Humourless and Lacking Symbolism.

First off, shall I tell the story of getting my flu jab today? Second question: Did anything amusing happen in the course of so doing? Answer: No. OK then, I won’t bother. And the fact that the pharmacy next door got my meds wrong wasn’t funny either. A humourless day was had by all.

But I did get an email from Mel later, complimenting my story Changing Places which she’d just read. This is the one about which an editor who intended to publish it said ‘It’s full of symbolism.’ And what’s interesting is that it’s had more than twice as many views as any of the others at my stories blog (1,060), and yet nobody has ever left a comment. I suppose it could be that the symbolism confused everybody, but I’ll let you into a secret: there is no symbolism. The initial dream sequence was deliberately written under the influence of two double scotches to make it more realistic, and the rest is just the standard rambling of my fertile mind (it’s the sort of fertile mind in which you sow carrots and get sprouting broccoli for your pains.) It’s here if anybody wants to read it.

And I received a reply to one of my YouTube comments today. It said: ‘Do you speak Russian?’ The video was published by an Australian woman on a theme of Harry Potter, so why would I speak Russian? Romanian I could understand, since that’s where the dragons are bred. Bulgarian I could also understand, since that’s the domicile of the bounder making fast and loose with my beloved Lady Hermione. But Russian? It’s been that sort of a day.