Ho Equals Hum

Sometimes the world is very serious. Sometimes there is no cause for humour. Sometimes you are not in the mood to write articles with anything smacking of amusement in them.

We all have different ways of dealing with this. We can trawl other authors for inspiration. We can look at the news in the hope that something topical will provoke enough response in readers to be a source of humour. We can hang around pubs listening to people and recount some absurd thing someone has done in an unguarded moment. Or we can forget the whole thing and be serious for once.

There are of course many serious matters to concern us all. There are bills to pay and often no money to pay them with. There are serious relationships with serious people. There are social welfare issues that should be addressed and there is the constant struggle to be all things to all people all of the time that modern living has inflicted on us all.

There is the impending arrival of The Great Pumpkin. There are continued concerns over who will keep the world safe when they stop showing repeats of Stingray and Thunderbirds. There is the continued threat of Godzilla rising again. There is the potential loss of our sense of balance as the dawn chorus recruits different members and the inner ear is unable to adapt to the different sounds.

We have yet to learn what conclusions the walrus and carpenter drew when they discussed why the sea is boiling hot. We have yet to learn if anyone ever has seen a stranger across a crowded room on some enchanted evening. We have yet to discover why the BBC employs Craig Doyle. We have yet to discover why weapons of mass destruction are all shaped like instruments of procreation and whether they therefore actually work.

We do not know whether exactly nine stitches are saved by one in time. We have yet to discover what Bart Simpson's shorts actually taste like. We have yet to find either end of a rainbow or where all the garden gnomes come from. We have yet to discover the fundamental colour which all the others are shades of. We have yet to discover the supposedly extinct chip to eat with the coelacanth. We have yet to see a man impersonating an impersonator. We have yet to see the cows sailing that we are promised every year.

We still do not know what would happen if the elephant with yellow feet hid upside down in a bowl of orange custard. We still do not know if green eggs and ham has become the favourite delicacy of a generation of doctors. We still do not know what Canadians are. We still do not know if anyone cares. We still do not understand the meaning of the meaning of life. We still do not understand why airlines still employ pilots and crew called Jack. We still do not know how much horses get paid for winning races or whether greyhounds have a strong enough union to insist on parity.

It is hardly surprising that humour sometimes deserts us. There are so many serious issues to resolve in the world that there is rarely enough time for anything else.