I spent a little time this week, while I was waiting for code to compile and interviews to be organised and sobs to stop heaving chests, to organise my massive all-of-the-Cuthbert-documents-ever folder; it’s a messy, haphazard collection that’s built up over the years – ideas that have struck me at three am, jokes I wanted to write down before I forgot them, scenes I’ve composed on long train journeys, slowly getting whole carriages to myself as I cackled and snorted and shrieked at my own illegible scrawls like a madwoman… The usual sort of thing.

I don’t normally have any reason to go through my – often unintelligible, even when typed – scribbles unless I’m writing a particular scene, so as I read through it, trying to filter out old writing for puzzles and plot lines I’ve dropped, I was really surprised at how much I’ve written for Cuthbert.

And how weird most of it is.

Okay. All of it.

I’m wary of spoiling too much of the story as I write on here, but I thought it might be fun to start sharing some couple of excerpts for things that may or may not wind up in the final story, entirely free of context, so’s not to spoil the plot.

And, erm, because many of them don’t have any context.

It’s Context-Free Friday!

‘He told me them beans would bring me unequivocal fortune. “You’ll retrieve the treasures of the giants, lad,” he told me.’ Jack huffed a grumpy sigh. ‘But all they gave me was a tum ache‘