Carrot versus stick

Conversation 1:
"I'm not having a lot of luck with women at the moment," emailed my most indecently beautiful male friend* this morning. "At all. I haven't gotten any in ages."
"Don't be ridiculous," I emailed back. "You're indecently beautiful: you're just being a fussy britches." (I can say this, you see, because he's Australian, lives on the other side of the world and I will probably never see him again. You can say what you like in that situation.)
"I'm not," he electronically-sighed back. "And you're always drunk when we're together, which is why you think that I'm hot."
"Once," I messaged. "Once! I was tipsy once, and it was your fault because you kept buying drinks. Anyway, you are hot: my friends need smelling salts whenever they see you. So stop being daft, please."
"Okay," he said. "When you get this job, can I come to your island and be your pool-boy please? For the whole six months?"
"Sure," I said, thinking: I'll just turn the automatic pool-filter off.

Conversation 2:
"We'd like to meet up with you," two literary agents said last week. "To read your stuff. We think we like it. But... well, if you got this job... that's a whole different story. We'd sign you on the spot."
"Umm," I replied. "Thanks?"

Conversation 3:
"God," I said this morning, looking up at the sky. "Tell me to mind my own business, but I'd like to just clarify something."
"What?" said God, amiably.
"Well," I continued, "I can't help but notice that if I get this job, I get the most beautiful island in the world for six months, space and time to write - as much as I want, as often as I want - every single day, a book deal, a sea to swim in, new friends to make, enough money to move out when I get home and the most beautiful man I know as my pool-boy."
"Right."
"And if I don't get this job, I get to live in my dad's spare room, stuffing envelopes for a living, writing in my lunch-breaks, no book deal, the local urine-coated pool to swim in, and no beautiful man at all."
"Right."
"It's a bit all-or-nothing, isn't it?" I pointed out.
"You could see it that way, yes," God said kindly.
There was a pause.
"Not that I'm complaining," I said eventually, "but do you think it's fair to be dangling so many carrots in front of one little donkey's nose?"
"Probably not," God said, chuckling, "but it's awfully funny to watch, don't you think?"


He's got a dry sense of humour, that one, but the best Gods do. Anyway, I think he might be right. I don't want to laugh at it all, but I can't help myself.

The carrot is always better than the stick, after all.




* who I am obviously slightly in love with - in a look-but-don't-touch kind of way - but that goes without saying. He doesn't read this Blog, luckily.