It seems that having launched my debut Christmas novel on an unsuspecting world, sending it into the wide blue yonder – perhaps never to be seen again, I have been slow to rekindle the fire of the written word. It isn’t that I have not wanted to, nor that I have not tried. I have begun editing the final chapters of my next novel and it lies begging for attention. I have read and enjoyed a couple of excellent novels and can feel the muse bubbling up inside me. Yet, housework, family demands and life in general, have thwarted any real progress these past few weeks. So, it was with a determined and hopeful heart that I began trawling through those gems I write down occasionally. You will know the sort: An idea, a snippet of overheard conversation…(the latter having already been discussed in ‘The Things People Say…”) all are things that can send the imagination into overdrive. I found several exciting and interesting snippets as it happens. I found an entire post written on the differences between girls and boys, another about the proliferation of bad news in the media…I must have had a bee in my bonnet when I wrote that. (I said bee and not wasp which I covered in, “Follow that wasp,”) However, there is one snippet that really caught my imagination. I remember writing this, surely-too-good-to-forget gem, in note form, as we sat in the pub garden of the Old Ferry Inn, in Bodinnick, Cornwall, a year or so ago. It has languished, forgotten, on my computer’s hard drive ever since. I shall give you this snippet of conversation just as I heard it but first, picture the scene if you will. The pub garden is built on several terraces, each terrace is accessed by a flight of stone steps and retained by a low stone wall. Each provides a lovely space in which to sit and take in the beautiful views of the river beyond. A harassed dad has been sitting by the low wall, watching his two young sons play while mum relaxes round the corner, in the shade. As the baby makes yet another attempt to scale the wall, below which lies a steep drop to the stone steps, his dad grabs him and sends him back to his mother. “I think it’s time to go,” he calls to his other son, we guess to be aged about four, although we cannot see him at this point. As the father and younger child cross the terrace to where the mother sits, a small disembodied voice exclaims, “Wow, that’s the nearest to death I have ever come in my life!” The mind boggles! I may just use it…