Aristotle's Cuttlefish — Matthew Dooley

You can tell a lot about someone from what they misplace. Oddball Mr. Daniels has spent his life sorting chaos into order. In the basement of a shabby Town Council building, he has meticulously labelled, guarded and sometimes claimed the lost property of Dobbiston’s residents for thirty years; a life’s work carried out mostly unnoticed. But when a bored teenager on work experience interrupts his routine, Mr. Daniel’s underground world is revealed to be both a lonely prison of his own making and a refuge for his peculiar, uncurbed creativity. A place where hit-and-miss experiments to make the elixir of life, or record the music of the spheres, help him to grieve and search for existential truths. Told through Lost Property Office vignettes - a snooker cue love story, a granny’s tea cozy and a kid’s toy on an intergalactic adventure – local histories are elevated to the momentous and profound, drawn with playful nostalgia and Dooley’s deadpan wit. Aristotle’s Cuttlefish is an irresistible and witty portrait of a close-knit northern town and the lives those lost and found characters within it.