writer's moll

"Mostly sunny day, to some, can look a lot like partly gray."

"After all, what are birthdays? Here today and gone tomorrow."

"Why, what's the matter?" "Nothing Pooh Bear, nothing. We can't all, and some of us don't. That's all there is to it" "Can't all what?" said Pooh, rubbing his nose. "Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush." "Oh!" said Pooh. He thought for a long time, and then asked, "What mulberry bush is that?" "Bon-hommy," went on Eeyore gloomily. "French word for meaning bonhommy," he explained. "I'm not complaining, but There It Is?"


I haven’t posted for nearly two months. I’m not short of subject matter - I’ve been to Chicago, one of my family is heartbroken and homeless and there’s the mystery of why French school kids are so much more irritating than our own.

Any of these topics would normally be worth a few words, but however feverishly I try to nail them down, they skip away like will-o-the-wisps, and I find myself indulging my negative mood in pointless exercises like: if I were part of a small group of survivors of a plane crash in a remote region of the world, what would be my contribution to our survival?

The guide perhaps? My orientation skills cannot be described as excellent, so it’s unlikely that I’ll be the one who knows that going south will lead us to safety, or indeed which way south is without a giant sun as a clue and of course it would be raining. My suggestion would probably lead us straight into the cooking pots of the last surviving tribe of cannibals.

Fire raiser? Doubtful, as you can bet that while I’m still racking my brains to remember how Ray Mears lit a fire without two sticks to rub together, the little upstart stockbroker, who’s never even heard of Ray Mears, will have started a bonfire-size blaze with some fiendishly cunning new government bonds.

Pull a rabbit out of my hat with a vast supply of cereal bars, chocolate and a 3 litre box of wine? Of course not, because at the last minute I’ll have taken them out of the suitcase to make room for the tennis racquets, flippers and snorkel or they’d have been catapulted, along with any handy bits of string and cutting implements, into a nearby ravine upon impact.

First-aider? sorry, all I remember is don’t put keys down the back of a nosebleed sufferer; calming influence? you must be joking with all those terrifying noises coming from every tree; story-teller? I’ll be suffering from a cold and just lost my voice; morale raiser? nope, too busy trying to find a knife sharp enough to slit my wrists.

Well how about I rustle up a nourishing soup with the mushrooms my eagle eye has spotted? Oh yes, I could do that. Well thank you very much. I see, you think that because that's my contribution at home, it's all I can do - back room stuff. So, there's to be no heroics for me eh? Just get out there and make sure those mushrooms aren't the variety that make your tongue swell up and turn black, and keep us fed while we all get on with the important work. Oh no, hang on, it's ok, no need to do a thing, we have our very own Crocodile Dundee, who's just leaned languidly over a tree stump and charmed a giant snake into the pot.