Talking to a Princess.

I’m still a bit fascinated by the murderess who just wants to be a princess and be rescued by a man, so much so that I found myself in conversation with her while I was in Ashbourne today:

‘What’s your name, Princess?’

‘Guess.’

‘Er… Snow White.’

‘Nope. More syllables.’

‘Rapunzel?’

‘Nope. Still more syllables.’

‘Oh, right. Must be Pocahontas, then.’

‘Nope. A lot more syllables than that.’

‘More than Pocahontas?’

‘Many more.’

‘OK, I give up. What is your name?’

‘It’s Princess Goidsargi Estibaliz Carranza Zabala.’

‘Blimey. All one person?’

‘Yes, but I have many strings to my bow. Would you like to see inside one of my ice cream freezers?’

‘I suppose so. Do you have vanilla?’

‘Of course. I think there’s room in that one.’

‘Room for what?’

‘Shit!’

Bang.

Happy Feet.

I have a visit to a chiropodist planned today. Some years ago I developed painful calluses on the balls of my feet, courtesy of years spent hill walking as a photographer, followed by as many more years tramping city streets after a big recession killed off the business. I didn’t have the money to afford even bus fares, let alone a car, and so I decided I needed the exercise and walked everywhere. You pay for it eventually.

So today I’m going to pay some more to see whether the nice man can provide me with pain free walking for the first time in a long time. Will the treatment hurt, I wonder. Will it give me a new lease of life?

There you go. There’s two deep and interesting questions to consider on yet another wet and windy day. You might also like to search out my old post on watching paint dry. That was deep and interesting, too.

Sarah Walking.

I haven’t made a post about Sarah from Mill Lane for ages, have I? Well, I’m going to now.

When I was walking past her house the other night, I took to remembering how she walks. It’s very upright, smoothly co-ordinated and straight-footed. Pretty elegant, really, in an unpretentious sort of way. No duckish waddle there!

So that made me wonder whether she went to finishing school. Do they still have finishing schools?

It's been a stressful day.

Ego, Humour, and the Designer Age.

I'm posting this because I'm a generous sort of person and I want to share something really funny.

No, scrub that.

I'm posting this because my blog is all about me and I think it important that you should understand my taste in humour.

No, scrub that.

I'm posting this because I have a massive ego and I want to show you just how superior my sense of humour is.

Shall we stick with that one? Actually, it is quite funny, but only if you have the sense of humour to get it. Obviously.

A Coincidence of Flowers.

The infernal rackety creature has gone quiet for now, so my mood has stabilised a little and I can observe a curious coincidence.

According to my Feedjit, two people were attracted to my blog post about the ice cream parlour murderess with the thirteen syllable name. One came from a place called Bellflower in California, and the other from a place called Belrose in New South Wales. That’s neat.

A Bit More Space Violation.

There’s something in the roof space above my kitchen. I do occasionally get the odd bird scampering around up there and I can live with that, but this is much louder and more aggressive. It’s scraping and knocking like it’s trying to demolish the timbers, and sometimes it sounds as though it’s dragging something around above the ceiling. I don’t know what it is because there’s no access to that space, but I suspect a squirrel. Whatever it is, the racket and sense of invasion are driving me crazy.

An Odd Sort of Fairytale.

I’ve been reading about the woman who has gone on trial in Austria accused of murdering first her ex-husband and then her current partner, a charge she has admitted. It seems she subsequently cut their bodies into pieces and encased them in concrete in the basement of her ice cream parlour.

Not much of a story there, I suppose; we’ve heard it all before. What interested me was the fact that the psychiatric report said she was ‘like a princess who just wanted to be rescued by a man.’ It occurred to me that:

1) The feminists will probably be jotting the facts excitedly in their notebooks under the heading ‘Women Who Want to be Rescued.’

2) Goidsargi Estibaliz Carranza Zabala isn’t exactly a snappy name for a princess, is it? The men should have seen through that one.

3) I think we should issue a health warning to all frogs: Princesses May Be Perilous.

And as a footnote, it also appears that she kept their remains in her ice cream freezers for a while. I wonder which flavour.

No Place for Simplicity.

In the Near East, children are being killed (accidentally, of course) by people with God on their side. In China, meanwhile, street children are dying of CO poisoning through trying to keep warm, while the nouveau riche with only Lamborghinis on their side are busy worshipping expensive bits of paraphernalia.

Such situations are, of course, far too complicated to hope that the rich and powerful might stop killing children.

Dreary Monday.

My personal space is of utmost importance to me. The sense of disquiet I feel when anybody imposes their presence, their paraphernalia, their noise, or anything else onto it amounts almost to a phobia. And when my second fundamental requirement – the need to be free to come, go, and do what I like, when I like – is restricted through such imposition, the sense of disquiet becomes a notable difficulty.

The Shire is grey, wet and a little windswept on this somewhat dolorous of Monday lunchtimes. I think I’ll pay my electric bill to cheer myself up.

The Gibbet and the Beast of New House Farm.

As I walked past the end of Church Lane tonight, it struck me that here would be the perfect place to site the Roston and Norbury gibbet.  It’s just about midway between the village and the hamlet, and Church Lane is one of the two roads that connect them. (Mill Lane is the other, but the only suitable junction on Mill Lane – for you need at least a T junction, if not a crossroads, for a gibbet so that the ghost of the departed doesn’t know which way to go – is slap bang outside the pub. That wouldn’t do, would it, since the ghost of the departed wouldn’t have any difficulty at all deciding which way to go.) And, me being me, a little rhyme jumped into my still beleaguered brain.

I saw a dead man hanging high

Upon the gallows tree

He raised his head as I walked by

And I saw that it was me

This is what comes of having ever depleting faith in the future.

And then, as I made my way homeward, I saw the unmistakeable lines of a fearsome beast watching my approach. Its implacable stillness sent a ripple of consternation through my veins, even though I knew it was only the rottweiler from New House Farm. Only the rottweiler? I’ve met him a few times in the bright light of day, but who knows what murderous machinations might infect the mind of a fearsome beast once night has fallen on The Shire?

His deep, powerful frame was scantily picked out by a little skim light from the security lamp in the yard, but mostly he was silhouetted against a bright wall adjacent to the gate – head held high, ears raised, and his attention turned on me. I stopped as I approached him, asked him whether he’d been watching The Omen or something, and invited him to come and say hello. He did, and after much head stroking and side slapping, he allowed me safe passage.

Something tells me I should go get a life. Right now, I’m going to get a cup of tea.