Bottles

He didn't know why he was doing it, but he knew that he had to do it.
He had taken the empty milk bottles from outside every house on his street and stacked them in a precarious-looking pyramid shape outside the shop.
It wasn't enough. He needed to get more.
He collected the bottles from the streets either side of his.
There were now almost 200 bottles in his structure.
His job was done.
He weaved home with his recently-acquired traffic cone.

Illness

The queue outside the doctors' surgery began to assemble every morning, around half an hour before they opened.
Four of the people in the queue were there for the same reason.
There was nothing wrong with any of them, but they were all hoping to trick their doctor into believing they had that elusive illness that could see them signed off work with full pay forever.

Vikings

The longboat crashed through the waves and on to the beach.
The warriors clambered out and ran inland.
They saw the town and stopped.
"There's nothing for us here," said one.
They turned and headed back to the ship.

147

All he had to do was pot the black.
He'd done it a million times before.
It was sitting right over the pocket and he would never get an easier shot at winning a tournament than this. And with a maximum break too.
He lined up the shot.
A man in the audience coughed.
He sliced the cue forward and tore the baize on the table, only lightly touching the cue ball. It rolled forward and touched the black ball.
The ball teetered over the edge of the pocket, but didn't sink.

Up and Atom

The chemist leaped out of his bed, lab coat already on.
He was a morning person, make no mistake.
He thought about molecules and particles as he drank his coffee.
He left the house with a real spring in his step, heading to the laboratory to use more of the grant money on stuff that was actually quite pointless but which he would be able to write a magnificent thesis about.

Distracted

The family were sitting by the river eating a picnic.
It was the perfect day for it and passers by were quite jealous of the spread that was laid out on the red tablecloth - if it's still a tablecloth when there's no table.
A nearby nest of wasps were quite interested in what was going on and several hundred of them went to investigate.
Two of the family were allergic to wasps and things were about to get even more...well, look at that, it's not every day you see five magpies together. How unusual.

Envelope

"It's pronounced 'en' at the start."
"No, it's pronounced 'on'. It's French."
"Potato, potato."
"What?"
"Potato, potato."
"You just said 'potato' twice."
"Only an idiot would say 'potahto'."
She wondered why in that case, he didn't say 'potahto'.