Stories come from everywhere

Last Monday I drove to Noble Park to speak to the members of the Sandown Probus Club about Queenie and my other books for children. The meeting and my presentation were as usual, but what happened before and after added something different to the day.

As I was driving, a fellow motorist traveling beside me started giving indications that I should pull over. Across a busy intersection I found a place to stop then two seconds later a passing pedestrian advised, ‘You’ll get a ticket if you park there,’ so I checked my car briefly (no flat tyres, no part opened doors, nothing trailing behind me) then continued on my way. Some time later my mobile rang, the caller being our family physio advising that someone had rung the clinic claiming they had my purse.

The short story is that the fellow driver had obviously been trying to tell me my purse was on the roof of my car. It turned out that a wonderfully Good Samaritan had rescued my purse, found the physio appointment card inside and the rest is history. (I was very lucky.)

After the Probus talk (and I am getting back to that) I drove to Pakenham to book a venue for a SCBWI event in April next year, afterwards meeting a friend for lunch. As I was relaying the purse story to her, she shared with me her own ‘lost and found’ story, which is now in the very early draft stages of what I hope will be a children’s book one day.

Stories come from everywhere.