Signs and portents to a new direction?

... or simply coincidences?

Yesterday I arrived early at the dentist.  Top of the magazine pile was a Travel magazine, quickly browsed and only articles on places I'd recently been were perused.  Next, one of those glossy aspirational ones, gorgeously scruffy, scumbled paint, sun-bleached wood, Suffolk farmhouse conversions.  Just about the only thing that has me panting for riches. And dishonestly - where would I find the time?

So, I turned to a short story, read it, mildly enjoyed it, then was reminded - was forcibly dragged back to a childhood when such stories had formed part of my staple diet.  My mother's magazines, and those of my aunt.  And the neighbour's. The stories, the serials, the accompanying, usually water-colour, paintings that illustrated them (and those I do remember, wanting to emulate, believing that was what painting was for.)

I've known since I started writing, I almost never do stories.  Briefly, as I followed the dental assistant into the surgery, I wondered why.   Then the news of Alice Munro, who I had heard of but it hadn't registered that she wrote only short stories.

This morning the first line of a possible short story popped into my head. But possibly, if it grows enough, I could turn it into a novel.