In a world where no calendar date is ever unexpected…
Herbert Ungleridge stumbles on a shocking discovery!
A February 30th! Where no February 30th should be!
But the biggest question of all is…
Will anyone believe him?
A wonderful snapshot of the intricacies of family dynamics. This delightfully quirky literary short story will fascinate you from start to finish.
“The Unexpected Day” is available for the month of October 2026 on this site. The ebook is also available on most major online retail stores. You can also read this story in the collection Baverstock’s Allsorts Volume 2.
The Unexpected Day
By Jessica Baverstock
It was an unexpected day. A February 30th in a year when only a February 29th should have happened.
Yes, February 29ths were unusual days, but expected every four years.
February 30th was unexpected.
And it should have been expected.
It should have been on everyone’s calendars.
On everyone’s smart phones.
On everyone’s computers.
There should never have been an unexpected anything in a world where everything was organised, scheduled, noted, and foreseen.
Nothing should have been unexpected.
And yet there it was, February 30th where no February 30th had been before.
Hubert Ungleridge was the first to realise it.
He was a night owl.
Not literally of course.
Figuratively.
A person who remains alert well into the wee hours, well past midnight.
But it was just as midnight rang on the old grandfather clock, and the third of the twelve chimes was still echoing through the long, dark, creaky wooden hallway and up the long, dark, creaky wooden staircase of his small terraced house, that Hubert Ungleridge realised that March 1st had not come as expected, but February 30th had come in its stead.
Although that wasn’t really the right way to look at it of course. February 30th hadn’t overridden March 1st. Hubert believed that March 1st was simply a day late and therefore February had helpfully filled in the gap with an additional day.
Hubert watched the little clock in the bottom right hand corner of his computer screen tick silently over and, while the grandfather clock made a huge song and dance about it downstairs, instead of displaying 12:00 March 1 the computer display said 12:00 February 30.
Hubert though this such a strange thing that he went into the bedroom where his wife was sleeping and woke her up with a gentle, but firm, nudge.
His wife, never a patient woman at the best of times due to a life run ragged by six boys who had finally left home after each had spent their trialsome twenties still in this small little house and worn through any patience his wife might have set aside for her retirement years, sleepily told him that whatever it was he thought he had found it surely couldn’t be the end of the world, and even if it was indeed the end of the world she was sure it could keep until tomorrow.
And then she turned back over and fell asleep as if it were indeed March 1st.
So Hubert did the only other thing he could think of doing.
He rang his youngest son, Shelly Ungleridge.
Now, at this point it must be added that while Shelly may appear to be a girl’s name under normal circumstances, the naming of the six Ungleridge boys was anything but normal.
The first had been named Tennyson. A reasonable enough sounding name, but with a distinctive poetic bent.
The twins who followed were named Keats and Burns. These too sounded understandable enough as far as themes went.
But when the second set of twins came along, the Ungleridge parents found themselves at a bit of a loss. Well, Hubert did. Mrs Ungleridge, who had championed the idea of the naming convention from the get go, having reached the end of the relatively well-known poets, figured she might be able to move on to other literary names and suggested Dickens and Trollope.
Hubert quickly put the kibosh on the matter of a son named Trollope. After all, times had changed and the word ‘Trollope’ had far too many negative connotations for modern use as a given name.
But Mrs Ungleridge—ever capable of completely misunderstanding perfectly reasonable male conversation—believed Hubert to have forsworn any of her boys being named anything but poets. And so she moved on to Wordsworth Ungleridge and Frost Ungleridge.
It pained Hubert greatly that Mrs. Ungleridge had not chosen such a reasonable name as Blake, which would still have fitted with the poetical theme. It was a point he brought up at the birth of his sixth boy and one that Mrs. Ungleridge claimed to have taken into consideration when naming the poor lad Shelly.
Out of the six boys, Shelly had proven to be most like his father, at least when it came to his sleeping habits.
And so it was this boy, out of the six, whom Hubert chose to phone to verify his unusual findings about the unexpected day it seemed the world had just entered.
“Hurrumph,” answered Shelly upon picking up the phone on the fourth ring.
It was a salutation the boy, now in his thirties, usually used when receiving a call from his father at this time of night. Hubert assumed that Shelly’s phone had some form of caller ID as he hoped the boy didn’t answer the phone that way to others.
