St Francis preached to the birds. But have you ever considered how difficult that would be, even if birds could understand human speech?

Concepts like good and evil, conscience, sin, salvation, redemption, death, resurrection, love as we understand it, even faith, hope and charity would be incomprehensible to a completely innocent creature that has no knowledge of death, no idea of right and wrong, and lives its life almost totally in the present.

Everything we gained when "Adam and Eve ate the apple" separates us from all other life forms. That is a metaphor of course for the process of becoming human over many millennia.

But are we really any happier for it?

Silly story again.

Two seagulls, a baby sparrow and a morepork were sitting on a roof watching the Hero Parade go by.

Along came some drag queens. "Look at them" said the first seagull. "Those humans don't know if they are male or female".

Then some chaps came along all dressed in chains and bits of leather. "Look at them. They don't know if they are humans or Clydesdales" said the second seagull.

Then along came the lesbian mothers. "Who are those?" asked the baby sparrow.

Nobody knew, but the morepork, being a wise old owl, wasn't going to admit it.

"Humans who have to mate like birds" he said.

"Gosh, do they lay eggs?" asked the baby sparrow.

So the morepork ate him, and the seagulls flew away.

If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, I wonder where I am from.

Perhaps I'm Cynara from Cygnus.

But I doubt if there is much "Bona" about me, unless you want to translate it as "Bonny".

(An artichoke from the Swan constellation?)

Silly story time again

Three burglars decided to rob a small row of factories by getting in through the roof. But the roof was weak and they fell through.

One fell into a bakery and landed in a vat of custard.
One fell into a greetings card workshop and landed in a vat of gold paint.

Both were captured.

The third fell into a chocolate firm and landed in the wrapping machine. He extricated himself from the wrapping, "Curses! Foiled again!", and escaped.

Next morning he turned up at the court to see what had happened to his mates. He asked an official standing outside.

"Oh" said the official, "One was found guilty, and the other was remanded in custody".

"The world was once ruled by the fish.
They had all that such creatures could wish.
Then Nature's new plan
Invented a man,
And now fish end up in a dish"

Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae

Would you call a girl "artichoke"? That's what Cynara means.

But I suppose if she was tasty, plump and a bit prickly.......



Seriously, the poem by Ernest Dowson, to which he gave that title (A quotation from Horace)
is one of my favourites. You will find it on Google.

"I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion", a famous line.

How many people have a "Cynara" in the past who keeps coming back to their minds?