Coastal Crimes & Stories

While working on my latest book, The aGent , I’ve been looking back over forty years in estate agency — a career that took me into hundreds of homes and introduced me to more characters than I could ever have imagined when I first walked into the office as a young negotiator. People often think estate agency is about houses. In truth, it’s about people. Every front door opens onto a different world, and sometimes you find yourself standing in the middle of moments you couldn’t possibly make up — even if you tried. One of the chapters in the book tells the story of a visit to a very respectable couple who lived in a lovely detached house with a beautiful garden. Everything about the place suggested quiet, comfortable retirement. Tea was poured, polite conversation was exchanged, and I began to make notes for the valuation. Then I noticed a framed photograph on the windowsill. It showed the couple in their garden, smiling broadly for the camera, clearly enjoying themselves. There was onl...

Can AI Really Write a Good Short Story? Out of curiosity, I set three AI chatbots exactly the same challenge. Each was given the same brief for a 3,000-word short story. Same outline, same rules, same requirement for a twist ending. No changes, no extra instructions. Then I asked each one to write the story — and critique the others. What came back was far more interesting than I expected. The brief itself was simple. A quirky character arrives at a venue to carry out a job. Something goes wrong. There are a few possible suspects. The chatbot narrator has to help solve the clues. Light-hearted tone. Unexpected twist. Same starting point for all three. But the results were completely different. One story was careful and polished, with believable characters and a neat, tidy ending. Another leaned into humour and oddness, full of exaggerated personalities and playful ideas. The third tried to be more ambitious, building layers into the plot and using the twist to change how the whole...

  A few days ago in Funchal, Madeira, we were wandering through the gardens with no real plan, just following the paths to see where they led. It was warm, the sort of easy warmth you only seem to notice when you’re away from home, and the place was full of the sound of running water. We came across a small pool with a waterfall dropping straight down into it, the water falling in a constant white sheet from the rocks above. It was louder than you might expect, but not in an unpleasant way. In fact, it made the whole place feel calm, as if the noise drowned out everything else. Out on the water was a single swan, moving slowly across the pool as if it had all the time in the world. It didn’t seem bothered in the slightest by the waterfall crashing down behind it. If anything, it made the scene feel even more peaceful. I took this photograph without thinking too much about it at the time. It just felt like one of those moments worth keeping. When I look at it now, what I rememb...

Over the years I have stood on hundreds of doorsteps. Some belonged to grand houses with sweeping drives and manicured gardens. Others were small terraces where the paint was peeling and the doorbell no longer worked. But one thing was always the same: when the door opened, you never quite knew what you were about to step into. Most people assume estate agency is about houses. In reality it’s about people. And people, as it turns out, are endlessly surprising. Recently I began writing down some of the more unusual moments I encountered during my years in the business. Not the sales figures or the paperwork, but the things that stay in the memory long after the deal is done. A parrot that answered the telephone. Bags of cash on a pub table. A letter that should never have arrived in the morning post. And a photograph in a quiet living room that stopped me in my tracks. The working title for this new project is The aGent — a small nod to the profession, and perhaps to the slightly unexp...

                         The Sound of a Daffodil Opening. Late one evening, while rereading something I had just written, I heard a faint crack from the pot of daffodils sitting on the table beside me. At first I thought I had imagined it. Then it came again. Sitting alone under a single lamp in a silent house, I realised the buds were opening. I wrote this immediately while the moment was still fresh. The Sound of a Daffodil Opening It's late in the evening. I'm alone at my table. The house lies in darkness save for a single lamp. I sit wrapped in the silence, just how I like it. Only the distant clock — tic… toc… tic… toc… My hand guides the pen back and forth across the page, turning thoughts into words and words into stories. The silence breaks — not by a neighbour's dog nor a passing car. There it is again. I stop and listen. A tiny, fragile crack. On the table beside me the daffodils begin to open...