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Everything filed under manners.
Fiction Made-Up Words
(n.) The small show of glancing at your phone, frowning and nodding before you turn round on the pavement, so that nobody thinks you were simply walking the wrong way.
Fiction Made-Up Words
(n.) The grave, expert-looking knock given to a watermelon in a shop, followed by a slow wise nod, by somebody who has no idea what a good one is supposed to sound like.
Fiction Made-Up Words
(n.) The painfully slow opening of a noisy sweet wrapper in a hushed room, done in the firm belief that slow means silent, which it never does.
Fiction Animal News — Fiction
A tawny owl in the old oak by the playing field has asked the neighbourhood to stop reading so much into her stare, which she says is just how her face works.
Fiction Tiny Stories
For years a river ferryman waved at every passing boat, including one kayak that never waved back, until one grey Thursday in March.
Fiction Tiny Stories
One blue dish, two neighbours and a low garden wall: for years it crossed back and forth, and it was never once allowed to make the trip with nothing inside.
Fiction Made-Up Words
(n.) The reflex that fires a good wish straight back at the person who offered it, so that a waiter setting down your dinner is warmly told to enjoy his meal too.
Fiction Made-Up Words
(n.) A hearty, generous laugh given in response to a joke you did not hear, offered on credit in the hope that nobody will ask what you found funny.
Fiction Tiny Stories
For six summers, two neighbours who barely spoke each mowed a little more of the shared verge than was strictly theirs, and neither ever mentioned it to the other.
Fiction Made-Up Words
(n.) The short, unrehearsed dance performed by two strangers on a pavement who both step left, then both step right, then both apologise, then both step left again.