From £5 to £1000: eBay Selling Experiment

This is going to be a fun little experiment.

I’ve spent many years working in marketing and ecommerce, and I’ve sold bits and pieces on eBay, Amazon, and Etsy before. Not recently though. It’s been a long, long time since I properly listed things, packed orders, watched prices, and tried to make a small margin.

So I’ve been wondering something.

From virtually a standing start, how easy would it be to make £1,000 on eBay, starting with as little as £5?

That’s the experiment.

The idea is simple enough. I buy something cheaply, sell it for more, then reinvest the money back into the next purchase. No big stock buy. No pretending this is a business empire. Just a small rolling pot, a few sensible buys, and a bit of patience.

There is one extra wrinkle, though. I’m not doing this with a brand new eBay account, but I’m not exactly starting with a fully active seller account either.

The account I’ll be using has been dormant since October 2021, so eBay is treating it cautiously and at the moment, I’m restricted to 18 items and no more than £190 in sales each month. In practical terms, that means I’m pretty much starting from scratch.

I’ve already slightly broken the £5 rule because I spent £6.50 in Tesco this morning on some hosepipe connectors. They feel like the sort of product that could work well on eBay: useful, small enough to post, not too fragile, and the kind of thing someone might search for when they need one rather than when they’re just browsing.

From previous experience, there are a few things worth remembering about eBay. It isn’t Amazon. The buyer mindset is different.

eBay buyers are often looking for value, something specific, something a bit unusual, or a replacement part they can’t easily find elsewhere. They’re also more aware of the individual seller. Feedback matters. Photos matter. A clear description matters. And I think interaction matters too. A quick, human reply can still make a difference.

Another key thing for me is postage. I’ll be offering free postage wherever possible because, rightly or wrongly, listings with free postage often feel simpler and more attractive to buyers.

Of course, free postage isn’t really free. It has to be built into the selling price, along with packaging, tape, envelopes, fees if they apply, and the original cost of the item.

That’s the part I want to track properly.

If I spend £6.50 and sell the items for £10, that doesn’t mean I’ve made £3.50. I need to take off postage, packing materials, and any selling costs. Only then do I know the real profit.

The challenge is to see whether I can grow a tiny starting pot into £1,000 by buying carefully, selling clearly, and reinvesting the profit rather than taking it out.

It might work. It might crawl along painfully slowly. I might discover that hosepipe connectors are the new Bitcoin, although probably not.

Either way, I’ll keep track of what I buy, what I sell, what I spend, and what the running pot looks like each month.

How I’ll Track It

I don’t want this to become a vague “I think I made a bit of money” sort of challenge. If I’m going to do it, I might as well track it properly.

The important number isn’t sales. It’s the running pot after all costs.

That means recording the original item cost, postage, packing materials, envelopes, tape, any selling fees, and what’s left after everything has been paid for.

For each item, I’ll try to track:

• Date bought
• Item bought
• Where I bought it from
• How much I paid
• How much I listed it for
• How much it sold for
• Postage cost
• Packaging cost
• Any fees or promoted listing costs
• Actual profit
• Amount reinvested
• Running pot

Because the account is restricted to 18 items and £190 of sales a month, I’ll also need to keep an eye on how much of that monthly limit I’ve used in the first month or two. That makes each listing more important. I can’t afford to waste too many slots on products that sit there doing nothing.

Now let’s see what happens.

Monthly Tally

Month	Opening Pot	Stock Bought	Sales	Costs	Profit	Closing Pot	Notes
June 2026	£6.50	£6.50	£0.00	£0.00	£0.00	£0.00	First stock bought: hosepipe connectors from Tesco. Account currently limited to 18 items and £190 monthly sales.

Lessons Learnt

Small, light, useful, non-breakable, easy-to-post items feel like the best place to start.

In eBay postage, exclude the following areas as they increase postage costs (Northern Ireland, Isle of Man, Scottish Highlands / North Scotland, Scottish Islands / West coast, Isle of Wight and the Isles of Scilly

Doom Scrolling and the Slot Machine Effect

There are a lot of people talking about the addictive nature of social media platforms, especially the idea of doom scrolling.

That endless feed is a geat design for these platforms, you never really get to the end of it. There’s always another post, another video, another opinion, another tiny hit of something. Good, bad, funny, annoying, useful, pointless. It just keeps coming. Very good engineering design that does make these platforms "addictive", not sure if addictive is the right term, or whether they are just designed to make it hard to stop!

