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There are days, like today, when there is nothing there at all. 

This is what it would have been like for Lucy, if, pushing through the moth-ball scented fur coats, she found only the wooden back of the wardrobe.

This is how it would have been for Cinderella, if the pumpkin stayed vegetable and the mice stayed rodent.

This is how it would have been if Alice had not fallen down the rabbit hole, or if Harry had stayed in the cupboard under the stairs. 

If Aladdin rubbed the lamp, and it just got shinier, he would have felt like this. Domestically satisfied, possibly, at a job done efficiently. But imaginatively, an empty vessel.

Washing done, ironing done, spellings tested, reading books laboured over. Words – unwritten. Not just unwritten – unthought, undreamt, unscribbled on a receipt in the bottom of my bag, un-tapped into my smartphone. 

There are plenty of words, washing around my head like socks in the suds, but they are the wrong kind of words. They are lists, and more lists, “must-do’s” and “mustn’t forgets”, reproaches and regrets.  These bullies push out the others - the shyer, more tentative words. They squash them, leave them crushed flat, wrung out by the unstoppable slosh and spin of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…. you get the idea. 

Those delicate, fragile words, spun from the gossamer-light, extravagant stuff of wonder, play, ponder and idleness cannot survive such rough treatment. They are holiday words, Sunday words, free-time, free-head words. There is no room for them here. 

So, I am forced to write about writing nothing, just so I am writing something. 

I feel better already.