It’s a question many people ask of a writer. “Where do you get your ideas from?”

Paul Toolan – author of  ‘A View from Memory Hill’- gives his answer here, in a beguiling short story format that follows the seed of an idea to the keyboard, and henceforth to the readers. 

So, Paul, where do your ideas come from?

If only I received royalties every time a reader asks me this!

Here, there and everywhere is the true but unhelpful answer. In ‘A View from Memory Hill’, there’s a story called Old Man, Young Pub that was triggered by seeing…an old man in a young pub!

I was at the Brighton Festival [Brighton, England – I used to live there] with old friends/fellow retirees. We dropped in to a wonderful, low-ceilinged pub called The Basketmakers, whose decor has barely been touched since it opened. I remember thinking we were the…