The Lonely Crowd will feature a new short story by a different author each month throughout 2026. For May, we are delighted to publish a new piece by Katherine Stansfield.

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I. Storm Suri

Peter has the radio on while making breakfast. Radio Wales before work, Radio 4 after, while making dinner. This morning: two slices of multigrain with Tesco Finest Seville marmalade for himself and a white bagel with proper butter for Gwenno. Tea for them both though sugar only in his. He’ll have his banana mid-morning, once he’s up to speed with his Landscaping teams. It’s a good marker between early morning and late, which is when he goes into the Big Meetings. He works for the council in an office by the museum, at a desk, but he likes to think his fingers are metaphorically in the soil of central Cardiff’s municipal gardens if not literally digging around in it these days. He doesn’t miss the back ache from planting and the maintenance, though he tells the lads and Alison that he’d much rather be out there with them, getting his hands dirty.

‘Should be back a bit earlier tonight, love,’ he calls to Gwenno from the hall. ‘Daf’s on his holidays so I’ll be able to get on that bit quicker.’

She says something but Peter doesn’t catch it. Then there’s the sound of the back door opening, Gwenno heading into the yard when she’d usually be just behind him as he leaves for work, going herself. She’s a train dispatcher at Central station. He makes his way back through the lounge and the kitchen, out the back door. Which pulls a bit. Nearly flies out of his hand, actually, wanting to bang against the wall of the extension. They never did get that hook sorted. She’s hauling the garden furniture towards the open shed door.

‘Oh good,’ she says on seeing him. ‘Give me a hand with this.’

He takes the other end of the metal table and they manoeuvre it to the shed.

‘Why you doing this now?’ he says.

He lets go his end of the table and she shoves it into the shed. With the chairs already inside, there’s not much room. They haven’t tidied it for a while which shows he’s right: early to be packing the summer furniture away. Not that they’ve had much use of it this year. Too hot.

‘The storm,’ she says, pushing the table further in with her boot. ‘Didn’t you hear them on the radio?’

Can’t say he did.

‘Picked up strength overnight,’ she says as they head into the house, and he’s ready for the back door flying open this time. ‘Amber warning.’

‘And that means?’

She kisses him. ‘Move your garden furniture to safety.’

He kisses her. ‘See you at six.’

 

On his way to the bus stop the wind grapples with him. Snatches at his coat collar. Knocks his rucksack about so his banana’s bound to be bruised. It’s a cold wait for the bus which is late. Drive blames bins in the road.

‘But it’s not bin day,’ Peter says to Drive.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Drive says. ‘Bins don’t have to be out to get blown into the road.’

He thinks about this as he sits down. People clearly aren’t stowing the bins as they should. No wonder Refuse complain about the time it takes to do rounds these days. Nothing is where it should be.

 

Gwenno will be late home. Texts him at lunchtime (leftover tagine, heated in the office microwave): Mad house here. Line to Swansea blocked. Five Paddington trains backed up the line! Idiots trying to pull up sections of the track again, he thinks, looking to sell the metal as scrap. But when Gwenno gets home she tells him the problem wasn’t track lifters, or even leaves on the line from the storm. It was a trampoline.

‘Blew out of a garden backing onto the line, Swansea side of Bridgend.’

‘You’re kidding me. Wind picked up a trampoline?’

‘Not just here. Two of them causing problems on the Bristol side of the tunnel as well.’

She slumps onto the sofa and he hands her the bowl of salmon risotto he’s been keeping warm.

‘Small ones, surely?’ he says.

‘Small what?’

‘Trampolines.’

But even as he asks her this, he can’t think what a small trampoline is these days, because what you see are the ones people fill their back yards and gardens with. Get half a dozen kids on them, as if every house is having a children’s party. And come to think of it, it’s from the train that he’s seen them. Sometimes they fill a whole yard wall to wall. Tall they are, mesh up the sides to catch the kids as they’re hurling themselves about. Blue and black. Makes him think of those things they use to farm salmon in Scotland. He looks at the fleshy flakes pinking Gwenno’s bowl, then at the news on the television.

‘Looks like it’s going to blow itself out tonight,’ Gwenno says. ‘Not that that’ll help us tomorrow. Hardly a train in the right place for the timetable, and those that are don’t have the right crew.’

