Looking out into my garden, past the wild patch where a fox spends some of its time, and beyond the back of my own property, I can see into a neighbour’s garden. For the past month, it’s been home to a variable number of tall white domestic appliances, standing cryptic together like Fridgehenge.

A few hours ago, in the night, there was a small earthquake, clocking in at 5.2 on the Richter scale. It went on for a minute or more, woke me up, and several of the neighbours gathered in the street to talk about what happened. I didn’t bother; listening told me everything I wanted to know at that point.

So now I’m wondering, and unable to see because it’s dark at the moment (4.54 am). Is Fridgehenge still standing? Or did the earthquake topple the white goods onto the ground? And will I get to see their owner put them back upright, or will they be left there?

People often ask where writers get their ideas, and conversely my experience is that ideas are everywhere: what are they doing to block them out? At the moment, the raw ingredients I’ve outlined would work well in an episode of Clocking Off, the Paul Abbott-initiated series that sneakily brought back the single play to primetime television. Or as a storyline in Coronation Street, Norris bemused and anxious about the presence of a monolith made of consumer goods, Janice coordinating with some of the other women working at Underworld to see if they can steal themselves some fridges, and so on.

And if I let my thinking drift to the actual Stonehenge, which I’m researching for a television project, one of the things I recall from my own experience is the sheer wonder and nonsense of two groups of wannabe mystics. One group was planting crystals around the Stonehenge site to waken the ancient site’s earth energies, part of a long term project that would lead to the establishment of a new Avalon, a reawakened Arthur in charge. The other group went around digging for these crystals, since they interfered with delicate ley energies, and plucked them from the ground. I’m not sure what they did with them, but wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up getting recycled to the sort of hippy/goth tat shops that sell such magical stones in the first place.

That example is only notable for its relative eccentricity, but really the clash of beliefs it presents is not much different to the kind of conflict you’ll find driving stories set in a more mainstream world. Put people together, and the one thing that’ll emerge before long is politics in some form. Who gets to make the tea, use the car, get better rates of pay, or the right to vote. All eminently suitable material for writing, depending on your proclivities. Some people spend their careers detailing the ins and outs and ups and downs of the micro social worlds they’re familiar with.

Me, I like the fact that I deal with a whole bunch of people in a wide variety of contexts, and experience patterns that transcend content. The participants can be aspiring politicians, drugs workers, homeless people, single mothers, artists, business coaches, pagans, astronauts, whoever: our similarities are always bigger than our differences, and presenting social worlds new to the reader or viewer only emphasises that the human game doesn’t much change just because the individuals wear different masks.