328: the man in the suit stood up quickly and walked away.

Let's brainstorm : together we can write a story or at least strain some bare bones out of the offaly slop of ideas. It can be done, I seem to remember doing it before once or twice, only this time there may be money in it. There is some competition and when I win it those fools who splash the cash will gift me with their thousands. With a crack of knuckles, a clutch of the crotch and a reshift of the pantaloons let us proceed : Once upon a time there was a great detective called Tom Sawyer who said goodbye to Berlin and felt fear and loathing on the campaign trail ; so long and thanks for all the fish he said . And other stories. Hmm, something is not quite right there ; can't put my finger on it.

Once upon a time has gone beyond cliché to post-modern joke, and beyond post-modern joke to just crap ; so that's out. 'In' is... - how would I know what is in ? Sarcasm, nihilism, arse-licking, goose-stepping, thoughtless nodding, knee-jerk disagreeing? It's a lucky dip really. What would Dan Brown do? Write something about something like : the man in the suit stood up quickly and walked away. She was surprised. She tried to look natural as she too stood up and followed stealthily behind. Her shoes were not designed for hunting as they made a noise like shoes walking on a floor as she walked on the floor in her shoes and worried that he might hear the noise of her shoes walking on the floor as she walked after him in her shoes attempting to walk quietly without being noticed by the man in the suit as he walked quickly and she tried to walk quietly but struggled because of her noisy shoes. If only she had worn her sneakers this morning, but her damn stupid vanity had lead her by the nose once more.

He stopped to look in the window of a shop and she noted the address and any other important or seemingly unimportant detail. She noticed the number plate on the car outside the shop – rearranged and with the letters omitted the number plate was 263. Her training as a cryptologist for the Iraqi Imperial Guard allowed her to recognise this as a reference to the year 263AD; the Year of the Consulship of Albinus and Dexter – the year King Odenathus of Palmyra declared himself ruler of the area west of the River Euphrates and is declared Dux Orientalis by the Roman Emperor Gallienus. The color of the car was green which she immediately associated with Islam; the year 613AD is the year Mohammed began preaching his revelations from God. 613-263=350. At that moment she knew that something clandestine and Earth-shattering linked the numbers 350, 263 and 613 and she knew the man in the suit held an important clue.

Well, that's one idea – god, I want to know what happens! but unfortunately I'm just not convinced by it for the same reason that Dan Brown is as clearly shit as mud is unclear and the metaphor is shit like a Dan Brown book. I saw someone reading one of them on the bus; not the Da Vinci one, it was one of the indistinguishable mush of others. I have a feeling the key lies in the number 350, she thought. Over the coming days she began to see the number more and more, with increasing regularity and at a higher frequency. I'm just jealous – I want to write a book and have it made into a movie – the only difference is I want my book to be good; that's why I'm not writing it now. At the moment it exists only as a perfect abstract. If I try to capture that abstract it breaks apart and the more I try to recreate it the further it gets from perfection.

Next idea: A man walks into a bar, I wrote instinctively with no forethought as to what to write next. Without saying a word he unbuckled the straps of his wooden leg, lifted it on to the bar and opened a small hatch on the thigh. From within he pulled out a telephone and a box of ploughman's lunch. Then he did something, someone else said something funny, and the one-legged man retorted with a superior response.

Later a man with a laptop wrote some stuff and stuck it here, only you can't see what he wrote cos I am in the way. Woohoo, look at me.