A true story about an intergenerational love of cricket.

The putputput of the boys tapping the bat into the earth while waiting for the ball was part of the soundscape of the street for as long as the neighbourhood could remember… Only at 2pm was it safe to walk past without risking a ball to the head, when the sun shone its hardest onto the earth and even the matted fur of the tennis ball appeared to sweat.

With my parents having recently put their house on the market, announcing plans to move out of Nottinghamshire altogether, I’ve been thinking a lot about my childhood home and the hours my brother and I used to while away in the garden.

Sometimes, when I lingered by the window to enjoy the golden light straying along the lawn, my eyes fell upon the raw stump, settling on the emptiness where the tree had been, the tree game a distant memory.

My friend Caroline and I find ourselves caught in an unexpected snowstorm after manifesting a weekend of snow in Edinburgh — only one out of a strange list of birthday coincidences.

Caroline buys postcards to send home and writes them as we wait at the station: ‘Det had snöat (!!) och varit så stämningsfullt här uppe’, which she translates to ‘it snowed and it was feelingful’.

On what being a true friend might look like, and on readers being in friendship with writers.

Sometimes we are ineloquent. Sometimes we fail to elucidate what we mean. Sometimes we blatantly misspeak, or through fear of misspeaking do not speak at all. But when you do speak, a true friend sees through the stuttering, the awkwardness, the bluster and the confusion, and takes you as you are.