Just after I'd finished the Halo Jones series of books, I was looking round for things to do. I wasn't too happy just to go back to Dredd or Robohunter. Though I seem to recall ending up doing the Daily Star strip...?
But before that happened I was searching for new things. One of them was helping out my friend Paul, who liked the idea of writing stories for a living. It is a pretty cushy number compared to road building or farming! So I was helping him get ideas. And one of the things I suggested was to 'take a common phrase and look at it from an alternative angle - put a slant on it'. A prime example was: "Occasional Table" - 'If it's only 'occasionally' a table, what is it the rest of the time?'
Paul and I were fond of throwing ideas around. We'd known each other for a long time... we were even in a band together till he went off with my friend Dave and formed "Mr Wonderful". Which was a quite 'wonderful' band! ;) Paul had been the original source of the Grain 'fairy story', back in 72. And together we came up with Hippopo, the hippopotamus Handyman. Then one day I took Paul and his girlfriend down to Brighton for a day out, to freshen our minds and walk and talk ideas. There I came upon the 'Lifeboat Museum' and inside I was fascinated by the "number-plates" on the boats. So I suggested we should celebrate Lionel Lukin's concept of the lifeboat by writing a story about the first Lifeboats in space. From those seeds the 'Lifeboat' story eventually grew, after many convoluted adaptations and revisions.
I do like to bounce ideas around. But not everyone enjoys being a conceptual trampoline! One lady-friend suggested, as she left, that I should put an ad in the paper ( yes. It was back in the days before cyber-society and 'social networking' sites! ) asking for: "An attractive companion to bounce ideas off." It must have been something I said... or something I thought?