I had a thought earlier about whether social media platforms are built with some of the same ideas as slot machines.

Slot machines can be addictive because they offer the possibility of a “win”. You pull the lever, or press the button, and maybe this time something good happens. Maybe this time you get the reward.

And I wonder whether doom scrolling works in a similar way.

You keep scrolling because the next great piece of content might be just one swipe away. Most of what you see might be rubbish, irritating, repetitive, or forgettable, but every now and then you find something that makes you laugh, teaches you something, shocks you, or gives you that little feeling of reward, that little hit of endorphins, which is probably the same as that slot machine win.

This is only a seed post for now, because I need to read more about it properly, but I do think there’s something interesting here. The endless scroll might not just be convenient design. It might be one of the reasons these platforms are so hard to put down.

The Autograph I Never Asked For

Back in the mid-90s, I was stood on a train platform in Leeds waiting for a train down to London for a meeting, when I suddenly spotted :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0}. As a massive football fan and lifelong Manchester United supporter, it genuinely stopped me in my tracks. To this day, I still think he was the greatest player ever to play in England. Effortless, unpredictable, flawed, brilliant... football’s first real rock star.

I desperately wanted to go over and ask for an autograph, but he was with a young woman and I convinced myself I shouldn’t interrupt him. It felt like his private time, and I didn’t want to become another overexcited fan shoving a scrap of paper under his nose. So I stayed quiet, watched him from a distance for a few moments, then got on my train.

And honestly... I still regret it.

Since then, I’ve gone out of my way to speak to people I admire when the opportunity appears. Not in an intrusive way, but just enough to say hello, shake a hand, or share a quick word. Life moves far too quickly to spend it worrying about looking daft for thirty seconds. Sometimes the moments you don’t take stay with you far longer than the ones you do.

In fact, writing this has reminded me to finally reach out and contact Dick Van Dyke. Funny how old regrets can still give you a little push years later.

VAR do your job

Football has always had its dark arts, but diving feels like it’s getting harder and harder to ignore. Some of it is subtle. Some of it is laughably obvious. A player feels the slightest touch, throws themselves to the floor, then rolls around like they’ve been hit by a van. The frustrating part is that everyone watching can often see exactly what’s happened within seconds, especially with slow-motion replays from five different angles.

That’s why I keep coming back to the same thought... VAR, do your job. If the technology exists to spend three minutes checking whether someone’s toenail was offside, then surely it can step in when a player has clearly tried to con the ref. Diving is cheating. Simple as that. Start handing out yellow cards retrospectively for obvious simulation and I honestly think a lot of it disappears within a season. Right now, there’s barely any downside to trying it, and that’s part of the problem.

The Man History Lost Twice (Historical Fiction)

A story seed inspired by the life of Herbert Henry Scaife.

We know how the official story ends.

Private Herbert Henry Scaife, 2/4th Battalion, King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, was reported missing during the fighting around Bourlon Wood in France on 27th November 1917. Months later, after enquiries by the Army and the British Red Cross failed to find any trace of him, his widow Margaret was informed that he was now presumed dead.

His body was never found.

His name was carved instead onto the Cambrai Memorial at Louverval, alongside thousands of other men who vanished into the chaos of the Great War.

But what if that was not the end of Herbert’s story?

Three days after the fighting had moved on, a French farmer picked his way carefully through the shattered edges of Bourlon Wood, searching for anything the Germans might have left behind. Timber. Tools. Food. Anything useful. The war had stripped the land bare, and survival often depended on what could be scavenged from the ruins.

That was when they found him.

Half buried in churned mud and splintered branches, still wearing the remains of a British uniform. One side of his head was blackened and swollen where a shell blast had torn through the trees nearby. He was alive, but barely.

When they tried speaking to him, he gave them only one word.

“Herbert.”

He said it again later in a weak, delirious murmur while they carried him back across the frozen ground.

“Herbert...”

The farmer and his wife knew enough about the war to understand the danger. If the Germans found a wounded British soldier hidden on their land, the consequences could be severe. But leaving him there to die felt impossible too.

So they hid him.

In the broken remains of an old farm building behind the house, they cleaned his wounds as best they could, fed him small amounts of bread and broth, and waited to see whether he would survive the winter.