He takes her bowl and gets up to put the kettle on. The back door rattles in its frame and a cool lick of draught finds his ankles. That’s new.

 

II. Storm Trent

 

Daf’s back from his holidays but two days later than planned. Strong winds meant landing at Cardiff Airport was impossible. His plane was diverted to Paris but—

‘Ferries cancelled. Rough seas.’ Daf shakes his head and inspects the diminished supply of coffee, as if he’s surprised people have been drinking it in his absence.

‘Did you not want to get the train?’ Peter says, heading back to his desk but resigned to the fact he won’t get to the order forms for at least the next half an hour because Daf hasn’t said anything about his holiday to Turkey yet apart from the bad weather.

‘Eurostar? Flooded. Nothing allowed through the tunnel.’

Well that is bad luck. Peter does feel sorry for him. Especially when he hears the price Daf had to pay for an unplanned hotel room in Paris.

‘You’ll get the money back though, won’t you?’ he says to Daf. ‘Insurance?’

Daf shrugs. ‘Have to. Amount I paid. But they’re saying it’ll take ages, number of claims they’re having to work through these days.’

When Peter looks at him blankly, Daf points at the windows lashed by rain, and says: ‘The weather.’

 

He’s on the order forms, thinking about options for the new scheme of plants to help surface drainage on the main roads into the city. Residents in Swansea, where these plants have already been rolled out, hate them because while the plants are new and small, the roadside beds become rubbish traps. But at the last Big Meeting he was told to press ahead for the same scheme in Cardiff West. He’s glad he doesn’t have anything to do with the council’s social media accounts. That’ll be a barrel of laughs once Alison and the lads get these roadside beds planted. When Comms do their monthly departmental reports in the Big Big Meetings, Peter hears what they have to deal with. Worth putting up with Daf to avoid that nonsense.

He’s managed twenty minutes on the order forms when the lads and Alison arrive.

‘Aren’t you meant to be digging over the beds at Roath Rec?’ he says. ‘I know it’s wet out but the bulbs are waiting to go in. Having a job keeping the rats off them, so Sanitation tells me.’

‘Cheerful bunch they are!’ Daf calls over from his desk, and Peter waits for Ravi to make the obvious quip (‘You talking about Sanitation or the rats there, Daf?’) because Ravi can be relied upon for such things. But the lad is silent. Alison helps him to a chair.

‘We were on our way to the Rec,’ Alison says.

Ravi covers his face with his hands. Bryn, the third member of the team, pats the lad’s shoulder. They’re all soaked and dripping onto the old lino of the office kitchen. Maintenance will need to put up the Wet Floor sign.

‘That’s when it happened,’ Bryn says.

‘What did?’ Peter says, then calls to Daf to put the kettle on. This lot need a hot drink, if not something stronger.

‘Caught the front bumper. Thought it would come through the windscreen but Ravi managed to swerve and in the end it just rolled past us.’

Ravi moans from behind his hands.

‘Close though,’ Alison says. ‘Too bloody close.’

‘It was the bin lorry got the full force of it in the end,’ Bryn says.

‘Whose lorry?’ Daf says, awkwardly putting a packet of Hobnobs into Ravi’s lap. ‘Good for shock.’

‘Jeff’s lorry,’ Bryn says. ‘It glanced off us and went straight into the side of them, thank goodness. Given the size. And that’s where it stopped.’

Peter shakes his head as if to shake water from his ears, as if the rain has come inside and flooded his brain. He must have missed a step here.

‘What was it nearly hit you?’ he says, thinking about scooters (too small surely?), a police car, a bus. There’s been nothing on the news and Daf has had Radio Wales on, his side of the office.

‘Trampoline,’ Alison says, and takes a Hobnob. ‘If it weren’t for Ravi . . .’

Bryn’s hand on the lad’s shoulder tightens.

‘The van though,’ Alison continues. ‘We’ve had to check it in with Works. Bumper hanging off and they’re not sure about the suspension. So we’re here.’

‘Well thank God you are,’ Peter says. ‘And don’t worry about the van. But a trampoline. Are you sure?’

Ravi’s hands drop from his face and he looks Peter dead in the eye.

‘It was a fucking trampoline. Bowling across the main road. Coming right for us.’

A pause. A long one. Ravi is trembling.

