist into the next batch so hard the flour formed a mushroom cloud.
The Spices: He didn’t sprinkle the cinnamon; he pelted the bowl with it like he was trying to blind a giant.
The Crosses: He piped them on with such aggressive force that they looked like tiny, white scars across the golden skin of the bread.
The Transformation
Arthur shoved the tray into the oven, glaring through the glass. “Ordinary? I’ll give you ordinary,” he hissed. He cranked the heat, ignoring the gentle rise and demanding a crust of pure defiance.
When the timer dinged, it sounded like a battle cry. The buns didn’t just look hot; they looked furious, the glaze was bubbling like molten lava, and the steam rising from them carried a scent so sharp it could peel paint.
The Confrontation
He marched back into the dining room, the tray vibrating in his hands. He slammed a bun down in front of the critic.
“Eat it,” Arthur growled.
The critic hesitated. The bun was radiating a palpable, vengeful heat. He took a bite. The currants were like little bursts of sweet shrapnel. The nutmeg hit like a physical blow. The “cross” was a jagged mark of culinary war.
The critic’s eyes watered. He gasped for air, his face turning the color of a ripe cherry.
“It’s… it’s…”
“It’s what?” Arthur leaned in, his apron covered in the soot of his own rage.
“It’s… intense,” the critic squeaked.
—
Arthur finally exhaled. He didn’t care about the star rating anymore. He had successfully baked his own fury into a tea-time snack. He walked back to the kitchen, grabbed a rolling pin, and started on the next batch—this time, for the scones. And God help the person who called his scones “crumbly.”
To capture the raw, unbridled fury of Arthur Thorne, these aren’t your grandmother’s Sunday morning treats. We’re swapping the gentle warmth of cinnamon for a heat that demands respect.
This recipe uses a “tangzhong” method for the dough—not for softness, but because Arthur knows that a hydrated dough traps the vengeance better.
The “Spicy & Spiteful” Hot Cross Buns
Yields: 12 buns of pure defiance
Prep time: 2 hours of aggressive kneading
I. The Infusion of Rage
In a small saucepan, combine:
-
250ml Whole milk
-
2 Whole star anise (to be removed later)
-
1 tsp Red chili flakes (crushed finely)
-
5 Black peppercorns
Method: Heat until simmering, then remove from heat. Let it steep for 10 minutes so the milk absorbs the “attitude.” Strain and let cool to lukewarm.
II. The Dry Defiance
In a large bowl (or a stand mixer if you’re feeling lazy, though Arthur wouldn’t approve), whisk:
-
500g Strong bread flour
-
75g Caster sugar
-
10g Fine sea salt
-
7g Instant yeast
-
2 tsp Ground ginger (for a sharp bite)
-
1 tsp Cayenne pepper (the “spite” factor)
III. The Assembly
-
The Hydration: Pour the infused milk and 1 large beaten egg into the dry mix. Knead until the dough is smooth, elastic, and looks like it could hold a grudge.
-
The Inclusions: Aggressively fold in 150g of dark currants and 50g of chopped crystallized ginger. The ginger provides a sudden, sharp sting that keeps the critic on their toes.
-
The Proof: Cover with a damp cloth and leave in a warm place for 1 hour. It should double in size, fueled by its own internal pressure.
IV. The Scarring (Crosses)
Mix 75g plain flour with enough water to make a thick paste. Add a drop of hot sauce to the paste—not for flavor, but for the principle of the thing. Pipe thick, jagged crosses over the risen buns.
V. The Incineration
Bake at 190°C for 15–20 minutes. You want them deep gold, almost bronze—a color that says, “I’ve seen things.”
VI. The Final Insult (Glaze)
While hot, brush with a mixture of:
-
2 tbsp Apricot jam
-
1 tsp Sriracha or chili oil
Baker’s Note: Serve these to anyone who uses the word “moist” or “ordinary” in your presence. The initial sweetness of the apricot glaze will lure them in, but the cayenne and black pepper finish will ensure they never forget your name.
The Day the Hot Cross Buns Refused to Behave.
The Day the Hot Cross Buns Refused to Behave.
In Ballykillduff, there are certain things one may rely upon.
The post box is green.
The wind comes in sideways.
And on Good Friday, Mrs Flannery’s hot cross buns behave themselves.
The wind comes in sideways.
And on Good Friday, Mrs Flannery’s hot cross buns behave themselves.
Except, of course, for the year they didn’t.
It began, as all respectable disasters do, with a smell.
Not an ordinary smell—no, Ballykillduff had long ago grown accustomed to smells that suggested something mildly supernatural was occurring behind the butcher’s or under the bridge. This was a confident smell. A proud smell. A smell that marched down Main Street like it owned the place.
“Buns,” said Mr Byrne, the baker, stepping outside his shop and sniffing the air with professional concern. “Hot cross buns. And not mine.”