The strange thing was that he did not seem to know who he was.

He recognised almost nothing around him. He spoke little. Sometimes he stared blankly into space for hours at a time. But every so often, usually in the dark hours before morning, the same word returned quietly under his breath.

“Herbert.”

And so that became his name.

Years later, the family he left behind would continue to mourn the brother, husband and father who never came home.

Meanwhile, across the Channel, an ageing farm worker with a Yorkshire face and a damaged memory would slowly build another life from the ruins of the old one.

In the end, Herbert Henry Scaife had two graves.

One held his name.

The other held the man himself.

History lost Herbert twice.

Little Wins

I don't know if your like me, but I can spend far too much time worrying about big things; so I decided to keep a list of all my Little Wins ... small moments that made me smile, laugh, lifted my mood, restored a tiny bit of faith in humanity, or just left me quietly satisfied for reasons that probably make no sense to anyone else.

Not life-changing moments. Just tiny victories. The sort of things that barely matter in the grand scheme of things, but somehow still improve your day.

---

Saturday 6th June 2026

I’m sure I’m going to have lots more days like this, but today I felt like a proper Grandy to our beautiful grandson Freddie.

We met Freddie and his mum at Taylor Hill Animal Farm in Huddersfield. I carried him loads, and we saw all sorts of animals, including fish, turtles, sheep, hens, ducks, and rabbits.

We had lots of laughter from him today. I helped him with his lunch, he walked to me, and a couple of times he properly cuddled in. Those are the little moments that absolutely get you.

He won a small octopus toy with his Nana on Hook a Duck, and a couple of cuddly toys, a bear and a donkey, on a tombola. We also bought him a wind-up tractor book.

Such a gorgeous boy. Such a great day.

Remember Freddie "Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit ..."

Monday 25th May 2026

Our grandson Freddie was 1 year old today, and we had a party for him at my daughter's house. As an added bonus, my other daughter was there too.

What a gorgeous little boy he is. The sun was shining, we were all sat in the back garden, and Freddie was on great form. It can sometimes take him a minute or two to realise that everyone around him is a friendly face, but once he settles in, he's such a joy to be around.

A couple of moments really stood out for me. First, his Nana Deb came out of the house and he was more than happy to be carried and cuddled by her for ages. Second, I was wearing a summer straw cowboy hat and he became fascinated by it.

At first, he loved taking it off my head and dropping it on the floor with howls of laughter. Later, with a little help from Grandy, he started taking it off my head and putting it back on again. He had the most gorgeous laugh as he did it.

It was an absolute joy to spend time with the little fella on his very first birthday.

Friday 22nd May 2026

It feels like it's been a long week today, but with Bank Holiday Monday, it's only actually been four days!

In many ways, it's been a pretty challenging week at work. We've had our share of issues across Sales and Marketing, and at times it felt like things could easily have gone off the rails.

I can't go into the details because it's commercially sensitive, but what I can say is that I'm genuinely proud of the work I've done this week. The communications plan and content I put together helped turn what could have been a very difficult situation into something much more manageable.

Anyone that does a similar role to me will know that marketing doesn't always get the credit when things go right, and that's fine. Sometimes the satisfaction comes from knowing you've done your job well, even if most people never see the work that went into it.

So, despite the frustrations and challenges, I'm leaving work tonight feeling pretty chuffed with myself ... and walking a little taller because of it.

Monday 25th May 2026

OMG, what an absolutely brilliant day today.

It’s been a glorious Bank Holiday weekend, with temperatures in our back garden hitting 42°C. We’ve mostly just lounged around doing very little, enjoying the sunshine and spending time together.

But today was extra special, because today was Freddie’s first birthday.

As well as seeing both of my daughters, Freddie himself was an absolute joy. We don’t get to see him often because they live so far away. We catch up on FaceTime, but it’s never quite the same.

Today though, he smiled and laughed the entire time we were with him.

At one point, he found it hilarious to take my summer straw cowboy-style hat off my head and throw it on the floor, only for me to pick it back up and put it on again so he could repeat the whole process. Later on, while I was holding him, he was crying with laughter as he took my hat off and carefully placed it back onto his Grandy’s head.

He also had the longest cuddle with his Nana.

He’s such a loved little boy, and today was just amazing.

