Curiosity killed the cat. But what about the writer?

I’m incorrigibly curious. It is a quality that drives much of my creativity. One of the most obvious manifestations of this affliction is that I tend to ask people questions about their lives, their work, or anything else that happens to come to mind.

“This is a great hole you’re digging,” I say to the man in the high-vis jacket outside my house. “But what’s that pipe down there? How deep are you going to go? How does this hole compare to others you’ve dug in other roads?”

I mean, the guy is going to know more about digging holes in roads than ten thousand regular people put together. He’s going to have knowledge about things that I didn’t even know were things.

“That’s a lovely inscription,” I say to a cemetery warden one day.

“It is,” he says. “And a lovely piece of stone.”

“What makes the stone lovely?” I ask.

“It’s Corris slate. From North Wales.”

He tells me that this kind of stone can’t be bought any more. Most of the deposit was mined out years ago. A massive spoil heap now covers what little remains in the ground.

All fascinating stuff. Not that it’s immediately useful to me. There’s no way I can think of working any of it into a novel. But with curiosity that doesn’t matter. And you never know what might turn up next.

The same is true of primary research in science. Curiosity makes the scientist ask the questions. She doesn’t know what the answers might yield. Sometimes it will just lead on to more questions. Sometimes to an invention that will transform our lives.

Asking ‘what if’ questions is another manifestation of curiosity - a habit of scientists and story tellers alike. What if a crow could talk to me? What if I stayed on a train on the Circle Line and just rode round and round forever? What if I believed the world was going to end on a certain day and it didn’t. What if Britain was partitioned by a revolutionary war?

Standing in the cemetery, the warden stares wistfully at the gravestone I pointed out. He sighs and I get the feeling that there is more to come.

“Folk steal them,” he says.

At first I don’t think I have heard him right. “Why steal a gravestone?”

“To use in classy building work,” he says. “They turn up in the middle of the night with a van, dig out a couple of gravestones and haul them away. If you go to a new house and see a windowsill made of Corris slate chances are it says In Loving Memory on the other side.”

Now, that is story gold...

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