From Ms Jeremy Dennis comes this frame for <a href="http://www.caption.org/caption-cgi/hello.cgi/phoenix/" target="_blank">a collaborative Internet comic strip</a>, featuring a character based upon myself. I am addressing a troubled Red Riding Hood. Or rather, her alternative world cousin, Big Green Riding Hood.

<img src="http://www.fosca.com/starfishsolution1.gif">

It suggests an excellent first line to a story.

<i>"Hullo, Miss Hood", said the blond man walking a giant harlequin shrimp. "I understand you have a starfish problem."</i>

I'm reminded of that wonderful first line from Ms Macaulay's The Towers Of Trebizond:

<i>"Take my camel, dear," said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.</i>

This ranks as my joint favourite opening to a novel. The other is from Mr Lewis's The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader:

<i>There was once a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.</i>