My excellent medical physicist friend Mandy Price came across Fun Palaces (a celebration of science and art run by Co-Directors Stella Duffy and Sarah-Jane Rawlings with the ethos: Everyone an Artist, Everyone a Scientist) and got in touch with me to see if I fancied collaborating on a very short piece of fiction for their #WriteScience competition. I did! We chatted about her job (she helps maintain the right balance between image quality and radiation dose for examinations using ionising radiation) and x-rays in general, threw around some ideas and came up with the short story we’ve got here – which the lovely judges chose as one of their favourites.

This weekend, you’ll find Fun Palaces all over the country with all kind of exciting events for people of all ages. Mandy will be doing cool x-ray things at Brockwell Lido in Tooting, I’ll be sharing some stories in Leith and there are hundreds more to choose from – find a Fun Palace near you.

Because Mandy is a clever one, she also made some snazzy postcards with her own x-ray art on the front. We’ll be handing these out but you can also see a wee copy below or listen to me reading it online!