Marley was dead: to begin with.
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
*****
I love a story with a good moral, the type of story with a bad character who turns good; it’s a formula based on the possibility that no one is without hope. I read such stories to be spurred on. The film Groundhog Day gives me the same buzz: Phil the weatherman is a modern Scrooge who cares for no one and shares nothing. Yet against their will, both Phil and Scrooge learn how good generosity can feel. Of course, my hopes are bridled by the fiction of Scrooge being shown, in one night, the cause and effect of his misery…
