The following unconnected collections of sentences are block-breakers and story kernels that I’ve scribbled in my journals between moments. They are presented here to amuse, bemuse and possibly even inspire…

• One of the unforeseen outcomes of the wider adoption of facial recognition software in consumer smart glasses was the upswing in malicious edits to people’s reference wikis by bored script kiddies.
• The only thing standing between Jake and a new career as a colander was the unripe banana in his pocket.
• There’s few things quite as disconcerting as walking into an empty children’s library to find a replica of Stonehenge made from the furniture.
• Revenues at the bar shot up when the owners switched to using Hollywood safety-shatter glass for all their drinks containers. The clean-up bill was truly heroic though.
• One of the positive aspects of falling out with Anya was suddenly not having to put up with her friends either.
• For years they had been working on a way to translate animals’ thought processes into a form translatable as text. When they succeeded, they soon wished they hadn’t.
• Hell’s Kitchen has a new hero – one who just wants you to cook the f***ing chicken! It’s raw!
• The increased number of hospital admissions among blue collar workers in West London was eventually traced to a tattoo parlour using hallucinogens in its inks.
• That sudden moment when you realise that you have a more complicated life than the average soap opera character.
• It’s surprising how even the most hardened rebel will often balk at writing in a book’s pages.
• If you’re busy terrifying kids in a story-time, then at least take the time to show parents where to find the self-help therapy books afterwards.
• The village clock chose that moment to strike fourteen and explode in a shower of fish. It was those traditional flourishes that proved it was an Act of God when the insurance investigators came calling.
• “Ah, I do love comic book conventions,” said The Count, “no one believes this is a costume and the hunting in the bars afterwards is like Halloween every night.”
• The things that go bump in the night are only trying to get you to keep the noise down.
• George stood over me and made frantic ‘get up’ gestures. As I could see straight through him, they were certainly effective at making me shift myself.
• When hippies look at your doodles and warn you to never take mushrooms, you know you’re in the zone.
• My grandmother came and sat on the bench next to me while I watched the world go by. Given she’s been dead for two decades, this wasn’t as alarming as you might think.
• When I die, I hope I get to be a ghost that screws with wifi signals. Then I’ll go haunt the local coffee shop to get my coffee aroma fix and annoy hipsters hunched over their laptops at the same time.
• There’s a bus stop just outside Hampton that no one ever uses. It’s an affluent neighbourhood, just by the river, and everyone has at least two cars – but that’s not why nobody uses it.
• Somewhere, in a parallel universe, the ghost of my grandfather is giggling about someone forgetting to remove his pacemaker before they cremated him. In this universe  he refused to believe he had a heart problem in the first place, so the service was a lot more sedate.