Rattle Your Dags!

Tags

Berrima, callipyge, camelids, Deborah Robson, Edward III, Emmerdale, House of Lords, Lord Chancellor, New Zealand rugby team, riggwelter, Six Nations, The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, The Merchant of Venice, The Speaker, vicunas, Woolsack, World Alternative games

Off to lunch with Brassica and the two husbands.  Decided on The

Woolpack.  It is fairly local and therefore the males can free

themselves from their jesses, to adopt a falconry metaphor, and

can escape early in the afternoon, to watch both Six Nations rugby

games.

The Woolpack.  Hmmm.  Isn’t that the stuffed seat in The House of

Lords which the speaker sits on?  In the fourteenth century,

Edward III thought that if his Lord Chancellor sat on it in council,

then it would remind everyone of the importance of the wool

trade.

The joke is that, in 1938, it was found to be padded with

horsehair.  So, our present equine scam is not the first.

But, as Brassie informed me, we were not going to The Woolsack.

There is a difference between sacks and packs?  And padding/

stuffing?

Being a convert to the revived craft of knitting, she told me about

The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook by Dorothy Robson, which

features more than 200 animals and their fibers.

(Don’t you just hate American spelling?  I mean over here.)

Fleece and Fiber -the title sounds a bit like that breakfast cereal

that I eat to prevent bowel cancer.  It’s quite edible with

supplementary prunes, but I digress.

All this spinning and toiling; it’s not Brassie’s usual

bent. Well, apparently fibres can be removed and spun from

camelids and vicunas, whatever they are.  She will probably knit

me a scratchy scarf for my birthday.  Lucky me.  I suppose I can tell

her that I’m allergic to lanolin.

We were going to have to rush back to the telly for the Wales/ Italy

Game, indigestion or not.

For this was serious. No, it wasn’t a competition to trial

individuals, to see them showcase their personal

fitness, by rushing up and down 1:4 gradients with a stuffed sack

on their backs, as is an annual tradition in Gemau Byd

Arallddewisol – World Alternative Games.

But, look you, the Italians might as well have been bulky bales, as

evidenced by their subsequent complete trouncing. Maybe the weird

Celtic training has come in handy.

You know, I said.  I always get mixed up between woolpacks and

woolsacks.  Wasn’t The Woolpack a fictional pub on Emmerdale?

Yes, replied a Husband, but I don’t think the one we are going to

today is run by anyone called Chastity.

Husband 2, emboldened by the sarcasm of Numero Uno, and slightly

edgy in case he missed the first few minutes of the match, added:

Yes, you wouldn’t want to patronise that particular hostelry, as in

 1993 there was a plane crash which destroyed its wine bar and

killed off trapped punters.

Warming to the theme of carnage, the other offered more dramatic

detail than was probably in the original series, which wasn’t too

hard:  

Yes, in 2003 it was struck by lightning and a chimney fell down and

killed Tricia Dingle.

(These chaps seem to have retained a lot of televisual, nay, soap

operatic facts.  Maybe it is because they have slouched around for

decades, watching everything and anything that pops up on the

screen.)

Should we be going to a pub with the same name? asked Brassie

nervously.

Don’t be superstitious, I interjected.  There are thousands of pubs

called The Woolsack -I mean Woolpack.

Brassie was worried that her GPS might be confused.  Her

navigational skills are somewhat challenged, revealing her lack

of an inner compass.

Cosmo, her husband, laughed. Well, even you can’t drive to The

Woolpack in the Berrima district of Australia.

Why are you mentioning that one? I asked.

Oh, the barmaid identified a serial axe murderer- a bushranger,

who drank there.

Cosmo! You are putting me off my lunch! implored Brassie, driving

a little erratically, even for her.

But it didn’t put me off mine.  Afterwards I kept thinking about

sheep terminology and Shakespearean quotations, such as wooly

breeders and eanlings and tainted wethers of the flock.  Good old

Merchant of Venice- maybe my favourite play.

When the guys were watching the matches-plural!-I looked up

some sheep terminology, just to have something useful to do.

I discovered and immediately liked the graphic New Zealand

expression, Rattle your dags! which basically is a rude way of

inviting someone to be less dilatory.

(Dags are the bits of unmentionable which attach themselves to

the fluffy hindquarters of sheep.)  Probably the New Zealand rugby

team are familiar with this exhortation.

Brassie was less enthusiastic.

And, having over-eaten at The Woolpack, I could imagine being

described as callipyge: apparently this refers to a natural genetic

mutation which produces over-developed hindquarters.

Alternatively, or additionally, maybe I was falling into the category

of a riggwelter.  This is a sheep that has fallen on its back with its

feet stuck in the air, demonstrating an inability to right itself

owing to its heavy fleece.

I knew that I shouldn’t have shared a muffin the other day and

now I have consumed a bowl of handcut chips.  So, if I don’t want

to resemble a bulging woolsack, perhaps I should desist from

stuffing myself any further.

 

 

 

 

 

Not Bovvered

Tags

Anglo the Musical, Anglo-Irish bank, Bargain Hunt, Canada geese, Danny Boyle, David Barby, David Cameron, Elysian Quartet, FT, House of Lords, House of Lords Reform, Ian McEwan, Lysistrata, Mastermind, MI5, Nick Clegg, Pointless, Stockhausen, Togo

Saturday, 25^th August

Pouring.  Stayed in and read Lunch with the FT.  Ian McEwan has brought out a new book, so he was being wined and dined. On a previous occasion, he remarked, he married his interviewer.  No pressure then.  He explained that he had once applied for a job with MI5, online, and ended up by having to answer questions on the migratory patterns of Canada Geese.  I became over-excited as this is a topic I have mentioned before in my blog and so I might have been in with a chance. It is another topic useful for Pointless or Mastermind general knowledge section.

(I really must apply to be a contestant soon.  Once I met David Barby, entirely by accident, I hasten to add, and he commented that I would be good on Bargain Hunt, but I told him that I thought the mandatory fleeces were a bit last century.)

The frequency of spotting helicopters in the skies might not have been anything to do with Prince William after all.  It might have had everything to do with rehearsals for Stockhausen’s Mittwoch aus Licht, even if I hadn’t necessarily only seen them on a Wednesday.

We have had to wait seventeen years for a full premiere.  Four members of The Elysian Quartet- well, there would be four in a quartet, wouldn’t there?-went up singly, in separate helicopters, and made a scraping noise which was beamed down to four screens at ground level.  Nine soloists played on trapezes.  There were long periods of silence and nothingness which puzzled the audience, just as had been a feature of the Olympic ceremonies.  It was meant to be an outpouring of the ego on an intergalactic scale.  So, something in common with Danny Boyle productions, then?

Remaining on the musical theme, I see that Dublin theatregoers are buying tickets for Anglo: the Musical, which is about the Anglo-Irish Bank and its role in boom and bust.  The tagline is: because all it takes is a few muppets to screw an entire country.  We have to wait till November for the opening, and I expect they will be able to add a few more song and dances numbers to the show by then.

I see that women in Togo are denying their men sexual favours, in order to encourage reform.  Maybe they read the Lysistrata over there.  Already Nick Clegg is being inspired and is refusing to get into bed with David Cameron, metaphorically speaking, unless he is granted House of Lords reform.  Unfortunately, Cameron is so not bovvered.

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