You Would be a Fool Not to Read This....

Today is Fool’s Day. I feel a little bit of a fool at the moment – in the sense that I am stuck in a daft non-achieving fug. Being bogged down by things, by life, is a hazard that everyone faces. I am no different. My daughter’s very serious problems at school – with her motivation, with her concentration - are so very real, so very solid, that they have temporarily eclipsed the wobbly phantom worlds that I usually enjoy creating. I have stopped entering competitions, stopped caring about writing. It feels so very different to how I felt at the beginning of the year, when everything was about possibility. I have even stopped reading, which feels scandalously wrong. My mind is like a fly that doesn’t want to settle – fluttering everywhere. Nervous. Purposeless. (I won’t say attracted to poo but it certainly seems to be seeking out rubbish to distract me,)

I think my brain needs cleaning. It should be taken out gently and a toothbrush run over that knobbly grey stuff. Like polishing heavily chased silver, getting into all the grooves.

There are lots of things that will save the day though – in the end:

1. Beautiful, wonderful, witty, wise and warm friends.
2. My sense of humour – an appreciation of the absurd.
3. Writing. It will get me back in the end.

So goodbye to Fool’s Day. Here’s remembering my favourite character the Fool giving the audience my favourite quote in my favourite Shakespeare play, King Lear:

‘Jesters do oft prove prophets.’