Nothing

Cicero once wrote to a friend of his, complaining that he hadn't had a letter from him in a long time. "You'll tell me you have nothing to say. Well, write to me and tell me that you have nothing to say". Actually he wrote something incomprehensible in Latin, which perhaps explains why people didn't write back to him, but you get the idea.

This is my third attempt to write something this weekend. Having nothing to say is not a problem for me - I never have anything. I'm just suffering from not being able to think up a way of saying nothing. Apparently Oscar Wilde said "I love talking about nothing. It's the only thing I know anything about." And of course Shakespeare wrote a whole play about nothing.

Anyway, I was sort of sitting here doing nothing, since Helena was wrapping presents. I started wondering about this nothing thing. Wondering how advertisers ever manage to sell products with claims like "Nothing tastes better", or "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux".

What were they thinking???

Then we have that elusive "No-one" "No-one does it better", "No-one gives you as much". So I should go and find this no-one person, who does things better. Maybe he will sell me nothing, which will taste better, even if it does suck. I wonder how much nothing is worth. No-one knows, and I suspect it will be a lot, since such a lot of things are worth nothing.

So now I can go back to spending quality time with my daughter, happy in the knowledge that if I achieve nothing more this weekend, I'll have finally managed to finish a post.

And that's better than nothing.