If today we converse and tomorrow I am fond of you...

No Sir, I am terribly sorry but I cannot talk to you, you do not look at all like the picture I glued in my Dreams Scrapbook.

Yes, that's what I said - my Dreams Scrapbook - I have it here, Sir. Well, of course, I carry it with me always. I mustn't forget my dreams, you see - or I might end up lonely or poor or live in an ugly house, with a horrid husband. ... Yes, it is very pretty - I was very fond of unicorns when I made this scrapbook. My big sister gave me those stickers for my 11th birthday, and I made this scrapbook the very next day. ... Well, yes. I suppose it is a bit battered, but I have had this scrapbook for a very long time. No you can't look at it! It's secret! See - there on the cover - it says "My Secrete Book". ... What? Well I... I don't know why I added an extra 'E' on 'secret'. I suppose I thought it was spelled that way. Please go away. I don't want to talk to you anymore, Sir.

I have already told you why. Silly boy, you know quite well why! You are NOT in my Scrapbook!

Of course it's importance - it is a matter of great consequence! ... because, Sir, if today we converse and tomorrow I am fond of you and the following day we kiss and the next day we dance in the rain and finally we are married, then my dream scrapbook isn't going to be worth very much is it? I will have wasted that whole afternoon! And all those pretty stickers! Yes, it's going to look pretty silly - isn't it? So, I'm not talking to you anymore.

What's in my scrapbook you ask? Fine! Look, here! See? There's the picture - he doesn't look a thing like you - does he? He's quite handsome, and... oh no, I haven't got a clue who he is. I found him in a magazine. Yes, his hair is a bit 80's... What? You can't say that about him! He's my future husband! See, I wrote underneath - 'husbund - Chris'. No, I can't remember why his name was Chris - it's not important. It's just so that I remember he has to have a nice, normal name. Well, it's not your name is it? Hah! I knew it - your name isn't Chris - it's not even normal sounding at all. Besides, you're so grubby and your clothes are old and you look like you haven't got any money at all... do you? No, I didn't think so - how on earth do you expect to be able to afford our big house? See - there's the picture of our big house... yes, it is very grand indeed. Yes, I chose that picture myself - it's in the country though, it that picture. In real life we shall live by the seaside.

What? Oh, that picture - that's me! See - 'Wife - Me!'. Yes, I spelled that correctly. I know, I know - I was a very clever 11 year old. Why is am blonde in this picture? Well, it's not really me - it's what I'm supposed to look like when I get married. See, she's got such lovely blonde hair, and blue eyes and perfect skin and she looks so young and happy. Well no, I do not look like that now. Thank you for pointing that out, Sir. But I'm not married yet, so I couldn't possibly look like that - see it says 'Wife'. So there. I'll be rich and I'll get contact lenses and a nice hairdresser who I can talk to about my wonderful children. See, there's the pictures of them - my future children. I have two of course, a boy and a girl. The boy will be older so he can protect his little sister at school. I don't care if you have a little sister Sir, I'm not talking to you. I shan't ever meet her shall I - you and I are not friends, and we are most certainly not married.

See, there! There's another reason I simply cannot speak to you. Our children wouldn't be pretty at all! I have to fall in love with the man in the picture in my Scrapbook - he is tall, and devilishly handsome, with blue eyes. And look! Our Scrapbook children are tall with my dark hair and his beautiful blue eyes. Your eyes are brown Sir. Brown is such an awfully common colour. Yes, I know my eyes are brown - but we've been through this - I need to marry a blue eyed gentleman, so that our children may have beautiful blue eyes.

No, I can't make exceptions. This is the way it must be. Yes, I'm sure you're a very nice person, you seem like a very nice person. Yes, it was my sticky 11 year old fingers that found those pictures and glued them down, and there's a smidgen of chocolate cake stuck to his face, but I knew exactly what I wanted. No Sir, you are not in my scrapbook.

Walking on a dream.

Last night I watched the robots play in the bright lights of the city sky, with a dear old friend.

He is one of my sweetest friends, the person I would lie on my back in the grass with and watch the dinosaurs fight in the clouds. We would talk about life, the universe, and nothing. We'd count shooting stars and make impossible wishes that eventually came true.

But tonight there were no stars, and no clouds. Just the shadows and the city lights. So we watched the lights, and faces started to emerge. The Suncorp building became a poignant, slopey-eyed robot, having a one-sided conversation with the smaller and more attractive building next door. A pirate building with an eye patch watched these two for a while with a bored expression, until the lights switched off and his eyes closed.

