Thought For The Day

Tags

aigret, Bad Hair Day, Barbara Cartland, davenport, dawn chorus, evil eye, fallaid, Farming Today, hammer drill, Harper Beckham, insomnia, John Humphrys, Land of Nod, lemming, Lionel Blair, Lionel Blue, Mary Wollstonecraft, Monty Panesar, Monty Python, murrain, National Anthem, Prayer for the Day, Rip Van Winkle, Sailing By, sauna, Shipping Forecast, struan, terminal moraine, Thought for the Day, World Service

(Mary Wollstonecraft: Wikipaedia.)

Carrie wandered into Costamuchamoulah must-seen cafe just as I

was ordering.

What’s that you are having?  she asked.

Struan nouveau, I replied.  Do you want to share?

It rings a bell.  What’s in it?

Cranberries, bilberries and caraway seeds.  It’s traditional-from

Scotland, you know.

Oh, it’s that thing the eldest daughter used to have to bake in the

Hebrides.

I’ll have a piece myself. Hi! I’ll have what she’s having.

(The latter was addressed to the baristress, who tried not to

laugh.)

What about fallaid? Do they serve that?  Carrie followed the counter with

her eyes.

No.  That was the meal leftovers which were put into a footless stocking

and flicked over the flocks to ward off the murrain.

Murrain.. Such a pretty name.

No, Carrie.  Don’t get broody now that you have got them all off to school.

Anyway, murrain was a kind of plague.  It was an animal disease.  In fact,

etymologically, it meant death, literally.

Like terminal moraine?  We did that in geography many moons ago.

Yes, well, fallaid also helped to protect you from the evil eye.

It would come in handy when you have to run the gauntlet of collecting your

kids from the school yard, Carrie remarked.  Actually it sounds like some kind

of subjunctive of the French verb falloir.  You remember: il faut etcetera?

Actually, I can’t think very clearly at all just now, I sighed.

What’s wrong?

Well, I am not sleeping.  Once I waken at about four, that’s it.

Do you get up?

I used to listen to The World Service and half doze off, but now they have this

really annoying clattery jingle thing before the news items.  It is so

raucous and repetitive.  It gets into your brain like a hammer drill.  I don’t

get back to sleep sometimes until Farming Today.

They should realise that nocturnal listeners are just wanting to have a gentle

white noise to lull them back into the Land of Nod, agreed Carrie.  Do you get

off to sleep all right when you retire?

Oh, The Shipping Forecast is brilliant for that.  I don’t like Sailing By and

 The National Anthem is a bit military, but you kind of respect that and it gives

you a Pavlovian emotional closure, I dare say.

You should write in and complain about the awful racket.

Well, I like Thought for the Day and Prayer for the Day and somehow, when

you wake up to John Humphrys, you feel soothed, even as you fall off a fiscal

cliff along with all the other lemmings.

I bet his wife doesn’t feel like that, retorted Carrie.

What? Like a lemming? She doesn’t have to see him first thing in the

morning, so it probably saves their marriage.  He looks like the antithesis of

Rip Van Winkle- ie/ as if he hasn’t slept for seventy odd years.

Thought for the Day represents people from all the different religions,

doesn’t it? Carrie said.

Oh yes.  (I am beginning to sound like that Churchill dog)  They had Lionel

Blue, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs too, I confirmed.

Hmm, I used to like Sikhs until that Monty Python guy, the cricketer,

urinated inappropriately.  I think he was a bad role model, though I think

those turbans would be brilliant for a Bad Hair Day.

Panesar. Don’t overgeneralise, I cautioned her.  We have had Black Swan

conversations before.  Anyway, I agree that the turbans might have their

uses.

Yes, agreed Carrie.  They’re very now.  Celebrities put them on their babies.

I bet Harper Beckham has quite a few to choose from.

I don’t think they’d suit me, I reflected.  Too Alexander Pope-cum-Mary

Wollstonecraft.

But you remind me of her, Carrie said.  Actually, turbans were very

Barbara Cartland too.

Well, I am not about to attend an Assembly Room any time soon,

complete with nodding aigret feather, swaying to the beat of a

chamber orchestra.

You, or the feather?

Oh, shut up!

So, what have you got against turbans?  I thought you could wear one and

cultivate that dreamy, faraway look, sitting poised with a quill in your hand,

composing a proto-feminist treatise at your davenport.

Well, it’s not my headgear of choice, ever since I came across an old dear in a

Leeds sauna, saving on her central heating and sweating it out, stark naked

except for her turban.  She actually accused me of sitting on her heart pills.

It was probably a shower cap, anyway.

And were you?  You know, sitting on them? Carrie enquired, a tad

aggressively, I thought.

No!  I’d have felt them under my folded towel, surely?

Depends.  If you were a princess, or not.  Also if you were less pneumatic

than you are now.

How very dare you! I swatted her with a Suttonford Weekly.

Anyway, Carrie laughed, surely the World Service is preferable to your

husband’s snoring.

Just give me the dawn chorus, I agreed.

But not too many aigrets, Carrie quipped.

Precisely.  I haven’t heard Rabbi Lionel Blair for a while, come to think of it.

Blue, corrected Carrie.

I can’t think straight.  It’s my insomnia, I yawned.