Friday 8th May 2026

We were staying at the H10 Salou Princess in Salou, Spain, and had rented one of the hotel’s Balinese beds for €25. After we’d settled in, someone wandered over and decided to sunbathe on the bed next to ours without paying for it.

Now, a lot of people probably wouldn’t care. But I did.

So I wandered down to reception and quietly mentioned it. A few minutes later, a member of staff came up and asked them if they wanted to rent the bed properly. They suddenly lost interest, gathered their things, and moved on.

And honestly... I was absurdly satisfied.

Not because anyone got told off. Not because I wanted an argument. Just because, for once, the world briefly worked exactly as it should.

Monday 27th April 2026

At ProSolve, we tend to take our time when refreshing the brochure. As it changes every 12 months, we can have hundreds of new products to add, along with countless amendments.

So when our Sales Director challenged me to get one completed, printed, and ready within two weeks, with 165 new products to add and endless changes to make, it felt like a massive ask.

But I said “yes”.  And today, 14 days later, I did it.  Very chuffed ... and just in time for an event too.

I Thought Facts Would Matter More

I noticed something during my brief spell as a paper candidate for the Liberal Democrats recently, and that is that people don't just hold opinions anymore ... they hold beliefs. Deep ones.

And once those beliefs settle in, facts barely seem to matter, in fact I don't think they do matter.

During the May 2026 local elections I spoke to several people who wanted to vote for Reform UK because they wanted someone who would “stop the boats”. The strange part was that even when you pointed out that local councillors have absolutely no control over immigration policy or border enforcement, it often made no difference at all.

The belief had already locked into place and cannot (always) be rocked.

I saw the same thing online. A Facebook friend confidently posted that “there’s only one party not funded in any way by Israel, and that’s the Greens.”

The problem is that this is simply untrue.

As I pointed out, under UK law, political parties cannot accept funding from foreign governments or foreign states anyway. It’s illegal under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.

When I asked for evidence that the Liberal Democrats were receiving money from the State of Israel, there was a change of goalposts, this time they pointed out that response was that the party has a “Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel” group ... which it does ... it also has "Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine" group too..

Both of which, as I explained in my exchange with them, are internal associated groups made up of members and supporters with particular views on the Middle East. Neither means the party is secretly funded by a foreign government.

But again, the facts didn’t really matter.

That’s the bit I struggle with.  If I’m wrong about something, and somebody proves it properly, I’ll usually back down. I’ll probably try to save face first because I’m human ... but eventually facts win.

For some people though, belief seems to become reality. Even when reality itself disagrees.

And I still can’t quite get my head around that.

Attention Tax

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about interruptions at work; not just obvious interruptions like phone calls, Teams messages, or someone asking “got a minute?” (although they can be a pain too), but the hidden cost that comes after the interruption.

I think most workplaces still treat interruptions as a simple time problem, where if somebody interrupts you for 10 minutes, then supposedly you've lost 10 minutes of work.

But that isn’t really how it works is it. Well not for me anyway!

You'll notice it especially if you’re doing deeper work ... writing, planning, problem solving, analysing data, designing something, trying to properly think something through ... the interruption itself is only part of the damage.

There’s also the refocus time afterwards.

You have to mentally reload the task back into your brain. Remember where you were. Rebuild the momentum. Re-enter the thought process you were already halfway through before somebody derailed it.

Sometimes a 2 minute interruption can cost 20 minutes of useful thinking.

I’ve started thinking of this as an “Attention Tax”.

Every interruption taxes your concentration a little bit. One interruption is manageable. Ten in a day starts fragmenting your thinking completely.

And I think this is partly why some days feel mentally exhausting even if you’ve technically “done loads”, you haven’t spent the day doing productive work, you’ve spent the day rebuilding momentum over and over again.

Modern workplaces almost seem designed around interruption now.

Side note: I remember when I started by career in British Telecom in 1987, been told that when it was still the civil service, managers had flags attached to their intrays, and if a red flag was showing, you couldn't talk to them ... I sometimes wish I had that here. 

Emails. Teams notifications. Meetings. “Quick questions”. Artificial urgency. Constant deadline pressure.

We also seem to reward responsiveness, it's deemed to be a good things if you accept the interruption and rude if you don't, but I’m not convinced we reward depth anymore.

I touched on some of this already in my post about why I hate deadlines, but I think there’s probably a bigger idea buried in all this somewhere.

This is definitely a seed post for now. I think there’s more to explore here.