This was troubling. Mr Byrne’s buns were the official buns of Ballykillduff, having won the Annual Bun-Related Excellence Award three years running (and once by default when no one else remembered to bake any).
Mrs Flannery emerged from her shop just as the smell intensified.
“Do you smell that?” she asked.
“I do,” said Mr Byrne. “And I don’t like the tone of it.”
They followed the scent to the village square, where a small crowd had gathered around the fountain—the one that occasionally remembered things it hadn’t seen yet.
At first, no one spoke.
Then Jimmy McGroggan (who distrusted anything that rose, floated, or behaved optimistically) pointed upward.
“There,” he said. “Look.”
Hovering just above the fountain were buns.
Hot cross buns.
Not one or two, mind you—but dozens. They bobbed gently in the air like well-behaved balloons, each one perfectly golden, each one marked with a neat white cross, and each one—most suspiciously—steaming.
“Well,” said Mrs Flannery after a long pause. “That’s new.”
At precisely nine o’clock, the buns began to descend.
Now, in most villages, this would have caused panic. Screaming. Possibly the ringing of a bell.
In Ballykillduff, however, people simply stepped back slightly and allowed events to continue, as they generally did.
The buns landed neatly on the paving stones in a tidy arrangement that suggested either great intelligence or an alarming degree of organisation.
Then one of them bounced.
Just once.
A soft, polite bounce.
“Did you see that?” whispered someone.
Another bun rolled forward slightly, as if clearing its throat.
Then—quite without warning—the entire collection began to move.
They did not scatter.
That would have been understandable.
Instead, they arranged themselves into a queue.
A perfectly straight queue.
Facing Mr Byrne’s bakery.
Mr Byrne stared at them.
“I refuse,” he said firmly, “to be queued at by baked goods.”
The buns waited.
There was no pushing, no jostling, no attempt to skip ahead. If anything, they were more polite than the average Ballykillduff resident on a busy morning.
After a moment, the front bun gave a small hop forward and tapped—very gently—against the bakery door.
Tap.
Silence.
Tap tap.
Mr Byrne folded his arms.
“I’m not serving them,” he said.
“You might have to,” said Mrs Flannery. “They seem committed.”
The situation escalated when the buns began producing exact change.
No one saw where the coins came from.
They simply… appeared. Small, neat piles of coins sat beside each bun, as if they had always been there and everyone had just been too distracted to notice.
Jimmy McGroggan crouched down and examined one.
“Well,” he muttered, “at least they’re paying customers.”
Reluctantly, Mr Byrne opened the door.
The buns shuffled forward.
One by one, they entered the shop.
What followed has since been described (in the official village minutes) as “a most peculiar but orderly transaction.”
Each bun approached the counter.
Paused.
Then nudged its coins forward.
Mr Byrne, after a long internal debate about the collapse of reality, handed each bun… another bun.
“No refunds,” he added automatically.
The buns accepted this.
They turned.
And left.
By mid-morning, Ballykillduff had a new problem.
There were now twice as many buns.
Because each bun had purchased a bun.
And those buns, it appeared, were just as capable of independent thought as the original batch.
“They’re multiplying,” said Mrs Flannery.
“They’re investing,” corrected Jimmy.
By noon, the buns had formed committees.
There was a Bun for Queue Management.
A Bun for Fair Distribution.
And, somewhat ominously, a Bun for Future Planning.
The village grew uneasy.
It is one thing for buns to bounce.
It is quite another for them to organise.
The crisis reached its peak at half past two, when the buns held a meeting in the square.
Mr Byrne, Mrs Flannery, Jimmy McGroggan, and several concerned residents gathered at a safe and respectful distance.
The Bun for Future Planning rolled to the front.
It cleared its… crust.
Then, with great dignity, it tipped itself slightly forward.
And stopped.
Nothing happened.
“Is that it?” asked someone.
“I think so,” said Mr Byrne.
They waited.
The buns remained perfectly still.
Then, slowly—very slowly—the steam began to fade.
The warmth softened.
The bounce diminished.
And, one by one, the buns simply… became buns.
Ordinary buns.
Still. Quiet. Entirely uninterested in commerce or governance.
By evening, Ballykillduff had returned to normal.
Mostly.
Mr Byrne gathered the remaining buns and placed them carefully on a tray.
“Well,” he said, “they seem harmless now.”
“Are you going to sell them?” asked Mrs Flannery.
Mr Byrne paused.
He considered the events of the day.
The queues.
The coins.
The committees.
The brief but undeniable sense that he had been professionally outperformed by his own product.
“No,” he said firmly. “These are not for sale.”
“What will you do with them?”
Mr Byrne looked out at the village square, where everything was once again behaving in a reasonably predictable manner.
