Next door to Mr Morton's bookshop is a shop that confuses everyone. The sign reads Second Hand Shop, so naturally people expect bargains on old furniture and wobbly chairs. What they find instead are drawers. Hundreds of wooden drawers with neat little labels. And inside them are second hands. Not gloves. Not watches. Actual ticking, gleaming second hands from clocks.

Most people back out slowly mumbling apologies. But one afternoon, a child called Lily stays. Lily is always catastrophically late for everything. Time, she feels, is personally attacking her. There is never enough of it. So when the shopkeeper explains that these golden seconds can give you one more moment when you need it, Lily buys three. Then sixty. Then hundreds.

She uses them for everything. Extra seconds to tie shoelaces without her fingers going weird. Extra seconds to actually hear what Dad is saying instead of just nodding. Extra seconds to make breakfast last, to stretch a laugh, to enjoy the bit in her book where the dragon finally shows up. She is still always late, but now she is late with better quality.

Then things start getting strange. Lily is using so many borrowed seconds that time around her begins behaving oddly. Her breakfast takes forty minutes while everyone else finishes in ten. Conversations with her seem to last forever. At school, she works on one maths problem for ages while everyone else races ahead. And one evening during dinner, every single second she has used that day activates at once. Time around Lily lurches. The kitchen slows to almost nothing. Dad is frozen mid sentence. Mum is paused reaching for salt. But Lily is moving at normal speed, which means she is trapped in a world where everyone else has stopped.

What follows is a thoughtful, gently magical story about the paradox of time. About trying to make moments last longer and discovering that the best time is actually when you forget time exists completely. When an hour vanishes while you are reading because you are so absorbed the clock disappears. Lily learns this not through a lecture, but through experience, returning her unused seconds and discovering something real about how time actually works.

This is a funny bedtime story for kids who are always rushing, always late, always wishing there were more hours in the day. It is also for parents who recognise that feeling of time slipping away and would quite like a story that explores it with warmth and wonder instead of stress. The story has magical shop mystery, frozen time moments that feel genuinely strange, and a resolution that lands somewhere thoughtful and cosy.

Perfect for family listening when you want audio stories for children that make everyone think as well as smile, for bedtime when you need a calming bedtime story with a bit of mystery and magic, or for car journeys when the kids storytelling podcast needs to be clever enough to keep older children engaged. The chaos builds as Lily uses more seconds, the frozen kitchen scene is wonderfully odd, and then it all settles into something gentle and true.

If you are searching for funny bedtime stories for kids with thoughtful themes, wholesome humour that respects intelligence, and a bedtime story podcast that never lectures but still leaves everyone feeling something real, this second hand shop is waiting next door.

Mr Morton's Barmy Book of Bonkers Bits is wholesome family storytelling with a bonkers twist. Performance driven, kind hearted, and never mean.

Episode length: approximately 14 minutes
Ages: 4 to 400
Best enjoyed: bedtime, car journeys, after school wind down

Follow the show for more funny bedtime stories for kids that turn big ideas into warm, silly adventures.