Counting the Count

Tags

Count von Count, Countess Backwards, Countess Dahling von Dahling, Guy Smiley, Hunter virus, Jerry Nelson, Kirstie Allsopp, Marbella, Sesame Street, Sesame Street Muppets, The Tempest, Thought for the Day, Wallis Simpson

Dull and cool, but dry.  I suppose we should count our blessings.  At least we are not burnt to cinders in Marbella or incubating Hunter virus contracted from a holiday stay in log cabins in Yosemite.

Don’t you just hate smug people telling you to count your blessings- especially when you are sinking into The Slough of Despond and they are planning their third cruise in as many months?

But, if you were Count von Count from Sesame Street, you would adore enumerating the little positives in your day-to-day existence. Imagine him having a literal field day at the County Show when La Allsopp enters her baking efforts in all four categories:

One, two camera crews,

three,  four becoming a bore;

five, six, old dog; old tricks; 

seven, eight- rabbits a-mate;

nine, ten a big fat hen

has just waltzed off with all the prizes.

The Count’s bats were called Grisha, Misha, Sasha and Tatiana.  Their names will shortly be appearing in a kindergarten near you.  He also had a cat called Fatatita.  Maybe he was not keen on Kirstie A.

The Count’s girlfriends were Countess Backwards- don’t worry, she liked to count in reverse. This could have earned her positive discrimination in any Maths exam, as evidence of Special Needs.

His other enamorata was Countess Dahling von Dahling and she was last seen entering Costamuchamoulah in Suttonford, where she ordered a Wallis Simpson latte.  Plenty of The Anything People frequent such establishments- you know, the faceless muppets who could be anything you wanted them to be: Guy Smiley or, the lavender ones, such as Smart Tina, or the Various Kids.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:

The Count used to hypnotise people by waving his hand and stunning them.  Surely the police might study this technique to prevent them from shoving helpless, old newspaper sellers to the ground?

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

Bears of Very Little Brain

Tags

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.

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.

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

All Things Lavenderial

Tags

Andy Murray, Bradley Wiggins, Chlamydia, Clydeside, coffee, Glasgow, lavender, London 2012, Michael Phelps, Novak Djokovic, Olympics, Roger Federer, Sarah Montague’, Thought for the Day, Warren Buffet

You could sit in the sun, but there was a wind. I suggested to my friend Chlamydia that we should go to an alternative venue for those all-important coffees.

There is a barn with surrounding lavender fields which sells all things lavenderial – wreaths, scrubs, oils, essential and non-essential, cake, shortbread and lilac furbelows.  Actually they stock pink, white and tufted green plants as well and someone told me that they had supplied floral spikes for the Olympic bouquets.  They probably supply some for the local Hyacinth Bouquets too.  Chlamydia, or Clammie, as she prefers to be known, caught them out, though, by asking for lavender which suited a north-facing position.  It was worthy of Gardeners’ Question Time from Sparsholt College.  Of course, she knew the answer and she also knew that it was only available on the Isle of Wight, so there!

Then I quizzed them as to whether the lavender in the shortbread was definitely of the edible variety.  I was a little nervous since they hadn’t known the answer to the north-facing question.

After a cyclist had been run over by a bus containing the media, Wiggins had lent his support to the cause of compelling cyclists to wear helmets.  Some smart arse had objected and recommended that more people should simply get on their bikes and go onto the roads and there would be safety in numbers.  I could only think of huge flocks of Canada geese, where the outriders were picked off by preying predators, yet a percentage made it through to sunnier climes, or to more wintry ones, depending on the birds in question. We are supposed to be worth more to God than the fall of a sparrow, I pondered.  I had heard that assurance on Thought for the Day.  I thought that more academics should listen in, if they weren’t too exasperated with Sarah Montague in the rest of the programme. They might learn something.

Andy eliminated Djokovic in a very short time and then actually smiled.  Roger, looking very fetching in the colours of his country’s flag, played the longest Olympic tennis semi-final ever, against a very smart Argentinian.  When Roger nipped off for a comfort break, I myself was relieved that the Argy guy did not unfurl a banner about the liberation of the Malvinas, though that was the second publicity opportunity that they had missed.

I was disappointed in Roger’s wife, however.  She was wearing a baseball cap- and I remembered what that had done to William Hague’s credibility- and she was chewing, as if she was Alex Ferguson. My granny had always told me off for chewing in public though she had come from Clydeside.  So, I shuddered to think what part of Glasgow Alex had come from.  At any rate, cud regurgitation was not a cool look and I felt it was unworthy of the consort of the glacial elegance of Federer.

At a crucial match point a baby had started yelling and I had felt that stab of maternal anxiety that can ruin a day out or an evening meal for adults.  I was glad when it was silenced- perhaps by an usher asking if it had its own ticket, or was merely related to a ball boy or girl.  Just as well it hadn’t squawked at Andy’s match, or his mum might have dealt with it very efficiently off camera- see Scottish play.

I watched the women’s ten thousand metres race and found it amusing to see the four Africans overtake the others who were visually ahead, but who were in lap arrears.  They had to avoid a big Polish(?) guy who had chucked a cannonball an amazing distance.  He had the bad manners to run across their track.  Had he tripped they would have had to hurdle over him, like negotiating some kind of beached whale.  Then it was the turn of pregnant wives and excited children to swarm over the track.  It was getting like the rush hour.

On the radio I had heard someone quoting Warren Buffet, who commented that when the tide recedes you can see those who are swimming naked. I wondered if there was a wave machine in the Olympic pool.  It would be quite interesting to flick a switch.  However, they all seemed to favour those lycra long johns – even Michael Phelps – pity.