Today is the sixth birthday of one of my nephews, and I've sewed him a fleece body pillow in the shape of a Great White Shark (well, Great Camo Shark, actually). Here it is, pre-bagging: While working on it, I was reminded of a poem by Kate Coomes called "Shark" which is found in her 2012 children's book, Water Sings Blue: I really like the evocative words of this poem: the "broken-glass grin" and the shark's movement in the water "like a rumor, like a sneer" for example. I certainly hope, though, that mine's not quite as sinister-looking as the one Coomes describes.
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Yesterday I attended a Mother's Day tea with my mum and two of my sisters. It was a a fun time, with good food and lots of stories honouring our mothers. And today we're taking Mum out for lunch after attending my niece's dedication at my brother's church, which always holds its baby dedications on Mother's Day. In honour of the day, I thought I'd share Gerald Durrell's tribute to his mother. Gerald Durrell was a well known British naturalist who in 1956 wrote My Family And Other Animals, an extremely humorous account of the five years his family spent living in Corfu when he was a boy. It is an autobiographical work, though somewhat exaggerated for comedic effect, and contains a lot of irreverent anecdotes about his older brother Lawrence Durrell, who became quite a famous author. At the time, Gerald's family included not just Lawrence, but also his sister Margo, brother Leslie, and his mother who insisted that he make it clear that she was a widow, because "you never know what people might think." Gerald Durrell dedicated the book to his mother in a typically tongue-in-cheek, yet obviously sincere and affectionate way: "I should like to pay a special tribute to my mother, to whom this book is dedicated. Like a gentle, enthusiastic, and understanding Noah, she has steered her vessel full of strange progeny through the stormy seas of life with great skill, always faced with the possibility of mutiny, always surrounded by the dangerous shoals of overdraft and extravagance, never being sure that her navigation would be approved by the crew, but certain that she would be blamed for anything that went wrong. That she survived the voyage is a miracle, but survive it she did, and, moreover, with her reason more or less in tact. As my brother Larry rightly points out, we can be proud of the way we have brought her up; she is a credit to us." Happy Mother's Day!Related Posts: The other day, I ran into a slight acquaintance who was buying ribbon and some other supplies because she was holding a May Day party and was setting up a maypole. I didn't know people still did that sort of thing, but apparently so. When I got home, I read up on it a little, including Jonathan Swift's 1725 poem which I've included below. The second part of the poem refers to the Reformation in England, when maypole dances in England were outlawed for being "a heathenish vanity, generally abused to superstition and wickedness." (Long Parliament's 1644 ordinance). When the Restoration occurred in 1660, maypoles started popping up again. A MaypoleDeprived of root, and branch, and rind,
Yet flowers I bear of every kind: And such is my prolific power, They bloom in less than half an hour; Yet standers-by may plainly see They get no nourishment from me. My head with giddiness goes round, And yet I firmly stand my ground; All over naked I am seen, And painted like an Indian queen. No couple-beggar in the land E'er join'd such numbers hand in hand. I join'd them fairly with a ring; Nor can our parson blame the thing. And though no marriage words are spoke, They part not till the ring is broke: Yet hypocrite fanatics cry, I'm but an idol raised on high; And once a weaver in our town, A damn'd Cromwellian, knock'd me down. I lay a prisoner twenty years, And then the jovial cavaliers To their old post restored all three-- I mean the church, the king, and me. |
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