Animal Fables

• I: Moth
• II: Hedge­hog
• III: Pen­guin
• IV: Zebra
• V: Ostrich
• VI: Owl

Dur­ing the more years than I some­times care to think about in which I’ve been blog­ging, I’ve developed some­thing of a repu­ta­tion for fre­quently indul­ging in the black art of obfuscation.

obfus­cate
/obfuskayt/
verb make unclear or unin­tel­li­gible.
– DERIVATIVES obfus­ca­tion noun obfus­cat­ory adject­ive.
– ORIGIN Latin obfus­care ‘darken’.

Such a repu­ta­tion is built on the fact that I don’t always like to say what I mean or what I’m think­ing, or dis­cuss in clear unequi­vocal terms what is hap­pen­ing in my life. So when, late one night in Novem­ber 2003, I wrote a silly little story about a moth, the com­ments that greeted me the next day were mostly along the lines of “What’s all that about?” and “What’s the pre­ten­tious twit try­ing to hint at now?” I denied it all, of course. “It’s just a story,” I said. “A stu­pid, mean­ing­less story. About nothing.”

I lied. It was about some­thing. The only prob­lem is that, after all this time, I’ve for­got­ten exactly what. Never mind. I’m sure it wasn’t import­ant. Best left to the shift­ing sands of memory.

How­ever, writ­ing that one short story rather gave me a taste for com­ing up with more of them. I ima­gined that one day they might be read to chil­dren — maybe not just any chil­dren, but rather the sort of pre­co­cious and serious-minded young­sters with whom I could eas­ily identify because I’d been one myself once. At least it wouldn’t give them night­mares, because the cre­ations of their own sub­con­scious minds were prob­ably far, far worse.

So whilst that first story did undoubtedly mean some­thing — a some­thing now long gone — the other five were just strange little tales writ­ten for an ima­gin­ary child who is rather too intense for his or her own good.

Sweet dreams, every­one. Sweet dreams.

Illus­tra­tions: The beau­ti­ful pic­tures accom­pa­ny­ing each story were drawn by the immensely skilled hand of The Gold­fish. My favour­ite is the pen­guin. There aren’t enough grin­ning, recum­bent pen­guins in this world.

See also: Animal Fables revis­ited, with the fest­ive story of a par­tic­u­larly pug­na­cious robin called Reginald.

More stor­ies: The Twelve Days of Christ­mas.