“Have you seen the date?” Hubert was not one for pleasantries at the beginning of conversations, especially when the person in question obviously knew to whom they were talking and had started the conversation themselves with an audible huff.
“Hmm?” said Shelly, implying that he had been woken by the phone call, although Hubert knew that that could not be the case, as the boy had the habit of not retiring till the early hours of 2 or 3 a.m. in order to have every excuse to sleep in until 10 the next morning.
“It’s February 30th!”
This exclamation on Hubert’s part did the trick of bringing Shelly into proper conversing mode.
“Nonsense,” said the boy.
And Hubert wouldn’t have argued with him, except for the fact that his computer was telling him so.
“Check your calendar,” suggested Hubert. He would have checked his own except that his wife insisted on making her own each year from her own photography from the year before. And so his months were punctuated by flowers with insects just slightly out of focus or just slightly out of frame. A calendar which couldn’t even get the subject of its photography in focus surely could not be relied upon to know when an unexpected day arrived.
“I don’t have a calendar,” replied Shelly.
This was not an unusual occurrence for someone of Shelly’s generation, as paper was no longer the main means of keeping track of anything. Newspapers, calendars, and even bank statements had all virtually disappeared in this world of electronic devices. Although, sadly, junk mail hadn’t followed suit, but rather seemed to have proliferated in its mass and frequency—an occurrence that still perplexed Hubert.
But the lack of paper newspapers and calendars and bank statements and whatnot were what made Hurbert so curious and, one might even say, suspicious of what his computer was telling him.
Hubert had grown up in an era where the printed word was as good as gospel.
Now he lived in a world where even the gospels were more readily found in electronic form than in paper.
But computers were fallible. They could be hacked, or changed, or updated, and then who knew whether to believe them or not.
There was, after all, the time when an update to a widely used operating system had unintentionally moved the clocks forward by three hours and caused much pandemonium the day after the update.
And there was the utter panic that the changing of the millennium had caused where people believed that a computer clicking over from 99 to 00 would somehow bring about the end of the world.
It hadn’t.
At least not so far as Hubert Ungleridge had noticed.
And he was a very observant man.
As could be proven by the fact that he was among the first to notice the coming of February 30th.
It must be admitted that one of the main reasons Herbert was among the first was because he lived in New Zealand and was, therefore, closer to the International Date Line than most observant people scattered around the world. Had he lived in Los Angeles, for instance (as he had once planned to do when he, for a brief evening, wondered if he could sell the manuscripts and plays tucked away in his office filing cabinet to Hollywood and become, if not a millionaire, then at least someone who had enough dosh to his name to set himself up with the kind of plush home and large swimming pool he had always dreamed of), yes, had he lived in Los Angeles, he would not have had the chance of being among the first to note the date.
He would likely have read it emblazoned across the day’s newspaper.
And that thought sparked a realisation.
He wondered if the newspaper would have a special edition for February 30th.
Then he wondered if the people working at the newspaper knew anything about it.
Perhaps they were too busy to notice.
What if they were already printing a March 1st edition when in actual fact a February 30th was needed?
Think of all the paper wasted, not to mention the missed opportunity to be one of the first newspapers in history to have a February 30th edition.
“I’ll ring you back, Shelly,” Herbert Unklerige hollered down the phone to his youngest son. “I have to call the newspaper.”
“Da—” was all that was heard before Herbert put down the receiver and went off in search of a newspaper for contact details.
While it was true that until now he had been sitting in front of his computer, with Internet access, which should have made it a matter of a moment to search online for the contact details of the newspaper in question, Herbert did not trust anything electronic today. He had trouble trusting the digital world at the best of times, but on a February 30th, everything must be verified in paper.
He found the Tuesday February 28th edition at the bottom of the kitty litter box. It wasn’t in good shape. Maxwell the cat had seen to that.
Herbert grumbled to himself as he pulled out the few unsoiled sheets in the hope of finding a contact address. He grumbled about the same thing he grumbled about every time he came into contact with that blessed cat.
How could he live in a family with six sons, all strapping and healthy lads, and the cat have a better name than any of his boys?
He would have loved for one of the boys to be named Maxwell. Max for short.
