The Bastille

I sent a joke to a stranger earlier on today.

I was buying a bit of flooring on the Internet.... 'like you do'. Do you remember when people said that a lot?

The joke was of a mildly Carry-On risque flavour based on an accident which had changed my carpenter's name from Laycock to Lovecock. So as you can imagine a joke was overdue, and with a local Pride march happening within the next 24 hours, I had the perfect frame for it.

I want to live in a world where you can still make a joke without too much fear so I pretend this is that world.

I tempered it a little, by phrasing it with a little pomposity to increase the humour.

(This wasn't my first rodeo, readers)

And I was blessed with a quick reply which said "Oh ...you have made my day".

I re-read what I had sent and have to admit it was a pretty good joke.

In theory, there was nothing in that for me.

Just a little chance taken to brighten somebody's day.

But I will let you into the thought processes:

Chance of it meeting some humourless half-dead vacuum - maybe 20%.

Chance of it being taken wrongly: maybe 15%.

Chance of it being received well but nobody letting me know.. maybe 50%.

My assessment: WTR - Worth the risk

Outcome: the best possible, because it met with a kindly soul (and I may have mentioned, it was a pretty good joke)

So what was that ..a little exercise for the human spirit, a little boost of adrenaline. A smile for someone 300 miles away at the end of a long Friday in a likely-boring job, doing invoices for laminate.

But many is the joke unsaid. 

Many is the gift ungiven.

The 84 dead people who were mowed over by a Tunisian lorry driver this Nice morning won't make any more jokes.

They won't get to face my trivial decision-making process.

Yet too many of the living have surrendered that right and duty early.

We are fragile. 

We have bones like Wispa bars. Our underflesh is like mallow. Our sensory organs are some of the most fragile tissues in creation.

And it's because we are so fragile that we tell ourselves that we are strong.

Through our culture. In our movies and books. In Holbein and on Instagram.

We even rewrote the original verse of our traditional nursery rhymes - the ones that reminded us how brittle our bones were and how tasty our flesh might be to others.

"Little Johnny on the railway line, picking up stones, along came the engine, and broke poor Johnny's bones".

We need to tell ourselves that we are strong. 

Because we are not.

It's a story.

Stories aren't true but we need them to survive. They are oxygen. They are food. 

And hope.

For better days ahead.

"Oh!" said Johnny, "That's not fair." 

"Oh!" said the engine.

"I don't care"