I remember one day I went up to the loft to find some old photographs.  When I opened the door I could see a faint glow. At first I thought someone had left the light on but as I climbed the ladder and my eyes became accustomed to the dim light I could see that the light was moving around behind the stacked boxes of junk. I crawled across the floor trying to be as quiet as possible and hit my head on one of the rafters, just managing to stifle my cry. The light flickered on, seemingly oblivious to me.

I slowly raised myself into an uncomfortable crouching position and peered over the boxes to see what was happening. On the other side a number of small figures were moving about, sifting through the piles of broken toasters and discarded records. They were about eighteen inches tall and dressed in blue overalls. The glow was coming from the magnificent eagle wings that sprouted from their overalls just above the shoulder blades. All their faces were different, some ugly, some beautiful. One or two wore glasses and they all carried clipboards. They seemed to be counting my possessions and marking down what they found. In the far corner of the loft one of them was sitting down at a folding table. He was slightly balding and wore a dark work suit and half-frame spectacles that sat perched at the end of his nose. Occasionally the others would walk over to him and he would copy what they had written on their clipboards into a thick leatherbound book on his desk. Every so often he would punch at the buttons of a small desktop calculator beside the book and then peer at the display down the end of his nose and frown slightly, muttering under his breath.

I must have watched them for at least an hour. Apart from the glow from their wings there was nothing even slightly ethereal about them. In fact somehow they looked more solid than anything else. Beside them I felt like a cloud. Eventually the figure at the desk lent back, closed the book and signalled to the others that everything was accounted for. They started moving all the bits of junk back into their original piles. After a while everything was back how it had been. They took the book and the folding table and chair and put them in a tiny filing cabinet that I hadn't noticed before and then in single file they crawled out through the hole in the guttering that I had been meaning to fix for months.

With a start I stood up forgetting where I was and hit my head on the roof. Quickly I climbed down the ladder and limping from cramp ran outside and jumped into my car. I could just make out the glow of their wings as they flew off through the trees. I started my car and chased after them as they flew south towards the coast. I suppose I was lucky they followed the main roads or I'd never have been able to keep up with them.

I had to let them go when they reached the coast. I pulled up the car by the edge of the cliff and got out and watched them as they flew off over the sea. Two of them were carrying the filing cabinet between them on ropes. They flew on for a while and then one by one they disappeared. It looks like the back door to heaven lies just off the coast about fifteen miles east of the Isle of Wight. Maybe one day I'll hire a boat and look for it.