Little Green Man

'Little Green Man' is a short story from a collection-in-progress - Housebreakers - which depicts aspects of contemporary work and working lives in the UK. This is an abridged version, read by Dorothy Atkinson, and first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as part of the BBC National Short Story Award, for which it was shortlisted. The story is about Carrie, a love-sick council gardener who wants to spend the day alone, but is instead asked to chaperone a young temp worker, a teenage dad called Ryan. 'Little Green Man' is structured around a work shift at Derby City Parks and Gardens, and engages with ideas about how workers are subject to what Fusco and Seymour call 'the commodification of time'. It begins with a supervisor asking Carrie to 'give me one day'...