“Run outside. Take a picture of the first thing you see. Run inside. Take a picture of the second thing you see. Write about the connection between these two random objects, people or scenes.”

Well, I did warn you that some of these ‘365 Days of Writing Prompts’ were bonkers.

Normally, I would just ignore this kind of prompt (and I can see a few coming up that I certainly will), but this one was just so ludicrous that I thought I would give it a go, just for the experience.

Which was not a happy one.

Although it probably goes against the spirit of the prompt, I had more than one shot at this. Here are some of the combinations I came up with:

• A tree; a kettle
• Another tree; a pepper mill
• Yep, tree: a salt mill

Desperate for inspiration, I thought I’d mix it up a bit, so I tried taking a picture of the second thing I saw outside and the first thing I saw inside. This resulted in the following:

• Yet another tree; a kitchen table
• You guessed it; a kitchen table
• And again.

At this point, it seemed that the only way to make some progress on this assignment was to cut down all my trees and get a smaller kitchen table. On reflection, however, both these solutions struck me as being rather radical for such a trivial outcome.

Then I had a flash of inspiration. I would go out of the front door instead of the back one. It didn’t help much:

• A gate; a model elephant
• A gate; another model elephant
• A gate; a dawning realization of the full extent of Madame’s collection of model elephants

As with the trees and the kitchen table, the solution was too radical to be contemplated, on the basis that (a) it’s my neighbour’s gate and (b) I would rather stay married.

Yet again, I tried mixing it up by going with the second thing outside and the first inside. This did solve the gate problem – albeit only by replacing it with a small pile of No. 1 aggregate (long story) – but there was still no getting away from the model elephants.

So maybe I will just pass on this one after all.

The tip of the iceberg