Beethoven's 10th

A real idea takes time.

It sits around without itself, sometimes for years, looking for a place to lodge.

It doesn't knock, it enters but not without making preparation, much as a moth makes flying up from a cold concrete floor at midnight to rise to the light, quietly beating its wings in victory.

'Ideas uncalled for come from I know not where' as Beethoven, whose last Symphony, the Ninth, includes 'The Ode to Joy', anthem now of the European Union, is said to have said.