BEST WISHES

We've all done the 'What if we won the lottery?' pipe dream and sorted out how we would spend the money. No doubt like me you were a little more or a little less generous depending on how much the winnings were. It's sad though that this hypothetical flight of fancy has pushed an old favourite out of the picture.

Remember Aladdin? Suppose you found the lamp, buffed it up and the Genie offered you just one wish.......and no, you can't wish for three more wishes!

I've pondered this and one thought was a new life as a bronzed adonis prowling the Californian beaches catching the eye of all the beautiful females. I'd be single of course and would court a different girl each day enjoying the thrill of the chase and the bedroom encounters to follow (sigh).

Then 'pop' goes the bubble as I mentally wind on a few weeks and realise just how bored I would become with it all. Besides, the worst thing about this scenario is that it doesn't include my lovely wife.

Have you decided on your wish yet?

To help you along, my next potential wish is for my wife and I to be young again - back to those heady days of courtship when we would spend hours on the phone finishing with 'You hang up first" - "No you hang up first". (Sigh).

Then I remember some of the difficult times we went through when times were hard or loved ones died. I don't want to go through all that again. Overall I am very happy in my own skin even though it may be over-stretched and a touch flabby.

So here's the deal. My one wish would be that as I continue to grow old disgracefully, comfortably financed by the kids' inheritance, I wish that I can retain my mental faculties right to the end. If only so that I can continue to see through the lure of those Californian blondes.

ONCE UPON A TIME........

Once upon a time, when I was knee-high to a grasshopper, my parents would read me fairy stories. Often the hero was a child,just like me, except that maybe they had wings or superpowers.

When I was old enough to buy my own books, my favourite by far was 'The Borrowers' by Mary Norton. These were stories about people, just like human beings, except that they were only a few inches high and lived under the floorboards. They would 'borrow' things from the 'Ooman Beans' who lived above and I loved the illustrations which showed their living rooms with cotton reels as tables and sardine tins as beds. The main characters were a family consisting of a father, mother and daughter named Pod, Homily and Arriety their names too having been borrowed from muffled names they had heard from above.

As a young adult I was captivated by Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings' and 'The Hobbit' which told wonderful tales of adventures had by people very similar to us except that their feet were bigger and hairier. I can remember lying flat on my bed for hours and hours as I turned the pages, eager to find out what would happen next.

In mid-life I discovered the 'Duncton Wood' books by William Horwood. These very adult books which dealt with characters who, just like mankind, were capable of love, kindness and heroism and others who were capable of murder, wickedness and rape. But they were not mankind, they were moles. Yes moles, some of whom I came to love, some of whom I came to hate. For some long while, my imagination was confined to dark, underground tunnels.

Now that I am an older man, I still enjoy tales of fantasy. It is sheer escapism which transports you from the humdrum everyday life into realms of exotic and fantabulous fauna and flora. I am currently reading the George R. R. Martin's 'A song of ice and fire' books in which he takes us into a world of heroes and villains just like those of Arthurian legend, except that their names, like the Borrowers' names, are slightly different from ours; Petyr instead of Peter, Eddard instead of Edward, Jeyne instead of Jane and so on.

So in my opinion, the secret of successful fantasy is to create it very close to our lives and understanding and yet just slightly different so that we know that we have left reality safely behind us so that now, anything can happen.