06 February 2004 ~ The Optimisitc Penguin

There was a young penguin who, waking one morning inside of his igloo, found that there was some sort of leak. He was woken because of it. The leak was making tiny droplets of water fall onto his left wing and, although he was usually a sound sleeper, it had incorporated itself into his dream (where a fish he was about to devour started prodding at his wing) until he slipped into semi-consciousness and realised it was something hitting him in reality...much the same as happens to us when dreaming and you hear the sound of the hoover or the washing machine and the noise works its way into the dreamworld.

So the penguin got off from his icy bed and raced outside to see what the problem was with the igloo and why the snowstorn that's bound to be on the go outside was managing to work its way through his roof. Now, his usual routine for exiting the igloo is to race through his room and do a little dive, thus sliding outside of the tunnelesque doorway and coming to rest in a snowbank outside. Today, however, he didn't quite manage this and, in the manner of a certain Mister Pooter could say he "left the room with silent dignity, but caught my foot in the mat", the penguin left the igloo with sliding dignity, and grazed his belly on the ground. For you see there was no snow anymore, just the dirty hard ground and a half melted igloo that was dripping in various placed.

Now this penguin, being an optimistic little fucker, recovered immediately from the shock of the snow disappearing and thought to himself...'well, at least the igloo doesn't really have a leak!'. I am sure you will agree in the face of such adversity that the penguin is a jolly young fellow with a sunny disposition and one whom you would like to slap after spending too much time in their company, like a postman that's happy, nay ecstatic and somewhat excited, to be up at some ungodly hour of the morning when a sane person would be in bed dreaming of hoovers and washing machines.

I remember as a child how optimistic I was about life, and I do prefer to call it optimism rather than naivety. I would wake on a winter morn' to find the ground covered unnaturally in this white substance known as snow which, like puddles, make you very wet but, unlike puddles, you are actually allowed to go outside and play in it. Not being scared of the way the world suddenly looks, and in fact being excited by it, is one of the things you tend to lose as you get older, along with you willingness to go out into the snow and build snowmen or have a snowball fight. The novelty is lost, it becomes a hindrance and you want things to go back to how they used to be, and what you are comfortable with. You don't realise as a child that the snow means delays and more work for people who can't take the time to appreciate it.

All of the older penguins, who had seen a thaw before, were grumpy the day the snow went away. They could no longer slide to work, relying instead on walking slowly. They could no longer travel to the centre of the pond, cut a hole in the ice and get the best fish, instead having to stand on the banks or get wet whilst swimming into the middle. They didn't want to take the time to refreeze their homes and stop them melting...but knew that they had to as the insurance didn't cover it.

The baby penguin played all day...curious as to why the elders had a scowl on their face when he was having the time of his life in the new environment, wondering why nobody else likes change.