Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?

She said to me: ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’

I couldn’t lie to her, not with how she was holding me. I’d seen her make a lemon meringue and watching her squeezing the lemons had made me nervous, even then. Now, with her holding my delicacies in he same way as she had held those lemons, all my thoughts of spinning her some story went out the window.

Which is a shame….

Because spinning the stories is what I’m good at. Give me anything, say: an elephant and a mandolin and I’ll have that elephant working as the best mandolin salesman the music shop has ever seen within a handful of paragraphs.

So, when she asked me where I got my ideas from, I told her.

I told her about the clearing in the woods.

I told her about the special night when the moon is just right.

I told her about the midnight hour and the chanting.

I made sure I told her all about the naked dancing under that almost-full moon at midnight in the clearing in the woods.

I told her about the special box you had to place in the dead centre of that clearing, and how you had to leave the lid open and walk away without looking back.

I told her all about those lonely hours sitting – still naked – with your back to the clearing until dawn.

I told her about how the dew-wet grass soaks your feet as you walk cautiously back to the clearing and peer through the undergrowth at the edge of the open space to see if the lid is back on the box.

Then I told her about creeping up to the box and opening the lid to find the box overflowing with ideas, more ideas than anyone could write in one lifetime.

Then she let me go….

I told her all about where I get my ideas from, and I’ll tell you this: it is well worth visiting that clearing in the middle of the woods next time it is almost-full moon, because the sight of her dancing naked around that open box is a sight you’ll never forget….

Who knows, maybe it will even give you an idea for a story too.