The blurry bears

A blurry shot of my mini keyboard, taken with iPad camera. It has been cold and dull all day, and I lack inspiration. I've done a bit of housework and so on, even made some potions, but the desire to do nothing much at all is still strong. Tonight I'm going to make something with prawns and bacon for supper, but I'm no food blipper, even though I love food when I am up and running!

This shot reminds me, in an odd way, of being taken to the public loos in Dublin, as a very young child. They were the under-the pavement type, and there was a glass-covered grid in the ceiling, a bit like the keyboard grid, that occasionally was shadowed by the passing foot of a pedestrian on the pavement above. I remember asking what these shadows were, and being told they were people's feet, but I didn't really 'get it". I couldn't connect strange lumpy shadows with human feet, and I believe I thought they belonged to animals, most likely bears.

I know there was a belief, that I did not subscribe to, that if one stepped on the cracks in the pavement, then "the bears will get you"! I on the other hand, had a specific phobia: I was terrified of the polar bears in Dublin Zoo, and had nightmares about them, and even on one occasion refused to go within 300 yards of their enclosure!

Suffice to say that I am still here; I have never been to Svalbard, Anchorage, or anywhere there is any danger of seeing a polar bear in the wild; and that the blame for the nightmares rests on a horrid, horrid book called The Story of Bobtail by Helen Bannerman! Do not read it read it to your children if they are likely to be anxious about the thought of being chased up and down a ship's mast by a hungry bear, while all around lie drifting icebergs! Give me Life of Pi any day.