This is my book, Ordinary Lives, Extraordinary Messes, set in the fictitious Sussex village of Denham. I write satirical, alternative stories that poke around in the everyday chaos of life, the daft decisions, the pretence, the petty dramas, and the moments when people accidentally reveal who they really are, and usually not in a good way. I’ve always enjoyed watching the human condition in all its glory and failings, people trying their best, failing spectacularly, and often making complete fools of themselves. But generally in a well intentioned, well spirited way, hoping to win but expecting to fail. This book is my way of capturing that energy and Britishness, the humour, the mess, and the small truths that say more about us than we’d ever admit.
I’ve tried to capture the feel of a traditional, quirky English village, think Vicar of Dibley in real life, but with a lot more bite. I’ve added an alternative, satirical edge, wonderful, lovely, nasty and odd characters and storylines that are funny, sharp, and recognisable to anyone who’s seen and enjoyed people behaving badly, making a mess of things, or occasionally getting it right and quite a few comeuppances. I’m not trying to romanticise village life, I’m using it as a lens on the British condition, our habits, our hang-ups, our failings and successes, and all the odd truths about human nature we’d rather pretend aren’t there.
Good ‘n’ Proper.
This is a sharp, big hearted village saga about what really happens when a couple of chancers try to turn a Sussex pub into their own little empire, and discover Denham isn’t having it.
When Vince and Maggie Potts roll into town with their glossy ‘gastropub’ plans, fake respectability and very dodgy money, they collide head on with Pammy’s ingrained sense of what’s right, what stinks, and who the pub is actually for.
What begins as low level unease at new owners slowly hardens into a messy, very funny, sometimes vicious stand off over community, class, loyalty and who gets to call the shots when everyone knows everyone else’s business. Pammy might be half cut most evenings, but in a village where reputation is currency, she may just be the most dangerous opponent the Potts will ever face, for their marriage too.
Howzat.
Denham Cricket Club becomes the stage for a richly drawn, quietly epic tale of legacy, decline and rebirth, a story where whispers of past glories and one exhausted man stands between a century of ghosts and the faintest flicker of hope. With prose that feels both tender and razor sharp, the narrative captures the melancholy beauty of English village life in freefall, peeling picket fences, empty clubhouses, the weight of family myth, and the impossible burden of tradition. This is a story of a community on the brink, a club on its knees, and a man finally confronting the truth buried beneath generations of pride. It’s haunting, humane, and utterly compelling, a village epic told with heartbreaking intimacy and astonishing scale.
A Very Alternative Christmas Day.
A rambling old rectory, a village church next door, and a couple imagining log fires, grandchildren and a gentle, storybook December, before quietly tugging the rug out from under them. When Rod and Samantha move into the Old Rectory, the idyll they’d pictured slowly frays at the edges, odd noises, small disturbances, things that don’t quite add up. As winter closes in, the house’s long memory begins to press against their own, blurring the line between quaint village history and something far more unsettling. What follows is a darkly atmospheric, surprisingly funny and deeply human ghost story rooted in the ordinary mess of midlife, family tensions, all set against the unnerving sense that some places don’t just hold the past, they want to speak it. A classic English haunting made modern, intimate and impossible to shake.
Musical Differences.
This is a riotous, bittersweet celebration of middle aged delusion, old loyalties and the strange afterlife of a teenage band that never quite made it. Decades after Denham’s punk metal misfits Jack the Ripper played their last dodgy gig, three of its surviving members find their quiet lives suddenly disrupted when the past refuses to stay buried. Old rivalries, forgotten dreams and one spectacularly long running sulk all come roaring back, forcing the lads to confront who they were, who they are, and what unfinished business still hums beneath the feedback. Packed with chaotic humour, bruised pride, two string basslines, questionable haircuts and a surprising amount of heart, it’s a story about the friendships that outlast talent, the egos that never quite die, and the unexpected ways music can echo long after the amps have been switched off.
The Fall of the DFLs.
It is a razor edged social comedy about Florence and Davina Martyn, identical twins who spend their lives performing a version of upper-middle class perfection they were never born into. Schooled among Sussex’s county set on a staff discount, they emerge fluent in the manners, tastes and snobberies of the privileged, just without the money to back it up. After bagging two glossy Lewes estate agents and reinventing themselves as interiors ‘experts,’ the twins join forces with the enigmatic Roedean educated Lynn Evans to launch The Boutique Brocante, a shop, and soon a chain of exquisitely curated antiques fêtes, tailor-made for anxious DFLs hungry for heritage chic. The business booms, their social stock soars, and the twins finally feel they’ve stepped into the world they always mimicked. But beneath the styling and self belief lies a hairline crack, the kind of secret that, once exposed, can turn a perfect Instagram tableau into a very public reckoning…
A Very British Barbeque.
Follows one sticky summer afternoon on a Denham smallholding where two neighbouring families, the fallen aristo Woodhams and the self made Marshalls, act out years of quiet class war over sausages and salad. Their children, Toby and Hazel, have grown up between the farmhouse and the converted barn, watched over by Christine, the divorced journalist in the oast house who’s become their unofficial aunt, confidant and gentle saboteur of parental expectations. As the monthly barbecue unfolds, the usual low level sniping about money, morals, schools and cars gives way to something sharper, a slipped sausage, a four letter word, and a calmly detonated gap year plan force both sets of parents to confront what they’ve really been doing with their children’s lives, and with their own. The charcoal smoulder of petty English snobbery, downward mobility, ambition and shame slowly flares into a reckoning neither side saw coming, leaving Christine to decide just how far she’s willing to meddle as the kids finally stop playing along and start writing their own script.
#NoFuture.
An unsettlingly funny story about what happens when performative activism collides with real world catastrophe. Toby Swithuns, golden boy eco warrior, media darling and softly cosseted only child, has built a reputation on clever stunts, good hair and just enough sincerity to look the part. His right hand man Adrian does the graft, his brilliant, scheming girlfriend Liz spots the angles, his businessman father bankrolls the background while grumbling about ‘bloody activists’. But when a toxic release at Denham Reservoir turns their carefully curated cause into a genuine tragedy, the whole machine is forced into territory it’s never prepared for, real victims, real stakes, and choices that can’t be spun away with a hashtag. As lawyers, PR firms, journalists and politicians swarm, #NoFuture becomes less a slogan than a prophecy, and everyone around Toby has to decide whether they’re in this for justice, for love, or simply for themselves.
A Mid-Life Crisis.
A sharply observed, darkly comic portrait of what happens when a man in search of a gentle new beginning stumbles into the unforgiving machinery of the antiques world, and the even more unforgiving machinery of the internet. Anthony, newly retired, newly single and newly obsessed with restoring old picture frames, hopes for a quiet life built from auctions, craftsmanship and the odd pint in The Red Lion. What he finds instead is a tangle of egos, rivalries, minor celebrities, and small town mythmaking, where one misstep can become folklore by nightfall.
What begins as a hobby quickly becomes a test of pride, identity and temptation, especially when the village’s warmth proves as intoxicating as its gossip. As Anthony is drawn into the orbit of dealers, influencers and his own restless imagination, the line between mid life reinvention and mid life delusion grows dangerously thin. A story about vanity, kindness, loneliness, small communities and the strange power of attention, A Mid-Life Crisis asks, with a knowing smile: how far would you go to feel seen?
#Alternative Writing #Comedic Writing #Content Creation #Short Stories #Sussex Village
Welcome to Denham nr Lewes 