Unfortunately, I didn’t marry a frog prince… but I did the next best thing and married the brother of a frog – well, not exactly a frog but definitely not a toad; he was a “Roast Beef” who married a frog, has lived with frogs for most of his life, and has a frog sprog, so by my reckoning my brother-in-law can be counted as a frog, albeit with a small “f”  (which doesn’t mean feeble, rather, fairly froggy). At any rate, Glynn lives in Le Conquet, Brittany, and speaks Froggish or French (si vous preferrez). Oh I do so love l’accent de grenouilles (so much more pleasant than an accent on miserable toads, which, incidentally, should never be kissed).

Whilst I’m on the subject of frogs, I’ll remind you that our friend Roland in Australia is a bit of a frog – no, he’s not French, just a bit of a frog… as the photographs taken a few months ago will prove (I was visiting his pad at the time).

To be honest, the main reason for the frog angle to my blog today is because I have a frog joke from none other than Roly.

An Unusual Pick-up Line

Before bringing me a cup of tea in bed this morning Chris received this request for accommodation on our Airbnb site (Chris answers to Sally in this instance because we share management of our site):

“Hi Sally,

I’m registered for a four day training at the Sea School of Embodiment. As of right now, I’m just booking this for myself only. If my friend also joins the training, I may want her to stay with me. I will be sure to keep you updated, if you accept me.”

Annabelle (from New York)

Delighted to have an inquiry from America, Chris wrote back:

Dear Annabelle,

Thanks for your inquiry, and it ‘s lovely to hear from you. Yes, I’m happy to say we’re clear for the dates you want, so Chris and I would be delighted to host you for the duration of your training course – I must say I hadn’t heard of the Sea School of Embodiment – sounds fascinating! There would be absolutely no problem if your friend decides to come too – it makes no difference to the cost, or to us, we love having people. July is usually pretty good weather-wise here, so hopefully you’d be coming at lovely time of year..but no promises, of course – This is England! We greatly enjoy visitors from all over the world through Airbnb, and we love the variety of types of people. Just read your reviews, and you sound very much like our sort of person, so I really hope you decide to come and stay with us! I can pre-approve your booking, just let me know. Hope to hear back from you shortly.

All the best,

Sally (Well, we are interchangeable; like threads woven together we are as one. That’s what many years of marriage does for you!)

Chris nearly spilt the tea as he came laughing into our bedroom and sat on the bed.

“We’ve had an Airbnb request from Annabelle in New York,” Chris chuckled. “Darling, have you heard of the ‘Sea School of Embodiment’?”

“No,” I was a bit surprised at all the hilarity so early in the morning, “Is it here is Dawlish?”

“Oh yes,” he giggled, “guess what it is.”

“Maybe it has something to do with fishing, or diving, or… it’s a special course for artists learning to paint the sea,” I pondered, although Chris’s laughter suggested something far less logical or normal.

“You’ll never get it. I shall have to tell you.”

“Go on,” I urged. (He was still laughing.)

“To think, (laugh), I told her, (howl), she sounded like our kind of person!”

“Tell me what it is…” I could hardly bear the suspense.

“Here, I printed it out…” and Chris read:

“The Sea School of Embodiment sponsors international teachers in the fields of somatic sexology, sacred sexuality, sexological body work, Tantra and the expressive arts, making available top trainings and workshops for explorers to learn and heal all that’s in the way of shame free naturalness and professionals enhancing their professional practices. Somatic can be defined as “of the body” and embodiment as “the body experienced from within”.

(Tantra is a Sanskrit word that means ‘woven together.’ Hindu and Buddhist meditation practitioners use sexual union as a metaphor for weaving together the physical and the spiritual: weaving man to woman, and humanity to the divine. The purpose is to become one with God.)

“It’s £680 for a four day course. And they have ‘Cuddle Parties’ – for between 10- 25 people at £25 each,” he added.

“We’re in the wrong business,” I said.

We meditated over the notion as we drank our cups of tea, which weren’t exactly divine because they had got cold whilst we were laughing.

“Seasons will never change… the way I love you,” Mary and my mum (alias Supergran) finished singing “All Kinds of Everything”, the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest winner. (Dana was their backing singer on this occasion.)

Robert turned off the music and all the assembled family members, who had come to my brother’s house to celebrate Supergran’s ninety-third birthday, clapped and cheered.

“Now wouldn’t that be a lovely song for the girls to sing at Katie’s wedding?” my sister asked.

