Where I Introduce Twig Blackadder

Twig Blackadder is not your average Joe. He is quite tall, quite pale. Almost yellow, in fact. He has a shock of white hair, thick white eyebrows, despite being young and fresh. He managed, one day when he was quite small and still new to his enchanted abilities, to turn himself into a stick figure. To this day neither he, nor anybody else for that matter, has been able to restore him to his original self. He became a worldwide phenomenon a few years ago, but interest in the anomaly that is Twig Blackadder had long since waned and he carried on living and breathing and being human, just like you and I (At least, I imagine you might be a usual human and if you are not then I apologise profusely). And yes, I dreamed him up. It was a summery, sunny day in April, much like this one. The year was 2011. I was walking into college (that’s 6th form when it’s at home) and Twig started to talk.

Oh he could talk the hind leg off a donkey, that one. It was this, that and the other. I watched the ground as I walked, intent on what he was saying.

There is something marvellous in the way Twig manages to skirt around all the topics known to man or beast before alighting on the point he intended to make in the first place. He reads the thesaurus before he goes to bed, and sometimes joins it with the encyclopaedia.

“There is no point,” he emphasises to me on a regular basis, “in speech if it is meaningless.”

Which is ironic, I suppose, given that all Twig likes to do is talk. His speech, however, is peppered with facts. He will be telling me about the importance of having a goal in one’s life, and it will take him a good few hours to make this point because he will go off on the most extraordinary tangents, taking me along with him on little worldly and wordy adventures. At the end of the conversation, or rather, monologue, I will have learnt several fascinating facts about worms, and all the synonyms of the word “shun”.

Twig prides himself on never saying anything meaningless. Unnecessary, perhaps, in the context of the conversation, but never meaningless. Or absurd, or empty, or useless, insubstantial, inconsequential, trivial, nugatory, vapid, vacant, futile and hollow.

Well. I mentioned you might be meeting Twig someday. Today he decided to make an appearance, and I thought since you might be wondering who that odd looking fellow, grinning impishly at you might be, I would give him a little introduction on my page.

He says hallo, and it’s good to meet you.