Instead he found himself shortening his boys names to things like “Tenny” and “Words,” both of which seemed utterly ridiculous to him and yet completely endearing to his wife.
A son named Max would have been something.
Instead he lived in a house with a tabby named Maxy.
Hebert shuddered, as he always did around about this time in his thought process on the subject of names.
Then he got himself back into line. Tonight names weren’t important.
Numbers were important.
Very important.
He scanned the newspaper until he managed to find a phone number of some kind. He wasn’t entirely sure what the number was for, but it was listed with the newspaper’s postal address and website, so he figured it must be right.
As he was returning to the phone so as to contact the editor of his favourite newspaper, The Jupiter Times, the phone rang.
Herbert snatched up the receiver just as the first ring was dying away. He knew his wife’s feelings on the subject of late night phone calls. Herbert was allowed to call out, if absolutely necessary, but calls in were heavily frowned upon—as were most things Herbert did, day or night.
“Yes?” snapped Herbert. He didn’t have time for frivolous phone calls. The newspaper was probably going to print very shortly and his job as one of the first to notice the unexpected day was clear.
“Dad,” said Herbert’s fifth son, Frost. “What’s this Shelly says about you having discovered an extra day?” Frost sounded just as sleepy as Shelly, and for a moment Herbert wondered whether his youngest son had fobbed his father off on the next brother up the line.
“It’s true,” said Herbert, with the conviction needed when one is informing the world of a strange occurrence that others are unlikely to believe. “Take a look for yourself.”
“What?” said Frost, always the one to start talking before properly digesting the information provided. Even his mother found this habit irritating, which eased Herbert’s mind no end. “What do you mean, ‘take a look for yourself’? Outside looks the same no matter what day it is.”
The logic here escaped Herbert. “Not outside. Inside. On your computer. Or phone. Or tablet. Or whatever newfangled device you have now.”
Herbert didn’t mean to sound snippy. He couldn’t help it. His snippy side always came out when Frost started talking ‘logic.’ The boy wouldn’t know logic if it bit him on the nose. He needed another decade or so of maturing before he started realising that he wasn’t entirely surrounded by fools. Herbert predicted this would hit around Frost’s mid-forties and he was greatly looking forward to that date. At that point he would finally be able to have productive conversations with his fifth son.
In the meantime, he was stuck on the phone with the lad.
He felt frustrated with Shelly. He had chosen the son to call very carefully. Very carefully. He was sure Shelly was the only one of the six who would understand him, and yet Shelly had rung up one of his brothers, willy-nilly as it were, who was now using up the phone line that could be used for more important things.
Life-changing things.
Hang it all, planet-changing things!
Hubert would not underestimate the significance of what he was experiencing. After sixty-seven years of obedient Februarys following the conventions of 28th and then 29ths only on leap years, here he was experiencing something completely different! Something he needed to announce to the world, but first to The Jupiter Times.
“I have checked all my devices,” said Frost. “They all say it’s the 29th.”
“Of course they would,” responded Hubert. “You’re in Western Australia. It won’t be the 30th there for another few hours.”
“I’ve looked at the calendars on every single device, Dad. There’s no 30th.”
“And yet, here, on my computer, there is!” Hubert wasn’t going to let his son talk down to him in such a manner.
Especially not on a day like this.
Especially not on February 30th.
“There’s a bug in your computer somewhere, Dad. Shelly will pop round tomorrow and sort it out for you. In the meantime, you need to get some sleep.”
Hubert ground his teeth. There was so much he wanted to say to this upstart of a son. But he held it in. It was for the best.
“Okay,” said Hubert, with no intention of following through on Frost’s suggestion, but realising, as every good parent does, that grown children must be humoured at times so that their parents can live a normal life. “Sleep is always a good idea. You sound like you need some yourself, son.”
“I do,” said Frost. But his tone indicated he had no trust in his old man. “Now you have to promise me, Dad. Promise me you’re not going to call the newspaper about this February 30th thing.”
A gush of angry words raced to the back of Hubert’s throat.
The nerve!
The unmitigated nerve of the fellow to speak to his old man as if he were the parent and Hubert the child.
