Happiness is a very small desk and a very big wastebasket

A magician said this. A magician, comedian and speechwriter for Gerald Ford, which seems a strange marriage of talents...

...but maybe not. A little worrying, perhaps, to think that a president of the US.etc. etc.

I don't particularly agree with Robert Orben's definition of happiness.  Too small a desk and I wouldn't be able to fit my Very Important Objects on it.

Difficult to see clearly but may I introduce them? From L to R.

Hmmmm, there's my To Do List on a whiteboard. (More of a To Do Scrawl, really.)

Then there's my Inukshuk. It reminds me of my two boys, Jamie and Laurie, and their girlfriends, Breanna and Irene, living in Canada. It also symbolises "You are on the right path." I live in hope...

Next, my hare. If I had a daemon, it would be a hare. Then there's a little card...

 ...because I never think I am.

Under that, a beautiful golden horse...

...Christmas present all the way from Bombay, from my dear writing friend, Rusty, which of course reminds me of Poppy and Alfie as well.

Then there's Bad Bunny for when I'm feeling wicked and Black Dog who gets shut in a drawer if I'm feeling miserable, as a sort of symbolic gesture for banishing depression.

Finally,  there's Eck - from a Meg Rosoff story, There is No Dog - reminder of someone who's an inspiration to me, and Ecks are very nearly extinct so I am his guardian.

My life, in eight objects. Ooooh dear! Rather telling.

I HAVE got a very big wastebasket, but I so very rarely throw anything away...

In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase...

"...and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy."

Bizarrely, no images of melting door-knobs, still less mushy ones, are to be found. ANYWHERE. So here instead is a painting of a door-knob at room temperature. British room temperature, that is.

by Leyla Munteanu

The quote is from Mark Twain and made me laugh out loud so I had to use it today, specially for my friend in Bombay, Rusty Irani, blogger about films extraordinaire, brilliant screenplay writer, especially in the Western genre (Western as in cowboys, not as in...as opposed to Eastern)...

 ...and very good friend.


Our snow here is melting, almost as quickly as it arrived. Shame!

We are left with mushy slush. Neither pretty nor any use to man or beast.

Slush ranks second only to sleet on my weather hit list...if you're at all interested...