Mme. Flaneur's Diary

The Nativity, Fairy Tales and Why Wishes Don't Always Come True

A whole month has passed by. The constellations have shifted yet again as the stars reposition themselves for their final act of the year.
This year's nativity was led by an enormous, flapping tin foil star, far too flimsy to support the multitude of wishes bestowed on it.

New year's eve seems an appropriate time to contemplate a new diary so I spent some time today flicking through page after page of blankness stretching months into the future. This blankness mirrored the imaginary pages of nothingness that stretch back into the past, so I placed it back on the shelf, squeezed between a collection of fairy tales and other people's autobiographies. I secured them with book ends, two Grimm patriarchs that sit telling each other monstrous fairy tales. As I listened I was interrupted by Batboy.

"Mummy, I know why sometimes wishes don't come true"
"Oh really?"
"Yeah, sometimes when you wish on the first star you don't realise it's actually the second, or third, and you actually missed the first"
"Oh, yes I'm sure you're right"

Pumpkin Head and the Ventriloquist's Dummy

I woke late this morning after wrestling with insomnia for several hours - taking rather longer than usual to untangle myself from the confusion of liminal dreaming.

In the kitchen dawn was filtering dilute pinkish light through thin grey clouds but I barely noticed as I flicked on 200 watts of overhead lighting and turned towards the window that overlooks the garden.

I was confronted by a face I know well but I was shocked by how much it had deteriorated since the last time I looked.

An unpleasant discolouration had spread over it's surface and the texture appeared spongy and lumpen. One eye looked as hooded as a reptilian centenarian's and the other had disappeared into the cracks that had carved their way into it's flesh. A once symmetrical smile had become a misshapen smirk, and the gap was releasing putrid  gases.The cracks at the corner of the mouth give the impression of a ventriloquist's dummy, an uncanny vaudeville puppet struck dumb by the realisation that no-one was listening anymore.

I went outside, picked it up and headed to the compost.

"Hey wait, have you heard the one about the blonde and the ventriloquists dummy?......................"

Tricksters and the Astronomical Significance of 1953

As I was driving home today in the late afternoon, with dusk visible in my rear view mirror and Bat Boy in the passenger seat, I found my attention to the road was distracted by various species of road kill. Pheasants, foxes, rabbits, small deer and other indistinguishable scraps of flesh and fur littered the road, the pedestrian victims of unreported road accidents.

One dead body in particular caught my eye and I slowed as I passed it to get a better view. It was the corpse of a large brown hare laying on it's side, it's stiff legs enacting a comic parody of rigor mortis.

I contemplated stopping to discuss art theory with it but before I had a chance to brake it jumped up, looked left and right, and sprang into the road causing the car behind me to swerve violently and continue into a field of pumpkins.

"Do you know how the earth got to be so big mummy?"
No. I checked the mirrors and kept driving.
"Well, a long time ago, in 1953, the earth was traveling through the sky and some snow got stuck to it. That's the Antarctic"
Oh right, no, I didn't know that.

Embroidering the Truth

It has long been my suspicion that all diaries are written in anticipation that they will one day be read by somebody other than the author.

If this is the case, how can the reader ever be sure that the text they are reading is entirely factual. Perhaps all diary entries contain an element of embellishment; a scrap of embroidery that with one small tug could be undone and re-worked into an alternative text(ile).

Now, where did I put my sewing kit?