Hubert knew that eventually the time would come when one of his sons, and probably the accompanying marriage mate, would become carers for his wife and himself, but that was still a long way off, and Hubert was confident he would go to his grave with all his thought processes intact.
Therefore the moment when the child slips into the carer role and the parent slips into the subservient, almost childlike role, was still a good decade and a half away. If it happened at all.
But here was Frost speaking to him as if Hubert were a five-year-old who was being told not to run out the back and climb a tree while Daddy is busy.
So many cross words had already been spoken between Frost and Hubert along these lines, and the last thing Hubert wanted was for Frost to ring his mother up and set her on him. Hubert’s wife slept with her mobile phone by her bed just in case one of the boys wished to contact her directly. Her finger was always on the figurative pulse of her family. And tonight the danger of her waking to a call from Frost warning Mum that Dad needed to be forcefully removed from the phone was too high a risk to let go a flurry of angry words.
But how could Hubert possibly reply in any other way?
“Dad?” said Frost. “Dad, are you there? Did you hear me?”
Goodness, the boy even had the wording and intonation of his mother. Why, of all the boys, why did Shelly have to call Frost?
Hubert glanced at the address of the newspaper. “Yes, I heard you.”
“Then promise me you won’t phone the newspaper,” said Frost, speaking each word slowly as if Hubert were a preschooler learning his first words.
Hang it, Hubert had taught the boy to read. How dare he speak to him in that manner.
“I promise I won’t call them,” said Hubert, gritting his teeth and reminding himself once again that the boy would eventually get it given time. In fact, today might be the very day. What better way to realise the old man was right than to come across a February 30th right where the old man said a February 30th was going to be.
Never mind, Hubert thought to himself. If he had to promise not to call the paper, he’d hop in the car and drive the seven kilometres to the newspaper’s head office and tell them in person.
“Good,” said Frost. And then, as if a new thought had just struck him, “And promise me you won’t drive down there either.”
Hubert slammed the phone down before choice words were said. He’d said them before to Frost and it had taken years for their relationship to repair after that. Today was going to be his day. The day Frost realised that his old man did know better. And cross words would only make the day harder for Frost.
Hubert picked up the scrap of newspaper with the phone number and the address of the newspaper office and was just about to set off in search of his keys when the blasted phone rang again.
Hubert wanted to ignore it, but the chance of his wife waking up was far too great.
Goodness, Frost might call her and wake her from her stupor to come stop him from getting in his car.
He wanted to dash right out of the house and make a run for his car before anyone could stop him.
But he paused.
Because the phone call might be from Frost, ready to apologise.
Maybe he’d turned on the TV and there on the news they were talking about the unexpected day.
So he picked up the receiver.
“Dad, Dad, Dad,” said Wordsworth, in his usual crisp but repetitive way. “What’s going on? What has happened? Tell me what’s gotten you so worked up tonight?”
Hubert gritted his teeth still further. Why the boy couldn’t just condense his thoughts into a single question had always escaped Hubert.
“Call Frost and ask him,” said Hubert. “I’m busy.” Frost was, after all, Words’ twin and the two of them could use the communication practice.
“Shelly says you’ve got it into your head that there’s an extra day in the year.”
Hubert suppressed a growl. “What’s it to you?”
“Now Dad,” said Words, as if there had been no growl at all. “Practically, you understand why there can’t be a February 30th.”
Hubert had no idea why “practically” had anything to do with the situation. But he glanced again at the bottom right hand corner of his computer screen just to make doubly sure that the unexpected date was still the case.
And it was.
“Have you looked at your computer?”
“No,” said Words, getting a parental intonation to his voice too. “I turn off all my devices at 9 p.m. so that blue light doesn’t keep me awake. You would do well to do the same.”
Hubert wanted nothing more than to pull the plug of the phone out of the wall and have done with all these tedious conversations, but the fact that his wife hadn’t yet woken up meant that none of the boys had called her so far. If the phone was removed from the wall, the calls to her mobile phone would be instantaneous and the speed with which she would ascertain the situation, or at least believe she had ascertained the situation, would be blinding.
“Maybe you should turn some of your devices back on and check what your old man is saying before you discount him completely.”
“Dad,” said Words in that placating way one speaks to old people who have lost their marbles. “You know this can’t be true. Why don’t you get some sleep and tomorrow we’ll work it out together.”
