What are you curious about?

I am curious about how you generate prompts for people to write about. Do you put words in a hat and pull them out? Or do you examine a multitude of Christmas crackers to see what words of wisdom are contained within them? As for me, I am curious about Olde Curiosity Shoppes and the curious things that one finds in them.

I am also curious about aliens. There are so many of them. At night, they often invade my brain and stamp around causing enormous damage up there. I think they think the own the place, throwing parties at two in the morning and chanting things that shouldn’t be chanted. They embarrass me. Even worse they sometimes shame me. You should hear the things they say and sing. Snippets of old rugby songs and limericks that never even saw the shores of the Emerald Isle. Sometimes, next day, they are still partying, and those little snippets go earwigging their way on and on.

What’s worse, they speak several languages and I hear them chanting in Latin, French, English, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Galician, and even in Welsh. As for the Welsh, it rolls on and on – ar hyd a nos – in fact they sing until Harry is hoarse. I looked in the mirror one morning, and I saw a whole crowd of them waving their tentacles like multiple octopi and chanting yma o hyd. And yes, indeed, they were still there. They weren’t going anywhere. They followed me around all day.

Another thing about which I am curious – how do I de-alienate the aliens who have alienated me from my old peaceful world of curiosity shops? “Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho, tell me if you know, who the, why the, where the, what the, where do aliens go?”

And if you happen to be curious about what makes me tick, well, I have a long arm and a short one, just like a grandfather clock, and a key in the middle of my back with which you can wind me up and set me off on any topic, however curious it may be. Just light the blue paper and retire.