The Letters...

Dear Ms Nixie, Lately I’ve been feeling really really sad but as the late great Mr chaplain once said; Despair is a narcotic, it lulls everyone into a state of indifference. So I’m hoping not to stay stuck here too long. Send in the clowns you might say? Don’t you approve? Where are the clowns? It seems a great love of mine is always tearing around and I’m starting to feel I can’t move. Just when I stopped opening doors then making my entrance again with my usual er meek shuffle, well a rather huge rainy cloud did land itself right here over yours truly. The irony of It all is that I am a clown. I’m not your usual clown. Not what you might expect. Nothing to do with solei or the world stage. I’m not sure how it happened but one minute I was fresh out of clown school and the next I was up for a grand audition. Well that’s what they told me, at the agency “ Stop clowning around , NOT.” It was only when I had the job in the bag that they painted the full picture you see. It seems I

Dear Ms Nixie, I was wondering what your legitimate opinion might be on the relationship between names and behaviour, identity and one’s outcomes in life? You see I wish to retain, and proudly so, both of my names, however it seems to be causing a wee spot of bother. Should I stand firm and live proud in what was bequeathed to me or is there a place for bowing down in the face of ridicule? Yours truly, Anon. Dear Anon, Stand proud. Live up to your name my dear. Sometimes we try and run away from the seed of our history rather than letting such origins propel us forward to the path less travelled. May I ask, if it would not be too forward of me, what your full title is then? It shall surely hold no baring whatsoever on the proceeding plans, however, for interests sake alone, I would be most honoured to know of you and that name which offers a real badge of honour, no matter how different or offbeat it may be to the wider mediocre masses. Not everyone can be a Smit