Blocked

Today marks 50 years since the death of Dorothy Parker:

American poet, short story writer, critic, and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks and eye for 20th-century urban foibles

… and that’s rather an appropriate anniversary, given that this post nearly didn’t get written, simply because – as can happen to any writey person from time to time – I simply couldn’t think of anything to write.

It happens to the best of us. It infamously once happened to Dorothy too, as she described in a telegram to her editor:

Yep. That’s the puppy.

And I’m in no way comparing myself to Ms Parker, except maybe to say that if she hadn’t suffered with Writer’s Block back in June 1945, then you might not be reading anything here today…

Blogger’s block and smoking monkeys

The problem with updating one’s blog every day is that sometimes one just doesn’t have the time or inclination. Either that or there’s nothing suitably interesting to write about. But it’s ok, because you can always post a quota photo – as long as you didn’t do that yesterday.
But in a worst case scenario – like today – those conditions come together in a perfect storm of blogger’s block. Oh crap.

It’s serious. The cricket is on, The Living Daylights is on, I have a billion spam comments to check through and clear (having found a terrifying large number of genuine “Ham” comments in amongst them last time), it’s getting late and I suspect that there will be some, if not more, child wakage later on this evening due to a nasty cold which is currently passing through the junior members of the household. I have done my best to relax the kids into a quiet and gentle slumber by plying the younger one with strong medicine and plying the older one with 104 pages of Curious George stories, but experience dictates that the nocturnal snot will prevail. Oh crap.

Times were evidently different when Curious George was written in the 1940’s and 50’s. When George escapes from prison by running along the telegraph wires and then floating away under a bunch of helium baloons before being rescued by his friend “The Man With The Yellow Hat” (who smuggled him into New York from Africa), he heads home. Obviously shaken from his rather traumatic day, I was horrified to turn the page and find the little simian chilling out in an armchair apparently smoking a pipe. And yes, there it was:

After a good meal and a good pipe,
George was ready for bed.

Alex looked momentarily confused. “Daddy? What’s a ‘good pipe’?”
But Daddy had brilliantly predicted that question and had already swiftly and safely moved on to the next story, all about how Curious George jumps into a lorry with two strange men who promise him that he can be part of their special circus later that night…

Oh crap.