Oddly my dictionary doesn’t give either of the definitions I associate with these three letters. To me they stand for Take a Break. I’m not terribly keen on the weekly mag, but TAB‘s Fiction Feast is great. I have a story in the September issue, which is out now.

My story, Sandcastles, involves a variety of sand sculptures. The inspiration for this came partly from my childhood. My parents, being farmers, rarely got a day off but we did go to the nearest sandy beach (Weymouth|) for the day if the opportunity arose. We always looked at the amazing sand sculptures and sometimes attempted to make our own. In my memory these were impressive in scale and execution. In reality I suspect active imaginations as we made up stories associated with the boats, cars and animals were responsible for all the realistic details! There’s no doubt my love of making up stories began very early.

When writing stories I used to indent paragraphs using the tab key, but not so many places now want the indent and when they do I use the document formatting option.

Non writers probably think of a tab as a drinks bill (oh, OK writers might be familiar with that one too!) A small strip of material used for hanging up clothes is a tab and tabbing is the action of attaching these. A stage curtain can be known as a tab and it might need to be tabbed in order to hang it.

To keep tabs on someone is to keep them under surveillance.