Unlikely sources of inspiration

I have two ultra-short (twenty-five word) stories newly available at Nailpolish Stories, which I urge you to check out just as soon as you've read this entertaining and informative post. The quirk that drew me there in the first place was that all the titles have to be names of nail polish colours. The only names from my own stash that sprang immediately to mind were pedestrian, to say the least (Grass; Blue Peter; Jet Black) but the tin I keep my nail varnish in was across the hallway and I was comfortable, dammit - what is Google for, after all? Go now and Google for yourself, something along the lines of 'nail varnish colours' - I'll wait.

See the variety? The inventiveness? OK, not all of them are that inventive, but aren't you inspired? I sometimes write stories because I've got a title and I want to know what story it goes with, and all these odd little phrases set me wondering. There was a company whose colours all seemed to be named after London streets; maybe if you're familiar with those streets there's a certain logic to it but anyway (having just finished reading JB Priestley's Angel Pavement) it did make me want to go and write a series of stories named after (set in) different streets. It wouldn't be London, of course, maybe Bradford or Leeds. Or Pudsey, just to be a bit more obscure. But I digress...

It doesn't only work with nail varnish (though thank you to Nailpolish Stories for pointing me in that direction) so if that seems a bit too frivolous a product to spark your masterpiece, head off to your local DIY shop and pick up a paint chart. My bedroom as a teenager was painted in Black (black, naturally) and Wanderlust (purple, the exact shade of the socks I was wearing when my dad took me to buy paint) and I still remember that, but as yet haven't written a story of that name. I shall have to save that up alongside Paprika Sun, which looks like a good bet for the kitchen ceiling, and see where they take me.