“Yes,” I concurred (not to be confused with conquered or conkered).

“Isn’t it a bit corny?”, “Ooh, not so sure…”, “Yes, too corny”, were some of the responses.

Sat over on the sofa with the tired seat cushions were Sophia and young Mary (my sister’s namesake), the little girls who have agreed to sing at their aunt’s wedding; having never heard the song before, they pulled faces expressing doubt about the proposed choice of song.

“Then how about that Aled Jones song about the shade and the trees?”, suggested my sister.

“That’s nice… or there’s ‘Marble Halls’ – that’s pretty,” I said.

“How does that go?” several asked.

“Oh, you know,” said Mary, but she couldn’t recall how it went so she looked to Robert… and his phone.

“Too complicated for little girls,” Robert shook his head, then looking to Katie, “What would you like Kate?”

“Oh, I don’t mind just so long as I get married…”

Several more songs were suggested, played, sung to and rejected by the majority; the romantic pop songs were “too poppy” (except for the little girls on the sofa) and the old ones were either “too corny” or “too difficult” to sing. At last my nephew Robert (my brother’s namesake) picked up a guitar and started singing “Scarborough Fair”, which was soft and beautiful – and quite appropriate for a country style wedding.

“How about singing that, girls?” asked someone amidst the hubbub of different conversations going on.

Now my hearing isn’t too bad but it’s not easy to discern every word from one conversation when there are five others in progress, therefore I heard just a snippet from the direction of the old sofa…

“….. …… quieter …….?”

“Surely no song can be ‘quieter’ than ‘Scarborough Fair'” I looked over at Judith (Sophia’s mother).

Judith started to giggle.

“No,” Judith paused to laugh, “the girls asked why we couldn’t get the ‘choir ter’ sing it!”

The Wikipedia article and lyrics, below, cause me to wonder if, after all, “Scarborough Fair” is the perfect wedding song; but on the other hand, husbands and wives often expect impossible tasks of one another. We can’t all be like Supergran.

Scarborough Fair (ballad)

Lyrics[edit]

As a popular and widely distributed song, there are many versions of the lyrics. The one here, intended as a duet by a male and a female, includes the place after which it is named:

Male part-

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?

Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;

Remember me to the one who lives there,

For once she was a true love of mine.

Tell her to make me a cambric shirt,

Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;

Without any seam or needlework,

Then she shall be a true love of mine.

Tell her to wash it in yonder well,

Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;

Where never sprung water or rain ever fell,

And she shall be a true lover of mine.

Tell her to dry it on yonder thorn,

Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;

Which never bore blossom since Adam was born,

Then she shall be a true lover of mine.

Female part-

Now he has asked me questions three,

Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;

I hope he’ll answer as many for me,

Before he shall be a true lover of mine.

Tell him to buy me an acre of land,

Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;

Between the salt water and the sea sand,

Then he shall be a true lover of mine.

Tell him to plough it with a ram’s horn,

Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;

And sow it all over with one pepper corn,

And he shall be a true lover of mine.

Tell him to sheer’t with a sickle of leather,

Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;

And bind it up with a peacock’s feather,

And he shall be a true lover of mine.

Tell him to thrash it on yonder wall,

Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme,

And never let one corn of it fall,

Then he shall be a true lover of mine.

When he has done and finished his work.

Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme:

Oh, tell him to come and he’ll have his shirt,

And he shall be a true lover of mine.

While I was baking butterfly cakes for our good friends Catherine and Martin, who are also our neighbours at Number Seven, I was thinking about our once beloved pet, Jess the cat. He was half feral, extremely clever, very masculine (even after the operation he maintained his macho swagger) and what he lacked in the ability to show or receive affection he more than made up for in character and personality. In fact he often showed a kind tolerance for his owners, like the time he came home with a nasty cut above his right ear and, knowing full well that I would not be taking him to an expensive vet, Jess permitted me to minister to his wound with tea-tree oil, cotton wool and a bandage made from an old white sheet; Bless his heart, he went outside and returned some minutes later looking like a violated Egyptian mummy. Unwittingly, our marvellous cat was an advocate of the old adage, “Laughter is the best medicine” – admittedly, he didn’t realise he was being funny when, hearing the familiar snap at the end of a small glass tube containing his flea treatment, he reversed as we advanced, and he nearly walked backwards up the kitchen wall.

Poor Jess the cat met an untimely and tragic end, not guarding his territory or seeing off the marauding rats which had been so prevalent that year, but as a result of the poison one neighbour had laid down in his garden for those same rats. My friend Catherine was the person who found him in the long grass.

