When Imagination Comes to Life

Now and again, as a writer, strange coincidences and serendipitous moments can happen.

In The Oneiromancer of Mars, one of the early segments takes place in Delft, in The Netherlands. I've been to Delft a few times, I've fallen in love with the city, and have set a couple of short stories there, and I chose it again for some of the scenes in this novel. One of the chapters takes place in a restaurant, not a real restaurant but one that was entirely fictional. I chose a street at random - HH Geestkerkhof - and imagined a restaurant with lots of greenery because it fit with the theme of the book. Here's how I described it:

A feature inside the restaurant was the profusion of hanging plants, their long, green tendrils reaching down almost to floor level from pots suspended from hooks on the high ceiling. Any space between the dangling leaves was occupied by tall potted palms, making the air itself seem green, cool and moist, with scents that, for Minra, had associations with the forest from the home she'd just left behind.

There's more of this, but you get the idea. Again, this was not a restaurant I'd ever seen, in real life or even on the internet. Just fiction.

So anyway, last month, Sarah and I revisited Delft, spending a week in our caravan, cycling, wandering around the narrow streets, seeking out new places we hadn't seen before.

We had coffee in one of our favourite coffee shops, overlooking the canal bridge on Oude Langendijk (yeah, a real place that also gets a mention in the book) then took a random turn down Kromstraat, a street narrow enough to be deemed an alley. There's a jazz club down there, a pub, and then, surprise, my restaurant.

Well, not mine really, but one that looked exactly like the restaurant I had imagined. Maybe even greener than how I'd described.

Here's the photo I took through the open window. 

It looked inviting but sadly we'd already eaten, and it was our last day in The Netherlands, but maybe next time we'll try the food there. Maybe the menu is the same. Maybe we'll get a table next to a mother and daughter called Minra and Lissa. As I say, strange things happen to writers.