Weirdest Place You've Done It

Like a lot of...er, people...I used to think there was only one place I could do it: in my bedroom with the curtains drawn, completely alone, with a cigarette on stand-by for afterwards.

But now I can do it almost anywhere.

I am of course talking about writing. Back in the days when I thought it was the surroundings and props (kind of wish I hadn't started this now) that would help The Muse to appear, I had the time and space to believe that was true. I needed total quiet. I needed black coffee and cigarettes. I needed a computer.

Now I think that those requirements were like an extra army of excuses for why I hadn't written that day. I didn't want to write badly enough.

Never was this more obvious to me than this Thursday, a non-stop rainy day during which I took my son to an indoor playcentre. I also took a notebook. The place was absolute bloody mayhem - kids screaming, mothers desperately trying to have an adult conversation while their little ones howled about being hit in the face by a plastic ball, and a very worrying smell drifting down the stairs from the loo. In three hours I wrote more than I'd have managed in three weeks with my former dark-silent-room scenario. When you want to write badly enough, you can do it anywhere.

Here are some poets who do it in strange places - including Benjamin Zephaniah who did it while stuck in a lift with a drag queen.

Please share your weirdest case scenarios.