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Candia Comes Clean

~ Candid cultural comments from the Isles of Wonder

Tag Archives: Christopher Robin

Noisy Neighbours

19 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by Candia in Humour, Literature, Social Comment, Suttonford, Theatre

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Archbishop of Canterbury, Bing Crosby, boobs, catwalk, Christopher Robin, Duchess of Cambridge, husband, Mark Tully, Piglet, Prince William, Rowan Williams, Something Understood, St Andrews University

There is something funny going on here!  I have just remembered that Kate Middleton paraded down a catwalk at St Andrews University, wearing a transparent dress, possibly to deliberately attract Wills’ attention.  So should she turn on the coyness now?  Or is it suddenly immoral for journalists to intimately reveal her to the world since she has acquired an elevated status? Maybe it is all to do with the timing of disclosure being down to an individual’s personal choice.  (see Gottes Zeit below.)

Anyway, there is nothing worse than people becoming bored with your boobs.  Unless it is becoming incensed with noisy neighbours.  Now the two topics in this paragraph should be great tags for anyone’s blog!

I’m only getting round to discussing the latest Something Understood, presented by Mark Tully, on Radio 4, as it has taken me nearly three days to recover from the emotional wreckage and sleep deprivation inflicted by my noisy neighbours in the early hours of Sunday morning.

The theme of the programme was based on the quotation: Is Discretion the Better Part of Valour?

This struck a chord as I deliberated whether to simmer once again with suppressed rage at anti-social nocturnal activities.

Yes, dear readers, even in sleepy Suttonford where the local rag will report a missing budgie on the front page and scintillating evening classes may revolve around the crocheting of loo roll holders, there is still a serpent in Eden.

You’ll have heard it said that there is no rest for the wicked, but this has been amended to simply: there is no rest.

The rasping cackle of a female laugh which resembled the onomatopoeic rapid rifle’s rattle from the trenches, as described by The War Poets, cut through glazing and blinds and permeated the bedroom as noxiously as a gas attack.

I had been listening to Tully discussing whether Falstaff’s discretion was in fact comic cowardice.  This query was juxtaposed alongside the lyrics of a song:

You can stand me up at the gates of hell:

I wouldn’t back down.

I won’t be turned around;

Gonna stand my ground.

Thanks for that, I thought.  Go, girl, and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

Different camps had either criticised or praised Archbishop Runcie for being indecisive.  Sometimes, he had seemed to think, it could be helpful to nail one’s colours to the fence.  Compromise is not necessarily weak.

Personally, as I flew out of the back door into the garden, I must confess that I felt like nailing some people to the fence, possibly with a staple gun.

In the past I had been indecisive. I’d compromised. Okay, so President Kennedy had avoided a Nuclear Armageddon by masterly indecision.  Elizabeth I’s foreign policy had been marked by procrastination.  But one day she decided to cut off her cousin’s head.

Bing Crosby smarmily sang: I surrender, dear. I could still hear it in my mind.  I immediately repulsed the thought and replaced it with a reminder of the philosophy of Pooh and Friends. Even Piglet did not avoid confrontation and he was accorded the highest praise for his bravery.

Pooh:  Did Piglet tremble?  Did he blinch? [sic]

Piglet:  I-I thought I did blinch a little.  Just at first!

Pooh: You only blinched inside, and that’s the bravest way for a very small Animal not to blinch..

So, I went out into the garden and I tried not to blinch. I bellowed as if I was a very big Animal. I told them to behave themselves in no uncertain terms.

Dr Rowan Williams PC, DPhil, DD, FBA the 104th...

Rowan Williams spoke next.  No, not in my garden.  He wasn’t behind a bush, burning or otherwise.  He had been on the programme too.  I could still hear his voice:

Don’t lose touch with both sides in the conflict, so people keep speaking.

Would he mediate?  I couldn’t imagine him approaching the rowdies in his mitre and dalmatics.  Presumably, at that time of night even the Archbishop of Canterbury would wear pyjamas.  Mind you, they would probably take as much notice of him as if he was wearing the invisibility cloak we have discussed in previous posts.

Rowan had said that one should never be tempted to be seen to be doing something decisive in order to gain approval.

No, I think I am safe there.  Approval is not going to be an outcome.

Then The Archbishop chided with a caveat:

Who carries the cost of what I say or do?   

a)   Others.  Well, they don’t seem to be affected at all, so that is that.

b)  Myself.  Yes, the Husband knows that I won’t be able to sleep for the rest of the night as I will be emotionally wrecked.

But, Rowan is encouraging here.  If I alone am to bear the cost of any decision to stand up and be counted, then, what is there to be afraid of, so long as I can cope with myself afterwards?

I can cope.  I can cope.

So, BELT UP, WILL YOU?!

Tully inserted an interesting little poem at this juncture about a cautious man whose relations made some kind of life assurance claim on his demise.  However, they were told that they were due no payout, as, since he had never lived, he could not have been considered to have died.

Vivamus, mea  Lesbia , vivamus.  Let’s live then, baby.

Shuddup!

Rowan counselled that the fear of God was the beginning of wisdom.  There is a proper fear which acknowledges that you know to whom you are answerable.  So… forgive me, God, but, I mean it …  Shuddupayaface!

In Zimbabwe, eight years ago, a Harare bishop proved his loyalty to Mugabe.  Why hadn’t Archbishop Rowan DONE SOMETHING ABOUT IT?

Ah, said Rowan, because if I had denounced him, it would have handed him a weapon.  So, instead I listened to J S Bach’s Gottes Zeit – God’s Timing.

Okay, I have listened to the noisy ones for twelve years, off and on, so now seems like a pretty good time, deo volente, of course…

Quiet!

