shewhomust | The ugly puffins' cupboard of shame

Ellen - who was once Samarcand in another place, but never made the crossing through to Dreamwidth - came to visit yesterday. It has been a long time since we met, and even longer since we met in circumstances where we could sit and talk for as long as we wanted to. So we had quite a lot of serious talking to do, and we did quite a lot of it.

We did - as we have always done - a fair bit of silly talking, too. Just because this journal doesn't have a tag for silliness doesn't mean it is never silly: on the contrary.

The title of this post emerged from that conversation: I can't remember which of us actually said it. I gave her tea in the puffin mug which was a Christmas present from the Bears, and she admired it - as well she might: it is a very fine puffin mug. So I explained, probably not for the first time, that beautiful puffins are always a welcome gift, but that there are some grotesque puffins out there, and that no-one should feel obliged to give me puffins just because they are puffins (this may seem ungrateful of me, but I have seen what happens to people who admit to liking cats, or ducks - or, inded, bears). "Oh," said Ellen, "I imagined you had a cupboard full of puffins too ugly to be displayed!" But no, there is no ugly puffins' cupboard of shame ...

Even as I write this, I feel sorry for those hypothetical ugly puffins.