What on Earth?

Writers need inspiration like farmers need rain. Both professions live in perpetual fear of drought, but whereas farmers spend their days worrying for their parched crops, a writers biggest concern is the dreadful prospect of the ideas drying up. Thankfully it hasn’t happened to me yet, but I’m fully aware that it might one day become a painful reality. To counteract that black day, I try to be as receptive as I possibly can to inspiration in all it’s unlikely guises. Inspiration can strike at the strangest places at the most unexpected moments. Alternatively, it can appear in the most prosaic setting you could wish to imagine. Take What on Earth?.

Annie probably won’t thank me for mentioning it here, but as a family we have a terrible habit of dumping stuff on the dining table. Scrap that. I have a terrible habit of dumping stuff on the dining table. As I sit here now writing this, I see 2 framed pictures, a pile of books, a school report, a DVD, an empty mug and 2 of my notebooks. Frankly it’s a mess. It looked very similar the day I happened to notice a sketch Annie had made, hiding amongst the assorted odds and sods getting in the way of everyone’s breakfast!

It was a charming little drawing of a flying saucer (complete with alien pilot) at a complete standstill in a field in the rain.

Here it is:

I don’t know what it looks like to you, but to me it looked like inspiration. Questions began to form. What was the alien doing there? Had they broken down? I hoped not for their sakes, imagine the difficulties finding replacement parts at the local garage.

No, perhaps they were here on holiday? A good old rainy British holiday like the ones I used to go on! Now there’s an idea!

I began to think about it. As much as I liked the notion of an alien trapped in a six berth caravan on a rainy day, playing Monopoly for ten hours straight whilst watching Murder She Wrote on a tiny telly, I thought it might be a bit niche, a picture book for the over 40’s! This alien’s holiday would need to be rather more fun than that. This alien would also need a name. I’ve always been unfeasibly fond of old people’s names, the kind of names you just don’t hear very much these days, unless you’re working in a nursing home or out for a Sunday stroll around a graveyard.

I considered some classic names and pretty quickly arrived at Horace.

Good name right?

If you were an alien called Horace who could go anywhere on earth, where would you choose to visit? Hawaii? Rio? The Caribbean? All perfectly good choices, but the idea of a traditional British holiday was stuck firmly in my head, and it doesn’t get much more traditional than good old Weston-super-Mare.

Why Weston-super-Mare? Why not Weston-super-Mare?

I’ve never holidayed there, but I was a resident at the time and I felt enough affection for her timeless charms to give the old girl a moment in the sun.

I hope local readers of What on Earth? will find the depiction a kind one, although anyone new to the town may struggle to locate the art galley that so befuddles Horace.

Consider it a nod to the time when Banksy took over Weston with his Dismaland Bemusement Park. Now I wonder what Horace would’ve made of that?

It was tremendous fun imagining all of Horace’s adventures, the new discoveries, the close shaves, the importance of sitting in the correct section of a football stadium.

In fact, I enjoyed writing it so much that I wrote a sequel. And another. And another…

Hopefully they’ll all be unleashed into the world one of these days, but in the meantime I hope you like What on Earth?.