‘Daf!’ Peter calls. ‘How’s that coffee coming?’

 

III. Storm Unwin

For the next two weeks the weather’s quieter. Everyone seems to think that’s the last of the storms for a while. Unfortunate set of weather patterns. El Niño time of year. Peter’s not really listening to the radio, and he’s not had much time for the TV news either. Too much going on at work. Trying to find a new van the lads and Alison can borrow while theirs is mended which Works says will take far longer than he expected. Cutbacks, he’s told.

‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ moans Daf.

And Peter seems to be in Big Meetings all the time now. Talk of reallocation of funds, the budget deficit. Which always translates as job losses. Poor Ravi’s still wobbly after the near miss so Peter needs to find someone to join Bryn and Alison at Roath Rec but people are being diverted to other departments. He’s not sure why and there’s no time to ask. They’ve got to plan the spring planting or the bulbs will be wasted. The rats are out of control, report Sanitation.

Gwenno’s got her hands full at the station: flooding between Didcot and Swindon isn’t unusual, he’s been caught by it himself often enough when he gets the Paddington train. But this time it’s taking ages to subside. When the water levels drop, engineers discover a key bridge on the line is unstable.

‘It never ends,’ Gwenno says, slumped on the sofa at the end of the day the engineers’ report comes in. She’s had to re-route thousands trying to get home after a Wales international rugby match at the stadium. She’s barely touched her dinner (a Tuscan bean stew) so he puts it in the fridge for her lunch tomorrow. He can do that for her, at least.

 

And then the next storm comes. A trampoline takes off and crashes through a school window in Merthyr. Two children are hurt. The teacher who grabbed the children as the glass fell, and in all likelihood saved their lives, sobs on the news, her face riven by cuts from the smashed window. It’s too much. Everyone agrees it’s too much.

 

It’s Rhondda Cynon Taf which starts things off. The local authority bans garden trampolines, citing the danger and disruption they pose, given the increasing storms the UK is experiencing. The first Peter hears of it is on BBC Radio Wales in their 8am news bulletin.

‘Sensible idea,’ Peter says to himself and to the news reader as he hands Gwenno her bagel. He’s thinking of Ravi, thinking of the teacher in Merthyr with her face cut, the children she pulled to safety.

Gwenno makes a noise of only vague agreement as she bites into her bagel.

‘You don’t think so?’ he says. ‘All the trouble they’ve caused you on the lines.’

On the radio the presenter says, ‘Tonight’s drivetime phone-in will be about this surprise decision by RCT council. Do get in touch, we’re keen to hear what you make of this. If you live in RCT and own a trampoline, what will you do with it? Is this decision by the council reasonable or is this the Nanny State in action?’

Gwenno turns the radio off. ‘Can’t see it happening. I’ll get something for tea on the way home.’

‘Not on lates tonight?’

‘God willing, no,’ she says.

As Peter takes his banana from the fruit bowl he can’t help but notice: the draught from the back door is definitely worse.

 

That morning the council leader calls an unexpected Big Big Meeting. Peter gets the alert on his phone while he’s on the bus (late again, Drive).

While they’re waiting for the kettle for their first tea, Daf shows Peter a video on his phone of a trampoline bouncing down a street, catching cars as it passes, a dreadful scrape of metal audible over the buffeting of the wind.

‘That’s in Rhyl yesterday,’ Daf says. ‘Blew right into the sea.’

‘Best place for it,’ Peter says.

In the Big Big Meeting, the divisional heads (he’s one, head of Landscaping) are informed that RCT are using an obscure byelaw to implement the ban on trampolines.

The leader tells them Cardiff Council’s plan is to hold fire, see if the interpretation of the byelaw will stand up. RCT are expecting challenges, it seems. But from whom?

That’s the first time Peter hears about the Trampoline Lobby.

 

That night he’s spared the Radio Wales drive-time phone-in because as usual Gwenno has Radio 4 on while making dinner. But he’s not spared hearing about trampolines because it’s a hot topic in the 5pm news and comment programme on Radio 4 that Gwenno likes. An online petition on the Welsh parliament website, arguing that RCT council has no right to take away people’s trampolines, has gained the requisite number of signatures to trigger a debate among Welsh Assembly Members.

