Martin Penny, a disillusioned and awkward young man, looks back to a turning point in his life - when his old, boring, and enthusiasm-destroying English teacher was arrested for pimping and was replaced by a fresh new teacher, a man who managed to blow off the dead-dust of his predecessor and rekindle the reader and writer in Martin. Martin, now an English teacher himself, has to come to terms with which of these two teachers he has come to resemble most - the one he hates or the one he emulates. Written in a free and easy style, Small Doses is a celebration of reading, writing, poetry, diary-keeping and of the little bits of magic poked, prodded and relighted back to life from the embers of memory.