The berries are just now at their brightest in the variegated holly tree at the entrance to the Grove.Who will join me on a cyber picnic? You have only to bring a location - all locations will be shared and infinitely interchangeable. Food and drink? Never mind the expense. Everything is virtual. For the time being my contribution is a tortilla espagnola, a Spanish omelet (eggs, onion and potato), which you cut into wedges, rather like a cake, and which is delightful eaten cold, and works well as finger food, essential for a picnic. To go with it, Krug Champagne, bottles and bottles of it.
Where were the three anthologies of poetry and pictures called Voices and published by Penguin Education, for schools, which I had loved for years because of the freshness and oddness of choice. I look everywhere for them. I think for a time that I may have given them to a grand child. Then, today, I find them shuffled on to an alien shelf. I'm suddenly glad that I didn't give way to a generous urge in this instance. Where else would I find, from Child's Bouncing Song by Tony Connor,
"Who're the gentry
Down our entry -
Mrs Smith's got two T. V.'s
What if her coat
Is a fur coat,
All her kids are full of fleas".?
6 comments:
Picnic sounds lovely, I'll have to poke around the kitchen and see what I have first...
That rhyme sounds almost Mother Goose-ish! There are so many absolutely silly nonsensical ones beyond the well-known ones that I wonder how they ever got published.
zhen. Remember it's a virtual picnic. The ingredients can be what you fancy rather than what you have.
marja-leena. I think that children love the sound of words, though very often they may know little of their meaning, and may in fact imagine meanings which they do not have. Sometimes, though, as in this case they manage to draw in shrewd social observations. Hence for me, at any rate, the attractions of such rhymes which revive some of the mystery and excitement of childhood.
Lovely photograph, lovely post.
Lindemann's Limestone Ridge shiraz cabernet, 1978 (check the limit on your virtual credit card first) together with escalope de veau à la Zagreb as served to a predominantly German clientele at a cafe in Crikvenica, the former Yugoslavia, in 1965. Location: on the beach at Cape Foulwind, west coast NZ South Island. Essential extra: someone sober to drive the car back along that road.
I love the picnic. Your Spanish omelette sounds wonderful, I haven't made one for ages and may now be moved to do so. But where shall we have it?
I think this may provide much matter for mental wanderings.
I was of the 'Voices' generation, at least at my primary school, but then went on to a more old-fashioned private secondary school where I think the books might have been considered rather riskily progressive. One never seemed to see old copies of them around, perhaps they just wore out in school libraries.
Post a Comment