Someone once described the Novel as "the one bright book of Life". If that is so, we can describe short stories as Life's bright pages. "Jackdaw & Other Stories" are mainly about people, but their settings are Mediterranean as well as British; and there is humour as well as sadness in them. The time-span is the last fifty years or so, but the last (and longest) story is a biblical up-date: set in antiquity, it fills in the details Genesis left out. This book is ideal for snatching a quarter of an hour's escape from the daily chores or the too familiar journey to work, but, when you put all the stories together, you will find that they amount to a fairly substantial presentation of life in the round.