I Need To Be More Organised

 I really don't know what's wrong with me, I have a wealth of technical and apps available to me, but I still seem to be very unorganised! I don't get it!

Chasing the Flavour in Coffee

So, for anyone who doesn’t know, I review beers, and I’m fairly good at picking out individual flavours in the beers that I review.

That’s why I got a bit excited when my wife bought me a Ninja Luxe Café Premier Espresso Machine bean-to-cup coffee machine last Christmas. I liked the idea of doing the same thing with coffee.
You read these descriptions and they sound incredible. “Mild chocolate with a juicy blackcurrant sweetness and a hint of lime.” or “Rich dark chocolate, sweet honey, and bright tangerine.”

I genuinely wanted to taste that, but I quickly found that I can’t ... everything well, just tastes like coffee!

I’ve tried the usual advice. No milk, no sweeteners, no sugar. I’ve read that the drip method (the Luxe function on this specific machine), is one of the best ways to bring out those more delicate flavours, so that’s how I’ll do all of these.

I’m going to treat this like I would a beer review, but slower, and a bit more methodical. I’m going to test strength, grind size, temperature, and even the water I’m using.

When I can get it, I tend to stick to Vemondo Barista Oat ‘Milk’ from Lidl, but if I will use a comparable barista oat milk.

For those that want to know the water details ... where we live the water is classed as Hard, and apparently I have since discovered that this particular profile can suppress some of the brighter and more delicate flavours, so I need to be wary of that.

Calcium: 73.8 mg/l
Magnesium: 24.9 mg/l
Conductivity: 524 µS/cm
pH: 7.5 

For those coffees with a more delicate flavour profile, I'll be using the Tescos own brand still water (unless otherwise stated) as that apparently has a nice soft water profile.

I’ll keep this post updated as I go. If I crack it, great. If I don’t, at least I’ll know it’s not for lack of trying.

Lidl Deluxe Colombian Rica

11 June 2026
Flavours expected: Warm and Full Bodied with Fruity Notes
Strength: Medium-Drk Roast
Grind: Pre-Ground (Fine)
Water: Lidl Carrick Glen still water

I used a soft bottled water today. On the nose, a mild tobacco note and a that little earthiness.
The soft water seemed to dull the flavour a little, a little nuttiness, a little tobacco, but no chocolate or fruit; when adding a dash of milk to it, a very mild chocolate flavour come out of it, and the bitterness was a little more restrained.
Score: 4/10

Lidl Deluxe Colombian Rica

10 June 2026
Flavours expected: Warm and Full Bodied with Fruity Notes
Strength: Medium-Drk Roast
Grind: Pre-Ground (Fine)
Water: Hard tap water

Another pre-ground coffee. Used our hard tap water today. On the nose, very strong tobacco notes and a little earthiness.
Honestly, the flavour was just a rich coffee with perhaps a hint of chocolate in there, quite a dry bittereness the further down the cup I got, but no fruit at all; when adding a touch of milk to it, a very mild chocolate flavour come out of it, and that bitterness became a little milder. Looking forward to see what a soft water does to this coffee later.
Score: 4/10

Morrisons The Best Kenyan

1 June 2026
Flavours expected: Blackcurrant and Citrus Notes
Strength: Medium
Grind: Pre-Ground (Fine)
Water: Hard tap water

Slightly different today, I went back to our usual hard Yorkshire tap water rather than the softer bottled water and those fruit flavours definately weren't as pronouncd! Perhaps softer water is needed for ther fruitier coffees!
Still smooth and roasty, just without that red berry flavour, I think the chocolate might have been dialled own a tad too.
Score: 6.5/10

Morrisons The Best Kenyan

31 May 2026
Flavours expected: Blackcurrant and Citrus Notes
Strength: Medium
Grind: Pre-Ground (Fine)
Water: Lidl Carrick Glen still water

Couldn't get a whole bean version of this, so I bought the ground version instead. I just put the right amount in the Luxe filter basket, around half full.

As you can see I used a cheap supermarker bottled water. These cheaper waters often come from soft-water sources in places like Cumbria or Scotland, so more delicate flavours should be able to come through.

I do have to remember that, unlike the hop-forward IPAs I enjoy, I'm only looking for a resemblance of flavour rather than outright flavour.

