As I wrote last time, to relieve my depression I started to create an imaginary world that I could control — in contrast to the real world which was completely out of control.
The world I created was one where anything could happen: penguins who hated eating fish, hated being cold and who loved colour could end up in a hot air balloon in the tropics wearing a bright red scarf. A small bee called Little could go from being mocked and bullied to becoming a lawyer who fights for the downtrodden. A mongoose who loves chocolate desserts, a drunken swan, a hen-pecked hamster who breaks out of his cage to escape his nagging wife and a hippo who falls in love are amongst the characters who came to life. There’s a bee called Aldrin (not related to Little), a budgie called Fudgie, a jumbo called Mumbo, a cute kitten called Mitten, another really, really cute one called Robbie, and a whole host of other colourful and monochrome characters doing weird and wonderful things. And then there are the “epics” — the longer poems that parody other stories such as Prince Charming and Sleeping Beauty; Silv’rilocks (Goldilocks at 90); Big Maroon Wheelchairing Hood (work it out…); Slush Brown; or original stories like Peter, a peacock with hay fever that destroys his love life and more — long poems (120 – 480 lines) that I immerse myself in for weeks, months or years (word herding can be tough when the words and ideas don’t cooperate!).
This world, which later became my Loonyverse of loony verse, was what got me through the tough times.
More about the development of the Loonyverse next time.