The non-existence of me

Before writing my post every day I catch up on other blogs I follow, one of which belongs to mon amie en France, Vera, at Labartere.

'Oooh goody!' I thought, seeing there was a new post this morning entitled 'Pas Francais. Espagnol!' I clicked on it, keen to read the next thrilling adventure of self-sufficiency across the Channel. Would Lester still be down the well with a hole in his bucket? Has Vera managed to smuggle a bag of potting compost past the pile of donkey dung? A message popped up.

'This page does not exist,' it said.
'Oh,' I thought. And tried again, because every now and again Blogger will pop up a message that can be proved balatantly untrue by bashing the keyboard a bit and yelling things into cyberspace. But no. Again the message popped up. And again. I tried various approaches to gain access to Vera's latest blog entry like going to the main page and then through the individual titles and then taking it by surprise by pretending I'd never come across the blog before and saying loudly, 'OOH, this looks interesting. I think I'll have a read.'

It wasn't having it.

Then I thought, perhaps its me? Perhaps my suspicions have been confirmed and I don't actually exist. Perhaps I can't access this newest blog entry because I THINK I exist and am sitting in my office on my laptop and I have a friend called Vera in France, but really, I am a figment of my non-existent imagination.

If this is true it would explain many things. Like why no agents or publishers have recognised my writing talent. I mean , they wouldn't publish someone who doesn't exist, would they? What about ghost writers, though? Hey, maybe that's it! Maybe I'm a ghost writer! Okay, so all I need to do is find an illiterate celebrity with the intelligence of a bag of cornflakes and offer to ghost-write a novel for them and then I'd get published.

Ah, but would that compromise my artistic standards? In order to keep the standards high (ish) I would have to be a ghost-writer for a non-existent celebrity. Then I could assume that identity for my non-existent self thus rendering myself real and able to read Vera's latest blog.

Aha! I could do it you know. On Sunday morning, as Andy was sitting at the kitchen table trying to read 'A la recherche du temps perdu,' and sighing into his toast and marmalade with the effort of it all, I wrestled the book from him and did my own translation of Proust's original. My version included Mme Swann wearing a gi-normous pair of clown trousers and blowing a small trumpet for the amusement of the local children. It made Andy laugh so was instantly more enjoyable than the version he was trying to read. If I can ghost for Proust, I can ghost for anyone, including a non-existent, cerebally -challenged celebrity...

Here we go...

My nam is Luella-Lola Spanglepants and here is my storeeee. It is a storeeee of 'ardship and woe, of deprivation and more 'ardship. I mean, we was so poor I didn't get no hair straighteners until I was nearly eight years old and then I 'ad to sell mi baby brovver to git 'em but that didn't matter coz 'e was the spawn of the Devil. No really. And this is my storeee. Wiv ghosts and everyfing...