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Thoughts on Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince"




  Am all over touting for presales of my book My Tutu's Gone AWOL! Discussing the crowdfunding aspect with Xander at Unbound I was a bit bemoany, as the report from the reader was that she shouldn't have read the book ahead of the other projects waiting for her attention, but the title made her so curious. She began reading at once, getting curiouser and curiouser and curiouser, came to the end, stopped, and happily recommended it for publication.  
  So why do I have to crowdfund it, why can't it just be taken up? 
  Xander said I had in passing mentioned that I would be approaching my banker mates - well, blame them! 
  I have done.  They don't like it. 

  What I don't like is any lack of response to my crowdfunding pleas. With hints strongly pre-dropped, I've so far proofread a film script - no pledge made. Edited a How to Handstand article - no pledge made. Given four two hour long singing lessons - no plege made. 
  Yes, I must get over being annoyed. 
  My attitude to people being on the receiving end of my expertise yet not yet buying my book reminds me of a recent walk along the side of the Meare in Thorpeness.  I was overhearing a mother at the really had enough now stage of answering her four year-old's questions. 
  'But why are there still some of the geese here, mummy, when you said they all flew south for the winter?'
  'Well, perhaps it's like in that ever so sad story we read you about the statue and the swallow - you remember, The Happy Prince?'
  'No. Did anyone get killed badly?'
  'The swallow died in the most sad, sad circumstances because it stayed too long into the cold weather and - '
  'Will the geese die?'
  'No, they're too well covered, aren't they, to die of cold? Look at the thickness of their feathers.'
  'Why wasn't the swallow well covered?'
  'Because swallows don't have to keep as warm as all that. They spend their time in two springs and summers each year, so wouldn't need to grow thick feathers.'
  'But you just said the swallow died of the cold.'
  'Yes, but that's because it stayed longer into a winter than it ought to have done and didn't fly to its warmer clime.' 
  'Why?'
  'Because it was helping the happy prince do something lovely for the poor.'
  'What?'
  'Donating bits of him to them.'
  'Like granny did when she died at uncle Tom's?  She had that card, didn't she?'
  'Not quite. And it turned out that granny took the wrong purse with her when she went away for the weekend, anyway...' 
  'So, mummy, why are those geese still here?  Why didn't they fly away?'
  'Oh, for god's sake, because they're a rogue group of couldn't be bloody arsed geese, allright? Now can you please stop chewing that feather and put it back down on the bank.'
  
  
  

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