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When the Galactic Registry of Ongoing Existence discovers that Earth has never once filed its paperwork, village pothole inspector Neville Bramble becomes the only document standing between his planet and the archive. Armed with eleven years of pothole measurements and a chirpy electronic guidebook that is wrong in precise ways, he takes on the beige machinery of the cosmos.

Mr. Pottage would like a licence to open his front door. Unfortunately, licences are issued only at Window Four, which lies behind Door Seven, which may be opened only by holders of a licence — a watertight system, and the Ministry of Doors is enormously proud of it.

The end of the world has been scheduled for Thursday next, at teatime, in the small town of Pother's End — pending correct postage. Standing between creation and its filing deadline: two immortal field agents who went native centuries ago and quietly prefer it, a cosmic auditor who has just discovered rain, an infallible prophetess whose index cards are filed under the last word of each prophecy, and a twenty-four-year-old sub-postmistress who has never once bent a rule. The apocalypse has excellent paperwork. Unfortunately for the apocalypse, so does she.