Brief Encounter 9. aka. Happy Escapes. Two of the creatures from one of my recent doodles have forsaken the smuggling and promotion of mystic inebriating substances and gone their separate ways, off into the big bad world to have experiences and adventures of their own. They haven’t seen each other for a while but now they have met at a very good garden party thrown by the Shoggies and are exchanging news and gossip. The square peg seems to have brought forth an offspring, which is quite odd as he is unquestionably male; but we don’t ask the whys and wherefores. Who cares, anyway; the little one is as cute as lace pants and she’s is most welcome and much liked by all, as she seems to have philosophical proclivities and she’s forever quoting W. B. Yates. Also, he has acquired a tag-along most flirtatious flowerette of uncertain but vague Austral origins. (Again, who knows and who cares…) The wormy squiggle, on the other had, has also produced a brood, or a clutch, or whatever, all by herself -but that’s no surprise to anybody because she’s parthenogenetic. Weekend sooooon come. Have a good one.

Why should not old men be mad?
Some have known a likely lad
That had a sound fly-fisher’s wrist
Turn to a drunken journalist;
A girl that knew all Dante once
Live to bear children to a dunce;
A Helen of social welfare dream,
Climb on a wagonette to scream.
Some think it a matter of course that chance
Should starve good men and bad advance,
That if their neighbours figured plain,
As though upon a lighted screen,
No single story would they find
Of an unbroken happy mind,
A finish worthy of the start.
Young men know nothing of this sort,
Observant old men know it well;
And when they know what old books tell
And that no better can be had,
Know why an old man should be mad.

Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad? by William Butler Yeats