For the Sake of Posting.

I need something to make a post about, but it isn’t easy when you’ve been in a bad mood all evening and bad moods don’t shift easily.

I thought of doing a ‘Further Ashbourne Encounters’ post, but they weren't all that interesting. There was Medeea, my Transylvanian dentist, who was as spectacularly wonderful as usual. There was the new checkout operator in the supermarket whose name badge said ‘Liss.’ ‘What’s Liss short for?’ I asked. ‘Alicia. Nobody can say it.’ ‘You mean A.L.I.C.I.A?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘…and nobody can say it?’ ‘No.’ So then I told her the story of the Italian waiter and the sea trout (which is on this blog somewhere, but I’ll be blowed if I can be bothered to find it.) She didn’t really get it, which is why I didn’t succumb to the temptation to write her a ditty. (Lots of words rhyme with Liss – some of them polite and some less so – but anybody who fails to see the funny side of my anecdotes has to remain in the chorus.) And then there was the woman in the bird food shop who said she never goes to dentists because she can’t afford them. ‘I work in a shop. Haven’t you noticed?’ Enough said. Oh, and then there was the man standing outside another shop who was accompanied by three creatures: a big Pit Bull Terrier, a little girl in a pushchair, and a tiny Chihuahua about the size of an adult rat which the little girl was cradling to her chest. I thought of asking him whether the Chihuahua was an emergency food supply for the Pit Bull in case of nuclear attack, but decided he didn’t look the sort to get the joke either, so I desisted.

See? Boring. Instead, I decided to give some thought to a list of the things I most want to achieve before I die. So far I’ve got:

1. Have dinner with Mistress M and her folks. I’m sure the conversation would send a March Hare round the twist.

2. See the Aurora Borealis.

3. Make contact with Emily Bronte in a seance and ask her whether my theory about Wuthering Heights is correct.

4. Eat a big piece of baked Alaska, lightly drizzled with raspberry sauce and accompanied by a dollop of Devonshire clotted cream.

5. Hear Zoe Mintz say ‘Jeffrey’ one last time. (This mustn’t accompany the eating of the baked Alaska, though. If Zoe Mintz had been a passenger on the Titanic, she would merely have had to stand in the bow and say ‘Jeffrey,’ and the big white thing would have melted and gone down instead of the ship. Zoe Mintz’s rendition of the word ‘Jeffrey’ is almost as spectacular as Medeea the Transylvanian dentist’s dentistry.)

I think that will do for now. The 5.9% ABV IPA is beginning to take effect.