Were they?  Yes, eventually.  After making the point that it was in their own time.

So, was valour the better part of discretion, or vice versa?

Ask me next weekend.  Otherwise I send in Piglet, aka the Husband.  That’ll make ‘em blinch.  (Not)

Husband is like Christopher Robin:

What I like doing best is Nothing….just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.

Bother.

So, Husband, dear, what are you going to do?

Oh, nothing.

He is for Discretion and I am for Valour.

But I am his Better Half, so:

Shurrup!!!

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012

Piglet (Winnie-the-Pooh)

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Bears of Very Little Brain

27 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by Candia in Education, Humour, Literature, News, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, Social Comment

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Alexander Beetle, Alice in Wonderland, All Shall have Prizes, Christopher Robin, Cottleston Pie, Dr Giles Fraser, Eeyore, genealogy, Jesus, John Tyerman Williams, Malt extract, Pooh and the Philosophers, Popper, Prince Harry, Prince William, St Paul’s Cathedral, St Swithun's Day, The Prodigal Son, The Queen, Thought for the Day, Tractatus, Winnie-the-Pooh, Wittgenstein

Thursday

Dr Giles Fraser, former Canon Chancellor to St Paul’s Cathedral was on Thought for the Day and he spoke about The Caucus Race in Alice in Wonderland and the Dodo’s ethos of All Shall have Prizes.

Skeleton and model of a dodo

It is forty days after St Swithun’s Day and I must say that we have not had constant rain, so there is a level of truth in the old adage.

Anyway, the Rev Dr declared that rewarding everyone undermined a sense of achievement.  However, success should not influence the degree of parental love.  The Prodigal Son found that the Father’s love was not dependent on his performance.   Dr Fraser spoke about the apparent unfairness of the parable of the workers in the vineyard all receiving the same wages, but explained it as how love behaves.  You can imagine Wills being annoyed that Harry gets away with his signature behaviour while he, closer in line, is expected, as the Elder Brother, to keep his nose clean.

Talking of lines to the throne, isn’t the genealogy bug gripping more and more people?  Apparently, if you go back 30 generations, then you would find that Jesus was related to King David, after all.  But so was every other inhabitant of Israel.

Trees become ever more branched if one widens the search and includes friends and relations, such as Rabbit and Alexander Beetle. Very Small Beetle was obviously staying overnight at Christopher Robin’s at the time of a census, but he may have gone round a gorse bush the wrong way and so disappeared off ancestry.co.uk and the International Genealogical Index.  That was why Rabbit couldn’t find him in subsequent records.

Too many amateur genealogists are not paying sufficient attention to Popper (Sir Karl, 1902-94) and his theory of falsifiability.  He said that no accumulation of instances could prove a theory to be correct.  However, one counter-instance could disprove it, at least partly. Got that?

You see, all swans might be white, but an instance of a black one would falsify the proposition.

We need a conceivable test for our propositions.  So, if we place a Rover robot with a plutonium battery that lasts ten years in a Las Vegas hotel room, we can verify if all Royals are white sheep, or if one black sheep exists.  That means that we can make a scientific judgement. (see Pooh and the Philosophers by John Tyerman Williams, p 103-4)

So, Harry must return to Grandmamma and hear what the Crustimoney Proseedcake is to be, for he is a bear of very little brain and long words probably bother him.  When he is asked why he behaved so stupidly, he will in all likelihood reply:

Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,

Why does a chicken? I don’t know why.

Eeyore could explain the whole sorry activity as Bon-hommy.

The Palace could refer to Wittgenstein and his observation in the Tractatus that what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.

Eventually HM might find a form of words:

Hello, Harry, wasn’t that you?

No, says Harry in a different voice.

Harry, says HM kindly, You haven’t any brain.

I know, says the Prince, humbly and then sort of boffs nervously as he swallows a spoonful of Extract of Malt. It’s just that it’s bad enough, granny, being miserable, what with no presents and no cake and no crown and no proper notice taken of me at all…

Well, now you know how your father feels  We can’t all, and some of us don’t. That’s all there is to it

Can’t all what?

Gaiety..song-and-dance…bon-hommy.. There it is!

So what shall I do with this pole?

Give it back to the nice girl at the club, Harry. These friends – they are the wrong sort of friends..so I should think they would make the wrong sort of headlines.

So, what should I do now, Grandmamma?

Go on an expotition and keep out of trouble

It will rain tonight

Let it come down!

(Exit Harry, pursued but not bare.)

It is going to be squelching over the Bank Holiday Weekend.

Black storm clouds under which a grey sheet of rain is falling on grasslands.

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012

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My name is Candia. Its initial consonant alliterates with “cow” and there are connotations with the adjective “candid.” I started writing this blog in the summer of 2012 and focused on satire at the start.

Interspersed was ironic news comment, reviews and poetry.

Over the years I have won some international poetry competitions and have published in reputable small presses, as well as reviewing and reading alongside well- established poets. I wrote under my own name then, but Candia has taken me over as an online persona. Having brought out a serious anthology last year called 'Its Own Place' which features poetry of an epiphanal nature, I was able to take part in an Arts and Spirituality series of lectures in Winchester in 2016.

Lately I have been experimenting with boussekusekeika, sestinas, rhyme royale, villanelles and other forms. I am exploring Japanese themes at the moment, my interest having been re-ignited by the recent re-evaluations of Hokusai.

Thank you to all my committed followers whose loyalty has encouraged me to keep writing. It has been exciting to meet some of you in the flesh- in venues as far flung as Melbourne and Sydney!

Copyright Notice

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012-2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Candia Dixon Stuart and candiacomesclean.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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