Did J.R.Tolkien have a time machine? The tyranny of the to-do list.

So there I was.
Cosied up on my sofa watching BBC One's latest, greatest nature epic, Nature's Great Events the first of which showing the plethora of wildlife and activity in the arctic when the sea unfreezes and all the animals get to have baby animals. And then on came this whale called a Narhwal which basically looks like a normal whale - whatever that means - except that's it's got a, well Dicky Attenborough called it a tusk, but that's not something one normally associates with whales, right, anyhoo, it's got a tusk coming right out of its forehead.

It looks ridiculous.

I'm not convinced that it's not part of some elaborate BBC windup, maybe an April fool two months early. Anyhoo. It looks suspiciously like someones stuck it on, and just because I checked Wikipedia an it's on there, I'm not exactly filled with re assurance.

Hmmmm.

So then I'm watching on and these birds called little orks appear and at that point I really start to think something fishy's going on from a J.R.Tolkein point of view. Narwhal and Little orks? It's all getting a bit Lord of The Rings isn't it. I know LOTR purists won't hesitate to remind me that there are no Narwhals in his trilogy, but if you've seen one I'm sure you;d agree they wouldn't exactly look out of place. But the look of them and also the sound of the word all seemed very Tolkienesque. And if you can get the word Tolkienesque into a sentence before 11am then go for it I say.

They are known as arctic unicorns and they are strange buggers to be sure.

I thought they sounded strangely like the Nazgul or ring wraiths from Lord of the Rings, the "terrible servants" of Sar
uron, but of course they only do a bit. Once more, Lord of the Ringophiles, seem how they're just pouring out of me today, won't hesitate to tell me that in fact the word Nazgul is derived from Black Speech the fictional language of Mordor , where Nazg meant ring and gul meant wraith or spirit.

You can say what you want about Tolkien but you can't accuse the guy of being lazy when it came to working out the back story to his novels.

Narwhals aside, I think the appearance of Little Orks in last night's nature programme clearly demonstrates that Tolkien did indeed have a time machine and decided to come forward to the date of Februry 11th having had something of a writers block for some of his characters and thinking that he'd pick up a copy of London Lite see what was on the pick of the day, and then watch it and maybe fill in some of the blanks he had for character names for hi9s book. Either that or he came back on February 12th, got an office job, came into work that morning and heard everyone crapping oin about last night's nature documentary and how tragic that bit was when the polar bear but the face off a seal but everything's so beautiful la laa laaa, and he thought "fuck me, I've got no idea what any of this lot's on about I'm going to fire up iPlayer and get with the programme".

Either that or he was a bit of an ornithologist and knew of the Little Orks.

Or he was bezzie mates with David Attenborough's great, great, great, great, great, great Grandfather who was bang into Little Orks and it was passed this Little Ork love down through he generations.

Or it was just pure coincidence. But I think you'll agree that one of those theories is bound to stack up.

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In other news I've been banishing my to-do lists which have, slightly unbeknownst to me leaving me feeling slightly unfulfilled and like I'm never getting everything done every day. Which I wasn't but there's nothing like a to-do list to really drum that feeling home on a regular basis.

I'm to going to write any more about it now, because it seems much more difficult to launch off on a flight of fancy about to-do lists than it did about the above topic. But suffice to say if you're a person involved in doing anything creatively and feel that time management and efficiency isn't really your strongest suit. Then why not have a little look at this free ebook on the subject and see if you find it at all enlightening.

I know I did.

Toodle pip for now. Laters.