Author: Matthew J. Richardson

Stories in Golddust Magazine, Literally Stories, Idle Ink, Writer's Egg, CafeLit, McStorytellers, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, Flashback Fiction, Down in the Dirt, Close to the Bone, Shooter, Soft Cartel, Fiction Junkies, and Heavenly Flower Publishing

A Prompting at Greysteer House | Short Story

Sometimes, one has to do a job oneself if it is to be done properly.

The house had looked promising – on the market for years, home report on request only, limited pictures online. The estate agent had been downbeat when showing Max around Greysteer House, waiting in the draughty hallway while his potential buyer picked his way through shuttered rooms and underneath walls spattered with black mould. He had looked positively astonished when Max said he would be putting in an offer for the property.

Max had set up his Olivetti in one of the downstairs reception rooms – one of the only spaces where a peat fire really seemed to drive out the cold – and had waited for the house to tell its stories. He had waited a full month before deciding to take a more proactive approach to listening. The British Newspaper Archive, local historical societies, Facebook groups, even the original drainage blueprints for the house – none of these resources had uncovered the slightest hint of intrigue or criminality. Max found himself wondering how a house could have weathered two hundred years and not have taken on even the slightest echo of the paranormal. Autumn was overtaken by winter, and the Olivetti’s carriage return remained locked.

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Boater | Book Review

Author Jo Bell standing on top of her narrowboat 'Tinker'

Boater: A Life on England’s Waterways

Jo Bell

304 pages

Paperback

Harper Collins

2025

ISBN: 9780008716295

Review

‘[The greatest difference between boat-life and non-boat life]…is not the sense of place, but the sense of time.’

Disclaimer: I love canals. They are a throwback to a bygone era of industry, but also one of the few places in cities where there is genuine peace. The world of the narrowboat is one of exquisite aesthetics – the eddies around opening lock gates, the sudden splash from a bank, the morning skeins of mist over the still water. I was always likely to be a sucker for Jo Bell’s book, and so it proved.

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Ribbons in the Valley | Short Story

The smell of coal smoke hangs low in the valley, skeined in ribbons of mauve and grey. As the nights draw in, it is the smell which welcomes the men home, filthy and goggle-eyed.

Straight to the outdoor tap, where mountain-cold water brings new aches to already weary bones. Hands move slowly, deliberately, the joints already worn from a day’s work. They will not be allowed in to eat until they are immaculate.

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Warmth and Wither | Haiku

A detailed high-res close-up image of an oak leaf hanging from the branch of a tree. The leaf is beginning to turn brown at the dawn of autumn.

A creeping autumn, and two haiku to match…

A compost pile in late autumn light

Warmth

Autumn compost heap –

settling scraps, writhing red worms.

Slow warmth from within.

A detailed high-res close-up image of an oak leaf hanging from the branch of a tree. The leaf is beginning to turn brown at the dawn of autumn.

Wither

Hurried withering

of once-wick leaves. Reminder

of promise, deferred.

Thanks for reading folks. Recent short stories include ‘Passing Traffic‘ and ‘A Shadow World‘.

Matthew Richardson is a writer of short stories. His work has featured in Gold Dust magazine, Literally Stories, Close to the Bone, McStorytellers, Penny Shorts, Soft Cartel, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, Flashback Fiction, Cafelit, Best MicroFiction 2021, Writer’s Egg, Idle Ink, The Wild Word, Down in the Dirt, and Shooter magazine. He has a Professional Doctorate in Education. Matthew blogs at www.matthewjrichardson.com.

Passing Traffic | Short Story

The lay-by is one of many on the A82, hidden from the trunk road by a line of winsome, non-native pines and looking out on the sometimes grey, sometimes Mediterranean Loch Lomond.

It is not a place in its own right, not really. No-one says to their spouse, I’m away for an afternoon at that lay-by north of Luss. You remember, the one with the overflowing dogshite bin and the vicious, hypodermic stinging nettles. Still, it is a waypoint for lives, a parallax for the moments of peoples’ existences.

In the spring there are the young lovers, cloistered by the everyone-knows-everyone villages and emancipated by those pines. Steam rises up windows and tinny, unsatisfying bass sounds from within the Vauxhall Corsas and the Seat Ibizas. Young love is born in the lay-by, only to be set aside days or weeks later.

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Along the Margins | Poetry

Along the margins

of those great English, wind-brushed fields of barley

lay sunken streets,

the ringroads of rural Suffolk.

Here, where sun and moon rise and stare

at obsequious, nodding herringbone spikelets,

the countryside jostles and hums.

Amidst dog-eared booms

and weed-clogged culverts

and the shredded chaos of fly-tips innumerable,

fauna shuffles, hurried and unhurried.

A water vole snuffles,

slips from the cluttered hedgerow,

bubbles clutching thickset fur, feet scrabbling.

Dragonflies dart,

eye-slipped and iridescent,

hurrying to destinations unknown.

The sweeping fox,

the low-slung, lockjawed badger,

lords of the field, drink and pad away, their hunting undone.

Above, bats flit between shattered shards

of nighttime sky

whilst the always surprised owl

sits aloft, watchful for an unprotected scuttle

in the moonlight.

A rural cast, driven to pastoral peripheries,

centred for a while.

Thanks for reading folks. Recent short stories include ‘The Silver-Lined Ridge‘ and ‘A Shadow World‘.

Matthew Richardson is a writer of short stories. His work has featured in Gold Dust magazine, Literally Stories, Close to the Bone, McStorytellers, Penny Shorts, Soft Cartel, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, Flashback Fiction, Cafelit, Best MicroFiction 2021, Writer’s Egg, Idle Ink, The Wild Word, Down in the Dirt, and Shooter magazine. He has a Professional Doctorate in Education. Matthew blogs at www.matthewjrichardson.com.

Leaf and Linen | Haiku

An ancient, thick cobweb in the corner of a small garden shed, more linen than thread. The cobweb is so thickset that it is more of a mesh than a web. The shed is disused and messy, whilst the cobweb looks thick and as though it has been there for years.

From the trees and into the shed with a couple of haiku…

Wide shot of a large oak in a field, which is bordered by a dry-stone wall. There are dappled shadows underneath the broad canopy. The oak stands alone amidst miles of open farmland.

Leaf

Leafy carapace,

shifting in the warm breeze.

Dappled shadows dance.

An ancient, thick cobweb in the corner of a small garden shed, more linen than thread. The cobweb is so thickset that it is more of a mesh than a web. The shed is disused and messy, whilst the cobweb looks thick and as though it has been there for years.

Linen

More linen than thread –

spider’s trap, muffled and chaste.

Ambition thwarted.

Thanks for reading folks. Recent short stories include ‘The Silver-Lined Ridge‘ and ‘A Shadow World‘.

Matthew Richardson is a writer of short stories. His work has featured in Gold Dust magazine, Literally Stories, Close to the Bone, McStorytellers, Penny Shorts, Soft Cartel, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, Flashback Fiction, Cafelit, Best MicroFiction 2021, Writer’s Egg, Idle Ink, The Wild Word, Down in the Dirt, and Shooter magazine. He has a Professional Doctorate in Education. Matthew blogs at www.matthewjrichardson.com.