“I think,” he said slowly, “we shall eat them… quietly… and not discuss this ever again.”
And that is precisely what Ballykillduff did.
Except, of course, for one small detail.
The next morning, when Mr Byrne opened the bakery door, he found—neatly arranged on the counter—
A single coin.
And beside it…
One perfectly warm, very fresh hot cross bun.
Waiting its turn.
*************************************************************
Epilogue — The Bun That Waited
The following morning in Ballykillduff arrived with its usual sense of mild uncertainty.
The post box was green (as expected).
The wind was sideways (as required).
And Mr Byrne opened his bakery door with the careful expression of a man who had been professionally challenged by baked goods and was not eager for a rematch.
The wind was sideways (as required).
And Mr Byrne opened his bakery door with the careful expression of a man who had been professionally challenged by baked goods and was not eager for a rematch.
There, upon the counter, sat the bun.
Neat. Warm. Patient.
And beside it—
A single coin.
Mr Byrne stared at it for a long time.
“Well,” he said at last, “we are not doing this again.”
“Doing what?” came a voice behind him.
He turned.
Standing in the doorway, brushing a stray lock of long blonde hair from her face, was a girl in a blue pinafore dress, looking at the bun with great interest.
“I’m fairly certain,” she said, stepping inside, “that this is the sort of thing one ought to investigate.”
Mr Byrne narrowed his eyes.
“You’re not from here.”
“No,” said Alice pleasantly. “But I do seem to arrive in places just as they begin to behave oddly. Or perhaps I arrive because they already have.”
She leaned closer to the bun.
It did not move.
But it did seem, in a way that was difficult to prove, to be waiting.
“For what?” asked Mr Byrne.
Alice considered this.
“For its turn,” she said.
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
Mrs Flannery appeared moments later, followed by Jimmy McGroggan, who had come prepared for disappointment and, if necessary, mild outrage.
“What’s the situation?” Jimmy asked.
Mr Byrne pointed.
“The situation,” he said, “is that we have a bun. A coin. And a sense of unfinished business.”
Jimmy squinted.
“It looks quiet enough.”
Alice smiled.
“Oh, things often do—right up until they aren’t.”
There was a pause.
The kind of pause Ballykillduff understood well.
A pause in which something might happen… or might decide not to… or might wait just long enough to be inconvenient.
Then, very gently—
The bun gave a small bounce.
Just once.
Jimmy stepped back.
“I knew it,” he said. “Optimism.”
The coin slid forward by the smallest imaginable distance.
Clink.
Mr Byrne closed his eyes.
“No committees,” he muttered. “No queues. No financial independence.”
Alice, however, looked delighted.
“Oh, I don’t think it wants all that again,” she said. “I think it only wants to see what happens next.”
“And what does happen next?” asked Mrs Flannery.
Alice straightened.
She looked at the bun.
Then at the coin.
Then at Mr Byrne.
“Well,” she said, very gently, “it’s paid.”
Mr Byrne hesitated.
He glanced at the shelves.
At the ovens.
At the quiet, perfectly ordinary buns that had returned to their proper, non-ambitious state.
Then he sighed.
“All right,” he said. “But just the once.”
He reached behind the counter and picked up a fresh hot cross bun.
He placed it carefully in front of the waiting one.
“There,” he said. “Transaction complete.”
The bun did not move immediately.
It seemed to consider the moment.
Then—
It nudged the new bun slightly.
As if acknowledging it.
As if passing something on.
And then—
It settled.
Perfectly still.
Entirely ordinary.
Alice watched this with great satisfaction.
“You see?” she said.
“No,” said Jimmy. “I don’t.”
“It didn’t want to multiply,” Alice explained. “It didn’t want to organise. It didn’t even want to queue.”
“What did it want, then?” asked Mrs Flannery.
Alice smiled.
“To finish.”
There was a quietness in the bakery then.
A soft, settled sort of quiet.
The kind that comes after something has made up its mind to stop being peculiar.
Mr Byrne looked at the two buns.
Then, cautiously, he picked one up.
It behaved.
He took a bite.
It was excellent.
“Well,” he said after a moment, “that’s that, then.”
Alice stepped back toward the door.
“Will you be staying?” asked Mrs Flannery.
Alice shook her head.
“No, I think not. Things seem to be concluding here.”
She paused.
Then added, with a thoughtful look toward the counter—
“Though one never knows when something might decide it hasn’t quite finished after all.”
Jimmy groaned.
“Don’t say that.”
And with that, Alice stepped out into Ballykillduff.
The wind caught her hair.
The village carried on.
And inside the bakery, everything remained exactly as it ought to be.
Except—
If you looked very closely—
You might notice, tucked just behind the till—
A second coin.
Waiting.
Not impatiently.
Just… patiently enough.
The Crazymad Writer Writes Again 