Goon Show subjects

I hate those things where you have to write a story about three things, a telephone, a deckchair and a coconut, for example. They don’t have any natural interlink so I write a kind of Goon Show piece where someone finds a coconut. The man opens the coconut and sees a man sitting in a deckchair. ‘Come in and close the nut, you’re causing a draught.’
‘I can’t. My wife is having a dinner party.’
‘Do you have a photograph of her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, put it on the wall and you can talk to her through that telescope.’
‘What about that gorilla in the other picture? It might listen in.’
‘That’s no gorilla, that’s my mother-in-law.’ Etc.
It never comes out like anything sensible.
I could never put together a story for a competition from things like that. My ideas have to have flow and be natural consequence of things. For example – a man goes for medical tests and gets a text from his doctor to come to see him. The man assumes it is connected to the tests, thinks he’d better go and have a will drawn up and sees a lawyer. His wife hears he has been to the lawyer and assumes he is setting up a divorce. It’s all believable and the misunderstanding opens several options for a conclusion as well as backstory.
People tell me the three item idea develops imagination but all it does is drive me nuts. Still, if it works for you!
Book characters