Last night we had an impromptu party. Every Dede and their dog was there. It just happened. Such a typical New Zealand thing. They brought their own drinks and mixed and mingled with everyone. It was really, really pleasant. I had some refreshingly good conversations. Of course there was also criticism. I mentioned that I am finally working on the proposal for the new exhibition and I am nearly finished. I want to have it done and dusted before the silly season starts. All the puppets standing around me at the time were rolling their eyes and Devil said: “It is all about you again. Isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?” I asked “you will be there too.”

“Yes, you will be showing us off!” replied Mouse

“I thought you liked to be on show?”

“Yep, but we are on show and have to do all the hard work, then you get the accolades!” added Sunny. It was obvious they had an axe to grind with me.

In the meantime the noise level had dropped and everyone was listening to our conversation. Suddenly we were  in the centre of a circle and all Dedes were standing around us.

“We would like to do something that is for us, and only for us…” Devil demanded and everybody clapped and cheered.

“You mean without me?” I was a taken aback and was nearly going to say… Give it a go and you will realise it won’t work, but Devil explained further: “No, not without you of course, we know we need you… But something largely run by us and you hold back a bit!”

“Look at the blog” Professor said “people are not interested in your stories. Whenever you feature – sorry, I have to spell this fact out to you – our ‘Likes’ drop!”

“Hang on, when I had my photographs up, we got far more ‘Likes’ than you guys ever got!”

“Shush! Just look at the name of the blog? Your pictures have nothing to do with it. Don’t even go there!”

“Okay what do you want to do then?” I asked.

There was a long silence.

“What about a beauty contest?” Pirate, the entrepreneur, piped up. A beauty contest! – I nearly burst out laughing, but bit my tongue.

But everybody else got quite excited and a big discussion ensued: “Why not? Maybe not a beauty pageant, maybe a talent quest: Dedes got talent or something!”

“We can include our readers….” someone else said and everybody thought it was a brilliant suggestion.

Listening to them I started to warm to the idea. After all, these are very popular formulas. I told them they should work out what they want to do, and let me know. I will see to it that it happens.

What do you think?