Two Assembly Members are giving their opinions on it now, on air, the usual butting of horns of opposing viewpoints. He doesn’t catch the name of one of the AMs because he’s got the kettle on, but the other is a Tory from Flintshire. Richard Coombs. Leader of the Trampoline Lobby.

‘The decision by Rhondda Cynan Taf council is an infringement of basic human rights,’ Coombs says, or rather shouts at the presenter.

‘Are you suggesting that owning a trampoline is a basic human right?’ asks the other AM, without much effort to hide their sarcasm it seems to Peter who’s hunting oregano at the back of a cupboard.

‘This is a question of personal property and the right to use one’s home in the manner of one’s choosing.’

‘But what about the impact of trampolines on other people?’ the second AM asks. ‘The danger they pose. Only this week we’ve seen four road traffic accidents not to mention—’

‘The only danger here is the danger of an over-reaching local authority,’ Coombs says, ‘and the Trampoline Lobby which I represent will defend the rights of Welsh citizens on this issue.’

‘And how will you defend them?’ asks the presenter.

A pause, and then Coombs says, ‘That will become clear in the coming days.’

The presenter thanks them both and moves on to forest fires in Greece and the evacuation of holiday makers, but he’s drowned out by Gwenno.

‘How can a council have the right to do this?’ she says. ‘There’s nothing illegal about owning a trampoline. You can buy them in supermarkets! We could drive there now, to Big Tesco, and get one.’

Peter looks out the kitchen window, his gaze blurred from the onions he’s been chopping for the bolognese. He tries to imagine their back yard swamped by a trampoline, the mesh pressing against the shrubs and the one dahlia that’s flowered this year. There’s a stiff breeze tonight. Is there a storm due? He’s trying to catch the weather that’s just started on the radio, but Gwenno turns it off.

‘I’m sick of hearing about it. All anyone’s talking about at work,’ she says.

‘The forecast?’ he asks.

Gwenno flops onto the sofa and groans. ‘The legal right to own a trampoline.’

He leans in the doorway to the kitchen. ‘Are they all mad keen on them, then?’

‘They are now!’ she says. ‘Half my team bought one online during their lunch break. Matter of principle, apparently. Civil liberties. You keeping an eye on those onions?’

He whips back to the stove but the onions have caught. It’s late to start again and he’s worried about Gwenno, how tired she is. Better to press on and eat earlier, try to get to bed this side of eleven. He’ll mask the burnt onions with extra garlic, sets to peeling the cloves. He turns the radio back on in time to hear that five more Welsh councils have banned trampolines outside, including Cardiff.

‘How will this be enforced?’ asks a North Wales MP who the BBC have scrambled to interview as the MP returns to his constituency from a day in the House of Commons.

How indeed, thinks Peter. That early night now seems essential. Work tomorrow will be something else. He gets garlic bread from the freezer to have with the bolognese. They both deserve a treat.

 

IV. Storm Veronique

He’s woken in the night. A noise. But Gwenno’s still asleep beside him. Her lovely face creased with fatigue. He hears it again. A moan. Soughing’s the word, isn’t it? The wind. They so rarely hear it this side of the house. Must be strong tonight. And then comes the rain, thrashing the windows. Gwenno stirs but doesn’t wake. He tries to go back to sleep but his thoughts are of trampolines being lifted into the air, bowling down streets like some weird new sport, but a sport that can kill you – those long metal legs flailing. The impact of one of them, even just a glancing blow. How many of their neighbours have trampolines? Have they tied them down?

He can’t sleep so he does the thing he knows you’re not meant to do and picks up his phone, looks at the news. The lead item is the move by more Welsh councils to ban trampolines, with speculation that councils in Scotland and Northern Ireland will follow in the coming days. One of England’s metro mayors in the north has an op-ed in a broadsheet due to be published that morning, reportedly championing the idea.

The rain beats more loudly at the window but there’s nothing about a storm on the news pages. When he checks the weather map there’s a yellow warning for the whole country: Wales is due to vanish under a wash of rain lasting 48 hours. He’s glad they’re getting rid of the bloody trampolines but there’s so much else to do.

