Short stories

Well, yesterday I carried on feeling feeble and wan, so give thanks for an almost totally horizontal day. I caught up with Mr Murray's success and then the steampunk circus of the paralympic closing ceremony, enjoying both greatly. There's a lot to be said about the obscenities of sports stars' prize money and governmental dual standards regarding disability, but none of it belongs on a blog about gratitude, does it? I'm grateful for having a TV, and the chance to see people happy... I get the impression Chris Martin had a good day at the office as well!

I'm grateful to Ainsley Harriot for making me broccoli and stilton cup-a-soup, Dr Karg for the spelt crispbread and er...a cherry tree for the cherries? As you can tell I gave up on even partial food prep yesterday... Great thanks for tasty snatch-and-snooze snacks about the place and that I don't always feel so weak and unwell.

This morning I feel a bit more energetic so gratitude for that. As I've done a lot of reading my stash of books to look forward to is diminishing so I thought I'd see of there was anything that appealed to order second hand from Amazon or reserve at the library. Of course you have to start your search somewhere and, as I'm reading some non-fiction about an isolated tribe and their language at the moment, I typed in 'Anthropology' The first book that came up was in fact a book of short stories by a chap called Dan Rhodes. I've nothing against short stories, as you know I've been known to produce a few myself, but it wasn't quite what I had in mind at the time. It was followed by a list of learned tomes, the kind you have to refer to when writing your anthropological essays at university and one reason why I abandoned my course...so I abandoned that line of enquiry. Next I thought of a book that came to mind after scanning the front page of the BBC website earlier...The Little White Car. (The photo caption had been about Prince whatever his name is being moved at being shown an orchid named after his mother and this rather amusing book had been about someone who thought they might have been involved in an accident in a tunnel in Paris, late one August night...I can hear people outside shouting 'Off with her head' so I think I'd better close these brackets now) Anyway, I couldn't remember who had written The Little White Car so I typed the title into the search box, and it was someone called Danuta de Rhodes with Dan Rhodes in brackets afterwards. Hmmm, methinks not to read another of this writer's books would be to deny my destiny - I've ordered a 1p one from Amazon straight away - and methanks for the synchronicity.

Gratitude also for this man's project to take pictures of what makes him smile. I can't get the tumbler links to work but it's on Facebook or you can just search for the images on Google if you want to see more.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19548517