Our hearts raced as the lights were flicked off in each office floor, flashes of light upon which we made more silly wishes.

We spent a long time watching the solitary office light on the top floor, which remained ablaze until the early hours of the morning. We imagined what the stranger behind those walls was doing, who he was, who he wasn't. Lonely, receding hairline, delusions of grandeur and adventure? Fresh, ambitious, dedicated, surreptitious? Affairs, office desk, betrayal, passion, stereotype? Somehow it was more stimulating than watching the planets and the imagined inhabitants of Jupiter. I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

She flew with a dangerous crowd.

His heart was all a-flutter.

Peanut sat on a railroad track,

His heart was all a-flutter,

Around the bend,

Came number ten...

Toot toot! Peanut Butter.

I have peanut butter sticking to the roof of my mouth, and it is making me oh so happy. It has distracted me momentarily from my concerns. Like a good little eager child I've looking at other blogs, as I've now discovered a new toy, and I want to see what all the other children have got. It seems the other children, as is always the case, have shinier, fluffier toys than mine. 

I have learnt that blogs are painted with the sparkley colours and whizbang bits of adorable newborn babies, happy families with bouncy blonde children, scrapbooking collections of talented but oppressed middle aged artists, the photographs of brilliant well travelled people with fancy cameras, collections of interesting handbags found online, people with cats, people with tea cosies, and comical genius expressed through a whole lotta swearing.

So, I wish jellyfish - but I am not blessed with the ownership of a gooey eyed baby, or a knitted teacosey collection. I would very much like a knitted teacosey collection.... I would very much like to know how to spell teacosey properly, I don't think I've got it right. 

Just some days, some sunshine, some chocolate bars. Some pictures of moments. Some words.

Some very forgiving friends :)

What have I become, my sweetest friend.

Sunrise, Sunset. You realise, then you forget.

"One day," you said to me, "I saw the sunset forty-four times!"

And a little later you added: "You know, one loves the sunset, when one is so sad..." "Were you so sad, then?" I asked, "on the day of the forty-four sunsets?" (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - The Little Prince)

I have always been a sunset person. I have loved the flirtatious colour and the passion, the thought that the day has gone and the night is to come. It is true that one loves the sunset, when one is so sad. I have been the kind of girl who would stop, no matter where I was and what I was doing and watch the sun fall asleep. One day I was told, after I had made a rather annoyed friend pause for the fifth day in a row to watch the sunset, that my infatuation was absurd - the sunset was there yesterday, and it will be there again tomorrow. Despite this, it made me incandescently happy, and rather than begin to get dark, the world would begin to shine.

 Yesterday however, I think I had a secret affair with the sunrise. The Dawn and I caught each other's eye, and came to a perfectly silent understanding. It is true that mostly in the past I’ve have only seen the sunrise through the lids of my ignorantly closed, fast asleep eyes. But I plan to meet with her more often, wide awake in my drowsy, innocent morning naivety. My moment  with her made me realise that my relationship with the sunset  was not much more than lust.

The sunset is lust, and the sunrise is the fabled and misunderstood concept of love. The sunrise is the time of sleepy eyed innocence. The sun has not yet fully revealed the sins of the night, and the day is yet to blaze and burn. The sunrise is the quintessential feeling of hope. One knows that anything could happen today, and the sense of the unknown is arousing and inspiring.

The dawn is the first few bars of a familiar melody, played in contented, undemanding silence.

"It was the afternoon of extravagant delight"

I am suddenly awfully aware that for the first time others may read the words that stumble and stagger clumsily from my mind to the page.

Ill-fated, unfortunate words, I do feel sorry for them. If only they had been born into the mouth of Dylan Thomas, Leonard Cohen, Oscar Wilde or MGMT perhaps they would feel like they had a life purpose, like they had the ability to change lives and make people dance and be clever and witty and loved. The reality of course, is that like most completely ordinary words they will dedicate themselves to the 9-5 life of this blog. When they die, they will be forgotten. These words may have children that love and remember them, and perhaps grandchildren, but generally they will go unnoticed through their mundane, monotonous self-serving lives.

I suppose therefore, that while I never intended on giving this blog an introduction - a magical first post that will entice and delight and promise things I cannot deliver - I am pledging to my beloved word-friends that they will finally have the opportunity to get off the couch and dance. They will see the world! I am crossing my heart and poking my eye that I will book my fledgling, scruffy, baby bird words into ballet classes and piano classes and gymnastics and give them the head start in this world that they deserve. 

My ordinary words will do extraordinary things with their lives!

Word, brother.