Hubert resented the tone more than the words. He had marbles. Plenty of marbles. More marbles than Frost and Words together.
“Sleep is certainly a good idea,” he conceded. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
And with that he deftly put the phone down.
He was about to make a dash for the front door, not having forgotten or been distracted from his original purpose, which was to get in contact with The Jupiter Times, when the dratted phone rang once again.
“Dad,” said Keats’ voice when Hubert picked up the receiver.
“It’s us, Dad,” said Burns’ voice.
Two sons at once. That was all Hubert needed.
The twins, Keats and Burns, lived as roommates near Oxford in England. Hubert couldn’t be bothered trying to work out what time it was where they were. Probably sometime in the early-ish evening of February 29th.
How funny that February 29th still existed in places while February 30th was so rapidly approaching them.
“Listen,” said Hubert, anxious to grab control of this situation before the two boys completely bamboozled him. “I know you think you’re so much more educated than your father, but this is important to me. And what’s more, it’s true. You’ll find out about it soon enough and then you’ll realise I was right.”
“We have no doubt you are right,” said Keats.
Burns added a grunt of agreement.
Hubert paused.
This was an unexpected development.
“Good,” said Hubert. “Then you understand why I have to get to the newspaper and make sure they know.”
“See, there’s our concern,” said Burns. “Is it really necessary for you to tell the newspaper?”
Hubert knew there was something afoot. The boys had an agenda, as they always did.
“You see,” said Keats, “if it is February 30th—”
“Which we’re not affirming or denying at this point,” added Burns.
“—Indeed not,” continued Keats. “But if it is February 30th, then shouldn’t the newspaper and all the news channels already know this?”
“Have you checked the news?” said Hubert. Because the boys did have a point. The news channels should be all over this by now.
There was a pause.
“That’s not the point at hand here,” said Burns. “Our point is, if it is happening—”
“And we’re not denying that it is,” added Keats.
“—then there’s no need for you to tell the newspaper because the newspaper should already know.”
Hubert cursed encouraging the boys to become lawyers. Even though they eventually went their own ways and became business executives, the hundreds of hours they spent watching police procedurals had done the damage.
The boys made startling sense. The news channels would be all over this, very quickly, and so time was running out for him to prove that he was the first person in the world to know it was February 30th. The window for recognition of that achievement was closing fast.
“Excellent point,” said Hubert. “I’m so glad you called. I’ll let you get back to whatever it was you were doing before you phoned.”
And before they could say more, he put the phone down.
The realisation of the passing of time, and how it would impact his part in this historic event, meant the drive to the newspaper office would take too long.
He would have to break his promise to Shelly and call directly. After all, a promise a parent makes to an irritating child was different to the promise a child makes to a parent. The latter was ironclad, the former more flexible.
With this in mind, Hubert picked up the phone and went to dial the newspaper’s number.
But the phone did not have the expected dial tone.
In fact, there was the soft sound of breathing on the other end.
“Hello?” said Hubert, shaken.
“Oh, hi!” said the voice on the other end. “It’s Tenny. How funny, you must have just picked up the phone before it rang.”
“What is going on with you boys tonight? Are you all just peppering me with phone calls one after another until you get through?”
“Something like that,” said Tenny. “Shelly has been ringing around. He’s really worried about you.”
“And yet not one of you have rung your mother, I assume.”
“Not yet,” said Tenny.
“Why not?”
Tenny paused, considering. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I guess it’s just something between you and your boys at the moment. But we’re all a little concerned that you’re a bit sleep deprived and maybe things aren’t quite how you think they are.”
“As in, you think I’m going off my rocker in the middle of the night?”
“There is that possibility,” said Tenny gently, and for once Hubert appreciated his honesty.
“So, tell me,” said Hubert, “have you actually tried to verify my claim, or are you all just assuming that because what I’m saying is unusual that it must therefore be wrong.”
Tenny paused again. Thinking, no doubt. The boy was a prodigious thinker. Always had been from very little. It used to drive his mother mad, always musing over something and coming to his own conclusion on matters, even on the subject of what he wanted for dinner. Right now, however, Hubert was finding it very endearing.
“You know, Dad, you’re right. We haven’t tried to verify it. But to be honest, we don’t really know how.”
