Ian McMillan entertains Geoff Hattersley with a look at the world through Barnsley glasses, featuring rubber jam tarts, a novelty Coronation Street alarm clock and a very strange game of chess.

Donny O'Rourke takes us to Edinburgh in August, for a Lughnasadh harvest festival — but one of culture, not of crops.

Tiffany Murray flees the over-familiar, but still creatively disabling, complaints of a despondent writer, by escaping to the strange new world of Iceland and its music.

Donny O’Rourke finds himself in the book-blessed town of Ullapool in May, celebrating the bonfires and bluebells of the Celtic Beltane festival.

Chris Arthur reflects on the inspirations of his ‘odd-object’ essays, and considers the popularity of this particular form and the most important aspect of oddness within it.