Do you identify with dental phobia? Do you like people-watching? Do you have anxieties in hospital outpatient departments? Do you enjoy touches of anthropomorphism? Grey Silk is a collection of short stories written, according to the author, over far too many years. They have grown dust in the far reaches of a laptop and have, at last, shaken the mouldy bits off and surfaced, hopefully free of the smells of mustiness. It is a mixed bag of Cornish memories, mice and Latin, pig abduction, incontinence with a touch of Gilbert & Sullivan spoofishness, and alternative farming in a stately home. Add in some gruesome infection and a bit of garden sluggery, tinged with the loss of colour in a depressing world. Some tales give rise to nostalgia, some are ridiculously daft, one is a homage to Alfred Hitchcock, two made the author feel distinctly uncomfortable, and at least one has a cringe factor about it. There are some to make you think, some to try and stop you thinking, some to make you smile, and one that may leave you with a sense of sadness about an imaginary dystopian state that has a hopelessness about wishing for the "unwishable". It is perhaps up to the reader to guess which of any of these labels may fit the written words.