“Simple,” said Hubert. “Turn your computer on and see if it’s doing what I say it’s doing.”
“Well,” said Tenny, “I could do that. But it could just be a computer bug. It could just be your computer.”
Hubert felt like slamming the phone receiver on the desk in front of him.
But he held the frustration in and said instead, “Even if it were a bug, it would still be newsworthy.”
“You know, Dad, you’re right. I’ll turn my computer on and see what it says. But promise me you’ll stay on the line while I do that. Okay, Dad?”
“Fine,” said Hubert.
The urge he had to call the newspaper was still strong. He still wanted to be the one to call the story in, but right now his family was his main priority.
He realised why his boys were all calling him.
All six of them.
They were all concerned about him. And each, in his own way, was doing what he could to care for his old man on an unexpectedly unusual day. Even Shelly.
Because Shelly had rounded them all up like a posse, each calling in turn to offer what they could to their father—a listening ear and a clear head.
And in that moment Hubert loved them dearly for it.
Hubert could hear over the phone the clatter of a computer keyboard as Tenny put in his password.
Suddenly Hubert heard his wife’s mobile phone ring in the other room.
Hubert rested his head in his hand.
He had waited too long.
He should have let the phone ring and just jumped in the car.
Instead he had left it too long and now his wife would be informed of the boys’ panic.
She would come in here and wrench the phone from his hands and then frog march him to bed.
Like he would be able to sleep on a February 30th!
“Have you seen it yet?” said Hubert to his son.
“It’s still booting up, Dad. I’m sorry. My computer’s slow.”
He could hear the panic in his wife’s voice through the wall, though the words themselves were muffled, as she spoke to whoever was calling her.
Was it Shelly? Having done his rounds of all the sons had he finally called his mum?
“I really have to go,” said Hubert, calculating that there would be just enough time to race out the front door before his wife made it out of the bedroom.
But that plan would only work if the car keys were exactly where he left them, on the sideboard next to the door.
And in this house, with this particular woman running it, things were never exactly where he left them.
He could always just do the dash and then wake up one of his neighbours. Smitty Watson next door was a light sleeper. Or there was Ron Kinders two streets over. He was probably a better bet.
“Well I’ll be,” said Tenny. “February 30th. You were right, Dad.”
Hubert was so mentally encompassed in his escape plan that it took him a couple of seconds to realise what Tenny had said.
“What?” said Hubert.
“You were right. My computer says February 30th too.”
Hebert’s shoulders relaxed and a smile spread across his face. How wonderful those words sounded. Those three little words that meant so much to him.
You were right.
Or, actually, to be more accurate: You are right.
Because he would continue to be right for the whole day.
And it would be a lovely feeling.
An uplifting feeling.
The door to his little office swung open and there stood his wife, his beautiful wife in her pink fluffy robe, eyes wide, with her mobile phone to her ear.
“Shelly says the news channels are saying that today is February 30th,” she said. “It’s got something to do with—”
But Hubert wasn’t interested in the explanation.
That didn’t matter to him.
Or at least it didn’t matter to him right now.
There would be time to find out the details later.
All that mattered right now was that his family was finally believing him.
And the feeling was so overwhelmingly wonderful that his eyelids were becoming heavy and a feeling of relaxed euphoria was overtaking him.
He said goodnight to Tenny, who was intent on ringing his other brothers up to tell them the incredible news.
He said goodnight to his wife with a small kiss on her cheek as he passed her. She was going to watch the news and asked if he wanted to join her, but he said he had some sleeping to catch up on.
Shelly wanted to talk to him for a minute, but even that Hubert postponed until after sunrise.
What he needed now was a good sleep.
And the wonderful thing about that sleep was, when he woke up it would still be February 30th.
February 30th when his family finally realised he was right.
What an unexpected day indeed.
“The Unexpected Day” is available for the month of October 2026 on this site. The ebook is also available on most major online retail stores. You can also read this story in the collection Baverstock’s Allsorts Volume 2.
“The Unexpected Day”
Copyright © Jessica Baverstock
Cover and Layout copyright © Jessica Baverstock
Cover design by Jessica Baverstock
Cover art © myshot/depositphoto.com, manera/depositphoto.com
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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