WHOOPS! WHERE DID THE TIME GO?

Hello, internet!

I've been a bit quiet on here as of late, due to having too much damn fun. I visited Paris with my better half and showed her the desolate sights of Scunthorpe, which in turn have inspired me to take a crack at a straightforward crime story (albeit one with horror undertones). There's a lagoon here called Ashby Ville that used to be a quarry. Now it attracts swimmers, jetskiers and sunbathers in the summer months. It has also swallowed up a lot of children, their young bodies caught in hidden currents and tangleweed. It's a peculiar location that elicits both joy and despair in equal measure, as adults casually splash around above the place someone's son or daughter drowned.

If you've never been to Scunthorpe, this picture tells you all you need to know.

Due to my recent gallivanting around, I spent a lot of time looking out train windows as scenery blurred past. There are a lot of forgotten places beside train tracks. Old station and utility huts, barns, houses, warehouses and office blocks. All now reduced to piles of broken bricks, empty shells and derelict symbols of failed businesses. If a body were to be hidden in one such place, I think there'd be a strong chance the local wildlife would find it before the police. How many murder victims, homeless adults, runaway children, have met such fates? Lost in one way or another, before time and environment causes their body to fade. The train tracks are littered with bones, but they're buried so no one knows they're there.

And what if it was your job to find these bones? Where would you start? Where can you start, when even the memory of who they belonged to is dead and buried? And what if instead of hopelessness, you felt motivated by a relentless need for justice, for answers? I hope to answer these questions. In story form! I've not turned detective in real life. Or have I?