Page 85, Little Fricka writes & Lunacy on the Aberdeen Express

Eh O! Ikkel Frikki ere. Da Da says I can say 'Eh O'. So Eh O, all u peeplees!

Ah bless! Chip off the old block, ay? She nagged and nagged and then nagged some more. For good measure, she threw in a bit of whining and grizzling, then nagged again. "Da Da, Pees." "For ikkle me, ikkle Fricki, pees." "Pees, I pwomise to be good, Da Da, pees, I use compootee?" "Pees!"

What can you do? Resist? Tell them to go and play with their friends? Tell them it's too complicated for chicks? That Da Da's busy? No, just give in! Just don't let her mother find out or there'll be hell to pay!

This post really follows on from yesterday's and, I think, makes a plausible stab for me at why this blog is, and why it is how it is. Not that this is particularly important in the great scheme of things but it troubled me a little so I thought about it. It's what penguins do. Judgement should be suspended on its plausibility until the very end :)

Odd thought this morning. I suppose it was probably prompted by little Fricka's pleading but a while back, just after Myfanwy died, I 'bumped into' somebody on the information superhighway. They used a wrong email address and got me instead of Tech Support. Now I was a little light headed at the time, I had been awake most of the night, unable to sleep because of the wind, and my reply was a little bit frivolous, tongue in cheek, even if I did solve their little computing problem.

Now for some reason, and I don't know why, there didn't seem to be anything to kick start it, an 'exchange' started up. Over the ensuing months, the exchanges, a couple of times a week, got longer and longer until eventually they were filling six or seven sides of A4, apiece. At times it seemed like a mutual support group. Each supporting the other through 'difficult times'. Moreover, from my end at least, they were becoming increasingly 'lunatic' and surreal to the point where, about halfway in, a glove puppet called Piglet, who could type but couldn't spell, suddenly appeared. He would make interjections in the text of the emails about my state of mind at the time, some true, some not, for which he was then scolded. Their replies then started to include special messages for Piglet about what a rotten bastard I was for treating him the way I did and offering moral support, usually in the form of 'wee bosies'. Eventually Piglet was sending emails all by himself about wild parties with Kanga, Roo, Tigger (who was always being sick down the back of the sofa) and the other toys while I was back out at sea.

Now there is something inherently childish about all of this, wouldn't you agree? Or perhaps child-like? Why would a fully grown, mature penguin engage in child-like dialogues with a person at about the same stage of mental development as the penguin? And why 'invent' Piglet in the first place? And why talk back to him?

Perhaps because when everything gets turned upside down in your life, there is a certain comfort to be had in retreating, for a very little while at least, each day, week or month, into a kind of child-like innocence where the world really is ok, daddy says it is, even if it's simulated. A way of forgetting your problems for a time but in a manner that allows you to reassure yourself that it's not really a retreat, just a wee dreamy doze in life's great afternoon and you'll be back on the case after your nap. For the penguin at least, writing those emails was often the only happy thoughts I had in the wake of Myfanwy's sad departure. Allowing, nay forcing, the surreal into every aspect of what you were looking at, riding to planet Pluto on a beam of starlight, bouncing 'off the wall', for just a wee while, an hour here or there, there was comfort to be had there, I think.

Sad, perhaps, but I still have most of them. As all of the long ones were sent as attachments, they were saved into their own folder at the time and like all good penguins, I understand the wisdom of the back up. When Myfanwy returns to scold me for not being the penguin she brought me up to be, and she does, often, I sometimes take comfort in Piglet's desperate cry for help, "The toys' party, the time machine and the dinosaurs in the bathroom" and the reassuring reply. :)

So, if they ever skidoo past this blog and catch a fleeting glimpse of the penguin on the ice, wave! Stop! The penguin would like to say "Thank you, arntie Jone!" Again. Properly.

You see, whatever we may believe, we all need crutches at certain times, perhaps all the time, even penguins. Whether they're moral, religious, financial, psycholgical or emotional, the need for them doesn't make us weak in any absolute sense but having them makes us so much stronger relative to where we would otherwise be.

I did say right at the very beginning that this blog would be my goad, my stick, perhaps even my carrot. Perhaps it's less of a goad or a stick now. You see what I realised back then, and had forgotten until probably 'Moko and the whales', is that even when the support's no longer needed and the lunacy largely disappears into a void, just doing it makes me feel better about all the shit that happens around me, audience or no. I will take some solace in that! Everything else is a welcome bonus.

And if anyone should think that I just made all of this up merely to illustrate that last point. No, the penguin has a long standing regret that he couldn't get so far north in the time available, and get to ring the millenium in on the big gate-bell on Hogmanay.

Ho hum, time to return to updating the breeding database. No it's late and I need to get back to little Fricka. I'll tell you about it some other time.

* 'wee bosie' = 'x x x' :)