Need a story idea? Try the Lost and Found!

Where can you find a good story idea? How about the lost and found? Hello, all. Dana Mentink here and there’s nothing more intriguing than a Lost and Found. It’s a tiny snapshot into the crazy world of people’s passions and playthings. If you’ve left something on a train, bus, cab or coach during your jaunt through England, you can visit the Lost and Found in the basement of Baker Street, Central London. For 75 years the place has been collecting items left behind by travelers. Not just the expected collection of brollies (though the basement houses more than 7000 lost umbrellas a year), you can find such nutty items as a puffer fish, clothing, false teeth, watches and two urns of ashes. No reports on whether or not Jimmy Hoffa has surfaced yet. I can’t help thinking this would be a great place to start a suspense novel. What if the clerk at the Lost and Found happened upon something…say a small black notebook with some hard to decipher writing? Or a round disk with a series of numbers printed on it? And what if this discovery soon had her running for her life? What do you think? And what, pray tell, is the strangest thing YOU’VE ever lost or found?