Life

The good news – I have finally got the syphon to work so I can clean Mr Gold’s tank properly.


The bad news – I had to suck the water through the tube to start it which is just gross because Mr Gold pees in that water.

Charles Dickens, The Cricket on the Hearth 1845

This is the most schmaltzy story, the very epitome of Victorian mawkishness. It features the blind daughter of a toymaker who has been misled by her father her whole life as to her surroundings. Although she lives in a hovel and her father works for a harsh man, he tells her that they have a lovely house and that their grim master is always winking and nodding as he says mock harsh things.


I always have this balancing act with Dickens – he is such a good writer that I get suckered in to his stories and then the second I stop reading I fall about laughing at the ridiculously over the top sentimentality of it. I have to whisper that I feel the same way about the Christmas movie *Love Actually*.