I have to say that this test worked to some extent. This was a very smooth coffee, and I definitely picked up a mild fruitiness (perhaps more red berries). There was no harsh roastiness, and I also got a very mild milk chocolate note and a very mild bitterness.
Score: 7.5/10

Union Gajah Mountain

16 May 2026
Flavours expected: Chocolate Truffle and Molasses
Strength: Medium
Grind: 20 (Coarse)
Water: Evian still water

Started proper experimenting now. Made it a coarse grind to slow down the extraction and try to get more delicate flavours (possibly the coffee for this actually!). Also I incorrectly tried Evian water rather than tap water. The result was a rich roasty coffee with a hint of nut, it's OK but nothing special. With milk it became smooth with a lot of bitterness, but a bit of sweetness came through.
Score: 5.5/10

Union Gajah Mountain

14 May 2026
Flavours expected: Chocolate Truffle and Molasses
Strength: Medium
Grind: 14 (Medium)
Water: Hard Tap water

Again, this makes a very nice, strong coffee, but I’m honestly not picking up any chocolate truffle or molasses flavours. Good quality coffee with a slight nutty note when served black. With milk, this turns into a really smooth, creamy coffee with a nice chocolate flavour.
Score: 7/10

Union Yayu Forest

2 April 2026
Flavours expected: Citrus and Bourbon Biscuits
Strength: Medium
Grind: 14 (Medium)
Water: Hard Tap water

This felt really rich, but I failed to get any citrus, bourbon, or biscuit out of it. It had a strong roast flavour with a little earthiness. Milk dulled the richness slightly and brought out a nice dark chocolate flavour that I really didn’t pick up when I had it black.
Score: 7/10

Rave Colombia El Carmen #50

20 March 2026
Flavours expected: Chocolate Truffle and Molasses
Strength: Medium
Grind: 15 (Medium)
Water: Hard Tap water

A nice chocolate flavour when I had this black. A very understated coffee, and very easy drinking. With milk, it added a nice semi-sweet chocolate note.
Score: 8/10

Bellarom Coffee Beans

3 March 2026
Flavours expected: Heavily roasted coffee and dark chocolate
Strength: Medium
Grind: 15 (Medium)
Water: Hard Tap water

Probably some of the cheapest coffee beans on the market. They made a nice black coffee with ash-like notes that I liked, and I did get some really nice chocolate flavour after adding milk.
Score: 5/10

Rave Signature Blend #1

5 February 2026
Flavours expected: Caramel, Almond & Chocolate
Strength: Medium

Water: Hard Tap water

A very decent coffee, but to me it just tasted like good coffee. Not too strong or bitter. The milk did bring out a good chocolate flavour.
Score: 7/10

A Story 35 Years in the Making!

I’ve probably carried this idea around for more than 35 years.

It started with a lad I used to work with. I’ll call him Chris… mainly because that’s his name. He always said he had a novel in him. To be fair, most of us think that at some point. The problem, at least for me, is pulling enough connected ideas together to actually make a novel work. I tend to land on smaller ideas. Short stories feel more natural for me to write, that and I can be realy lazy, and writing at least 40-50,000 words is a bit much for me.

Chris had this very simple concept. A man dies, and at his funeral the people there slowly discover who he really was. That was it. Not much to go on I know, but it stuck with me.

Over the years, I’ve kept coming back to it. I’ve often pictured that man as me. The mourners talking, sharing bits, slowly building up a picture. The good things, the missed chances, the ideas that never quite made it. Almost autobiographical, in a way.

But if I’m honest, I don’t think my real life is interesting enough to carry a story like that. And it had to be about me because that's how I've always thought about this story, and tbh, the stories I’ve written recently, and another that I am currently working on now, they all start with something real in my life, a small truth (the crow corner I drive past almost every day, or the old Victorian doll/ghost my wife and I saw at a window one day, a grain of truth that drifts into the story.

And in my head, this story was always the same.

But because I'm not interesting enough, over time the character became someone else. Still rooted in that original idea, but more interesting, more layered, more worth writing about. In Chris’s version, I’m sure the twist was that the mourners started off disliking the man, then came to understand him, maybe even like him.

I could never quite make that wor for me and it always felt a bit flat.

But something clicked this morning.

I’ve got the twist now, and it flips the whole thing on its head.

This isn’t a story where people come to appreciate the man.

It’s the opposite, and I'm kinda looking forward to writing it.