I steal stuff. I nick things occasionally. This isn't plagiarism, it's taking things out of the public domain and using them differently. I think all writers do it. Start with an idea from another story and turn it into one's own; there's very little out there that's not derivative. Think how many times the Biblical stories are reused: Cain and Abel's murderous pairing is very popular. Chaucer's character the Wife of Bath is completely made up from bits and pieces of other texts, poor thing.

I've stolen the idea of Appropriate Column Ideas from Tim Dowling in the Saturday Guardian and turned them into Appropriate Blog Ideas (ABIs) and hunt round for them as a way to inspire or put off any other writing. As this blog is supposed to be about writing and creative ideas or the absence thereof Varifocal turns the spectacles onto Important Things in the Day to hinder writing.

Professional work of the paid variety. Has to come first, then exhaustion sets in.

Interruptions from elsewhere. Attending meal times with one's other half. Finding things for same. Conversing with same.

Necessary Leisure Time. Important for the creative juices (I keep hearing about). No fun, no writing apparently.

Sleeping. Eating. Searching for chocolate. (Someone out there knows who I mean).

The biggest ABI of the day however, is the Great Mole Hunt. A huge molehill appeared in the centre of the lawn. It shouldn't matter of course. No one here bothers about the moss much. . But this was insulting even to our lowly standards of lawn keeping. The molehill was flattened, reappeared, flattened, reappeared ... As did numerous molehills on the edge of the garden, with several seeming to have most of their bulk under the shed.

Flattening mole hills takes only two minutes out of writing time. But searching the internet for safe mole deterrents is a whole afternoon typing into a search engine (an ersatz substitute for typing creative thoughts).

Having wasted hours, with many pauses for coffee and serious thought, the idea of garlic came up. It's now thirty six hours since half a bulb of peeled and crushed garlic was shoved hard down a mole tunnel. No return of the molehill. Yet. There's a story in this somewhere if only I wasn't too busy checking the mole tunnel and putting garlic down the next one.

That's it. The cats have got to move, I want my armchair back.