Pollyanna Bogle...

...a nickname given to me a while back, and which I love.

I started to use it, because I loved the film "Pollyanna" as a child. Remember it? First film I remember watching, at a cinema in the London suburbs, one summer half-term.   Based on a children's story written in America in the 1900s...the film starred Hayley Mills as orphan Pollyanna from an impoverished family who goes to live with a grim great-aunt.  Pollyanna's late father, a missionary, had taught his little girl "the glad game". The Bible tells us to rejoice over 150 times. The key is to find something about which to be glad, even in a grim situation...

Easy to sneer, and lots of people did when the film came out, and do now.

When I was accused  of being a Pollyanna, I thought it was done with affection and fun, and was rather touched.  Only later discovered it was meant to be nasty: the idea was to attack Joanna and denounce her joy.  Ooops. Too late by then... I was using the name and enjoying it. My Iron Lady moment...

I don't always publish nasty Comments on this Blog - but I always read them, as I have always done with letters (death-threats, the lot!) that I've received over the years. Playing the Glad Game doesn't make you immune from insults, but you see them in perspective.

And, PS: Watch the film. Pollyanna wins. That's the whole point.