So, if any of those of you gathered here this morning want to see just why there is nothing left to say, please make your way over to the word bucket. There you can see for yourselves that it is, indeed, empty.
That is apart from a couple of slightly dented conjunctions and an adverb with post-end-of-sentence-proposition shock.
Of course there was a time, long ago when this was all words as far as the eye can see. Back then, there wasn't just one word bucket, but massive word barns, filled to the brim with all kinds of words, harvested when ripe and lush and already forming crude sentences of their own.
Back then, the word fields were full of words growing strong through the summer, up above the height of a man's head some of them were. It was good in those days to be a word farmer with the fields all ripe and ready waiting for the start of the harvesting season.
There were people – poets and other writers mostly – who used to come out to pick their own words too. Usually for some special piece they were writing, or just for the feel of getting their hands dirty. They would pluck the words from the fertile soil with their own hands and carry them home in a basket at the end of a weary day.
Now, though, all that is gone. Times change and so they must. Now the field next door has a crop of lolcat pictures ripening in the sun. The markets are full of YouTube videos, and people are all growing their own selfies on allotments and in back gardens.
It looks as though it could be the end for these fields that were once so full of so many words.
Maybe we will miss them when they are gone.
[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US)]
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