In the winter of 2008 the editor of Battersea Matters Jenny Sheridan suggested I write a ‘seasonal’ short story for the forthcoming issue. It was a while since I’d written any fiction, but I agreed to give it a try. The result was Afterwards – based on an idea from a classic Edith Wharton story called Afterward. She had a lot more words to play with than I did, but I did my best. It set the pattern for all the later stories in having a very local setting, close to where I live in Battersea.
A couple of months after the first one appeared, a Battersea Society member came up to me before a meeting and asked if the tale I’d told had really happened to me. I’m pretty sure she was being serious. So maybe I was doing something right. You can judge for yourselves. As with the bus journeys I’ve been asked several times if I can put the all stories in one place so I’ve extracted each one as a pdf from the edition in which it appeared. They’re listed below.
Enjoy – or ignore. The choice is yours.
Afterwards (Winter 2008)
Strange Meeting (Autumn 2009)
The Dog That Barked in the Night (Winter 2011)
Communications (Winter 2013)
The Disappearing Hat (Winter 2014)
The Weeping Woman (Winter 2015)
The Man on the 19 Bus (Winter 2016)
The Uninvited Guest (Autumn 2017)
A Midwinter Night’s Dream (Autumn 2019)
All stories (c) Mike Roden. All editions of Battersea Matters may be viewed and downloaded from the Battersea Society website.
If you’re interested in seeing the Edith Wharton story mentioned above you can find it here.