Hirsute

Well this image is not hirsute, although if the carpet were shagpile, perhaps it could be called that (some friends of mine used to live in a shagpile flat. It was amazing.). (You know what confuses me, brackets. I know that if I put a whole sentence inside them, the full stop goes inside, but what happens when the sentence outside isn't finished, but the sentence inside is? Anyway, back to my story. Maybe I should put these asides in italics instead. Or footnotes? Not perhaps just leave them out. But really, back to the story now. Might be better to start again - this had just become rather discombobulating. Be warned, here be there rambling.)

So, today's photo is not hirsute, but I have have had that word going around my head all afternoon. Thought about finding a photo to match the caption, but that seemed terribly predictable and old hat, so here's a completely unrelated picture of some of our stairs. Our house is the sort that children's authors write about, with staircases, creaky floorboards and cold draughts. It has doors that swing open unexpectedly, and spider webs in the corners of the rooms. The difference is that our house has neither ghosts nor vampires, does not smell of mildew, and is very sunny and bright. These stairs go from the front door down to one of the landings. As I child I remember tumbling down these stairs incessantly, rolling to the bottom of one flight, whinging, picking myself up, and setting off down the next flight. Needless to say I soon became quite adept at not falling down stairs. The bookcase at the bottom here is stuffed with cookbooks, Bibles, walking guides, kids' books, and books on the English language. My friend was amused the other day to see Spong's A New Christianity for a New World between Meet Jemima Puddleduck and The Big Bug Book. Nothing like some literary variety.

And why is the word 'hirsute' tumbling proverbially around my head? Well there's no story of particular interest there, it was just following a lunchtime conversation about acceptable levels of hairiness, with particular attention to the suitability of beards to certain faces and the likelihood of human hobbit feet going bald with old age. But that leads me to thinking about real hobbit feet. I wonder if they go bald. Maybe I should put this in the same category of questions as 'If elves are immortal, why do they age, and what determines when the process stops for each individual elf?' Such things puzzle me. Do you know the answer?