As so often is the case, when I started to think about what to write about in today’s blog post, I came up a complete blank. My mind was about as empty of ideas as the milk bottles on the doorstep in the top picture are of milk.
And now I have that image there, I shall pause on the threshold to contemplate the joys of the English language, which allows us to differentiate so clearly between a milk bottle and a bottle of milk. The distinction could be made, of course, by using prepositions – “a bottle for” rather than “a bottle of” – but I think the way we do it is better.
Moving on, the next picture features something that looks suspiciously like a milk bottle of orange juice, which begins to be a little odd.
I do hope someone fetched those bottles in before the sun crept farther round and the contents curdled.
And that hint of sunshine leads me on to my next digression – if you can have a digression from a route that was never actually planned – where I consider things that sit on doorsteps.
The most natural collocations, I think, would be milk bottles and cats. But on a recent walk, I found this little fellow calmly enjoying the sunshine and waiting to be claimed.
In fact, from milk bottles, to milk, to a monkey, today’s photos were chosen because, having no other inspiration, I skimmed back through recent photos to find “all manner of things that begin with the letter M.”
That’s why the final picture is a marigold.
I do like quotes on the blog to be accurate, so I’ve just checked, and in fact the dormouse told Alice that the three sisters, who were learning to draw, “drew all manner of things — everything that begins with an M —”
When I went looking for the correct wording for the quote, I found the reassuring words of Julian of Norwich: “In the end all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
I don’t think she was talking about a treacle well, though.
don't confuse the narrator 
Nice post.
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