Worried the light of the phone will wake Gwenno he goes downstairs for a cup of tea and puts the radio on, using the BBC app with his headphones. For once he’s up early enough to hear the programme about farming on Radio 4 that comes before the main news programme at six. He’s only half listening as he checks his work emails but someone’s talking about droughts. And here they are with a yellow weather warning for rain. How does that make sense? There’s already emails waiting for him, sent late last night. The Comms team burning the midnight oil. He turns off the radio so he can concentrate.

He learns there’s to be a trampoline amnesty in Cardiff with scrappage scheme attached. People have one month to give up their trampolines and receive compensation. The money will come from all council departments making ‘efficiency savings’ and Peter is informed he must make a plan by the end of this week for where his team, Landscaping, will make savings. He hasn’t the stomach for breakfast but Gwenno makes him take his banana to work.

When he arrives Daf is already there, looking grey.

‘What can we cut?’ Daf says. ‘We’re already facing redundancies.’

Peter puts the kettle on. He’s due to be in back-to-back Big Big Meetings all day with no idea when he’ll have a chance to eat lunch. Daf cracks open the Hobnobs as they look at the agenda for the first meeting.

‘See this suggestion from Parks,’ Peter says, ‘about improving the city’s climbing frames?’

‘Well, if there’s no trampolines left,’ Daf says, ‘we’ll need something for the kiddies. Will Parks use the trampolines do you think, melt them down?’

‘I haven’t got a clue.’ Peter sinks back in his chair. ‘There’s a review planned and Landscaping will need to feed into it. You’ll have to do it, Daf. I’ve got no time. I’m already late with the business case for retaining existing staff and if I don’t get a move on, Alison and the lads might be out of a job before I can do the paperwork to keep them.’

‘Any news on Ravi?’ Daf asks.

‘HR said he’s not coming back any time soon, and Alison tells me he’s moved back in with him mum. Night terrors, apparently.’

‘Poor lad.’

 

In the second of the day’s Big Big Meeting Peter hears that a new temporary division of the council has been set up to manage the trampoline amnesty. Overnight there has appeared a new page on the council’s website with a form. People fill it in and then the council will collect the trampolines. Peter’s team have been seconded to pick-ups. When he protests about the impact on Landscaping’s work, the new drainage plants that are meant to go in, he’s told it’s not just a question of personnel. His team can’t do any landscaping right now anyway because the vans have all been commandeered. Plus, his budget, like all council budgets, has been frozen until further notice.

He and Daf are to remain in the office and direct Alison and Bryn to the collection points, and deal with queries over the phone. The level of abuse from callers takes them both surprise, and when he manages a quick break and phones Gwenno, he finds himself close to tears.

‘How can people care so much about bloody trampolines?’ he says.

Gwenno has no answer for him, and in the background he can hear constant tannoy announcements about delays and cancellations.

‘Doesn’t sound like your day’s much better than mine,’ he says. ‘Flooding?’

‘Yes, but it’s also—’ She breaks off to issue some hurried instruction to someone nearby which he can’t make out, then she’s back talking to him: ‘Protestors are blocking the lines. We’ve had to call the police.’

‘What are they protesting?’ he says but he can’t hear Gwenno’s reply over the noise at her end. So much shouting. And he knows the answer anyway. They’ll have a takeaway tonight. Whatever Gwenno wants. Hang the cost. And wine. He and Daf might need a drink just to cope with the things people are saying on the phone. And then Alison calls in to say one of their pick-up points was an ambush.

‘An ambush?’ Peter says, and can hardly believe he’s saying these words. How has it come to this? ‘Are you all right?’

‘We’re fine,’ Alison says. ‘We were out of the van before the crowd tipped it over.’

‘Tipped the van over? My God.’

On hearing Peter say this, Daf puts down his phone mid call and goes to the window where he stands in silence watching the rain drench the city, the country.

Peter tells Alison to get herself home once the police have taken her statement. He joins Daf at the window. They stand together in silence, Peter’s not sure how long for, but when he turns back to his desk, the phone system is covered in red lights showing calls waiting. He can feel the anger emanating across the office.

 

The phone line abuse gets worse that afternoon once news breaks of the test case. A woman in Aberystwyth is mounting a legal challenge to her local council’s use of byelaws to ban trampolines. Her legal fees will be paid by the Trampoline Lobby.

