The Orzipanikanitkcz*

I've purposefully left this post to after noon because I've got into enough trouble this April Fool. I sent out an email to my walking group saying we should start 5.30am walks, but they seemed to think I was just being extra bossy which has got me worried now that I've taken my self-appointed leadership too far.

However, there's a story, The Faery Handbag, in the excellent and fantastical collection of short stories by Kelly Link:



which takes a magic handbag as its central theme. The handbag (made from the skin of a dog who still lives inside) was used by the narrator's grandmother to keep safe the whole village in Baldeziwurlekistan when raiding parties came calling, but they just stayed there. So while one half of the bag is big enough to hold 'a chicken, a egg, and a cooking pot', the other half is made large enough

'to hold all of the village and all of the people under the hill and mountains and forests and seas and rivers and lakes and orchards and a sky and stars and spirits and fabulous monsters and sirens and dragons and dryads and mermaids and beasties and all the little gods that the Baldeziwurlekistanians and the people under the hill worshipped.'

Trouble is that the narrator's boyfriend, Jake, pops into the handbag one day to have a look, and she can't get him out. I thought about this story again when I saw this photograph of Katie Holmes. Surely she's got at least a couple of ex-boyfriends in there, not to mention a whole range of Baldeziwurlekistanian gods?



*Orzipanikanitkcz = the bag of skin where the world lives.