The scarred teacher from Merthyr is on Newsnight that night, alongside the Lobby’s leader Richard Coombs. It’s a heated discussion with a lot of emphasis on whether sufficient tethering would solve the problem. Perhaps all new trampolines could come with these fixtures? Is this an issue of rented property vs. home ownership and should landlords be responsible for damage caused by trampolines? The teacher talks of the trauma the children in her class still experience. A crowdfunder has been set up to pay for plastic surgery for the teacher’s injuries. The programme finishes with a report on the upsurge in trampolining clubs held in sports centres. A fifteen-year-old who attends one such club in Llanelli is asked if this is a form of protest.

 

V. Storm Wynne

The legal case mounted by the woman from Aberystwyth is rushed through the courts, given the ‘sensitivity’ of the issue. She wins the case but, in his summing up, the presiding judge includes remarks about whether this should even be a local issue, that the byelaws used by the councils never anticipated the problems we face today. Perhaps this is something that should be looked at on a national level. The First Minister of Wales is reported to be taking a keen interest.

 

Peter is still working the phone line arranging trampoline collections. He can’t remember the last time he even thought about anything to do with landscaping. He dreads going into work, the abuse on the phones unremitting. He’s glad the bus is late every day. He’d rather spend the whole day at the bus stop and has worked out where to stand to avoid the wind which never seems to stop. Gwenno is off work with stress, will only eat bagels though not enough of them to keep body and soul together.

But then comes a reprieve: the amnesty scheme will be removed from council administration. The risk to public safety from trampolines is a devolved issue. Emergency legislation is tabled in the Welsh parliament and the Trampoline Act comes into being. Trampolines are banned in Wales.

 

When the amnesty month is up the collection phone lines are replaced with an anonymous number for tips of illegal trampolines.

‘Hard to hide a trampoline, surely?’ Peter says to Daf the morning the tip line is announced. ‘Maybe out in the country. But in towns and cities, it’d be pretty obvious, wouldn’t it?’ He thinks about seeing them from the train.

‘Ah,’ says Daf, ‘but people are taking them indoors. Putting them in their living rooms, if they can.’

Peter nearly chokes on his banana. ‘They’re doing what?’

‘Point of principle apparently.’ Daf holds his hands up. ‘Makes no sense to me.’

 

They don’t put the radio on now. The news makes Gwenno too upset so Peter catches up on the app once she’s gone to bed. Injury rates are going up among the under twelves, mainly caused by children putting their heads through ceilings as they bounce on trampolines now crammed into living rooms. There are long waits at A&E departments which are already overstretched. Opponents of devolution point to the actions of the Welsh government as draconian, against common sense.

But as autumn arrives and storms worsen, trampolines cause more and more problems across the border. Within a month, England follows suit and bans trampolines.

 

A side effect no one saw coming is the value of scrap metal goes down, given all the confiscated trampolines. Gwenno is pleased about this as she starts the process of returning to work.

‘Fewer idiots trying to prise up the tracks,’ she says.

But the lack of trampolines doesn’t help the rate of blockages on the railway lines because as autumn turns to winter, flooding gets worse. The Trampoline Lobby are still on the radio, claiming trampolines aren’t the problem. And Peter wonders if they’re partly right.

When a group of enormous trees blow down in Bute Park, in sight of his office, he doesn’t have the resources to deal with them. Daf has been made redundant and with Ravi still not back at work, there’s no one on the team with a chainsaw licence. Some of the trees fall into the river at the weir and contribute to the worst flooding the city has ever experienced. The drainage plants he was due to have planted on the roads leading into the city centre have long since rotted and he has no budget to replace them.

He goes to sleep to the sound of the wind, and the sound of sirens.

Katherine Stansfield grew up in Cornwall and now lives in Cardiff. She is a multi-genre novelist and poet. She co-wrote the fantasy crime trilogy Tales of Fenest with her partner David Towsey, publishing as D. K. Fields, and also writes gothic and horror fiction as Mina Templeton. Katherine is co-editor, with Caroline Oakley, of Cast a Long Shadow: New Crime Short Stories by Women Writers from Wales, published by Honno. Ongoing editorial work includes poetry co-editor of Scintilla, the journal of the Vaughan Society, and founding co-editor of Bending The Arc: a Thrutopian Magazine which imagines hopeful futures into being. She teaches creative writing for Faber Academy and has been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow.

 

Author photograph by Two Cats in the Yard Photography.