“Jess is dead,” Catherine blurted out and cried on that summer evening some twelve years ago.

“Oh no!” said Chris and I in unison, “But we saw her only yesterday!”

“Not my Jess (Catherine’s daughter) – your Jess… the cat!”

Therefore it was with great relief that we became aware that the dead body in Bill Robinson’s garden was that of poor Jess the cat. I shall never forget the look of agony on his face, his missing teeth (that were hardly noticeable in life), the huge size of his stiff body and the dead weight. And we’ll never forget the burial… What is one supposed to do with a big dead cat?

Chris and I thought it would be nice to bury Jess up on Haldon Moor, about four miles from our home in Dawlish. Unfortunately, the topsoil on Haldon Moor is just a few inches thick. Numerous efforts with a pick and spade in different spots revealed there was a greater likelihood in starting a fire than digging a hole deep enough to hold our dear departed for the substrate is all flint. Hence, in the absence of a hole (and perhaps due in part to some primeval urge), we decided to build a traditional Viking funeral pyre of old logs; we agreed not to set the pyre alight (although the task would have been simple enough with all that flint around) and instead, covered the pyre with more heavy logs to keep our cat’s body safe from any wild animals. As Chris and I – bearing a pick, spade, garden fork and two black rubbish sacks – came out from the wooded area to where our car was parked we noticed a cyclist had stopped and was looking at us very intently… and suspisciously.

“Just burying the cat,” called out Chris as nonchalantly as possible while he loaded the boot with the tools.

The cyclist looked very grave.

Now if you’re wondering why I was thinking about Jess the cat whilst I was baking cakes for Catherine and Martin… Well, when we met up with Catherine out by our gate this morning, and we asked her how she was, our friend seemed rather perturbed.

“Not the best, actually,” Catherine began, “you see, Martin and I have been feeding Jane and Rollo’s cats for them while they’re away, and when I went in the other morning I noticed straight away that their big ginger cat was sprawled out on the kitchen floor. At first I thought he was asleep but then I thought he seemed rather large and stiff…”

“Oh dear…” I said.

“Yes, quite,” Catherine knew we understood. “What do you do with a dead cat? They’re so…”

“Big and heavy,” I nodded.

“Yes, Rollo suggested we put him in the freezer but….” Catherine paused.

“No! Have you seen ‘Doc’ Martin’?” I took up the pause.

“Yes! Not with food in a freezer. Martin buried him…”

“Not up on Haldon?” Chris and I asked together.

“No, we remembered about your experience with the flint and buried him in their garden,” said our friend ruefully.

So I made them some nice butterfly cakes to help cheer them up.

As you may remember from one of my previous posts, these days I’m something of a vexillologist, which doesn’t mean that I study how to vex people (I manage to do that quite naturally at times), rather… Vexillology is the “scientific study of the history, symbolism and usage of flags or, by extension, any interest in flags in general.” The word is a synthesis of the Latin word vexillum (“flag”) and the Greek suffix -logia (“study.”) I fall into the latter category. In fact I collect flags from around the world – not actual flags made of material but the little flags which appear on my website stats informing me, at a glance, of the various countries that the visitors to my site come from. 

For some time now the Russian flag has appeared almost daily on my stats, making me think that I have an avid Russian fan (it is so nice to be modern, multicultural and sophisticated!); of course, there could be lots of Russians hitting on my site… a different one each day, but I prefer the notion of my one devotee. So whoever you are, Добро пожал (welcome) and Спасибо (thank you) for being a regular.

Speaking of Russia, my son James took Russian as one of his foreign languages when he was a schoolboy at Torquay Grammar. One evening we were watching an old Bond film together (can’t remember which one but it may have been “From Russia with Love”) when one of the bad guys spoke in Russian and there weren’t any subtitles.

“I understood that Mum!” Jim seemed surprised.

“Oh, Jim,” I began, rather proud of my twelve-year-old genius, “really? How clever you are!”

“Don’t get too excited,” he laughed, “he only told him to sit down!”

Which reminds me of my own extensive knowledge of the Arabic language… Didn’t you know that I speak Arabic? Have you seen the film “True Lies”? Perhaps you’ll remember the bit when the Mercedes is careering over the bombed bridge and Jamie Lee Curtis is fighting with the female Middle Eastern antiquarian-arts dealer inside the car? And the bad-girl art dealer calls out, “Aetini!” Well, I know what she’s saying – “Give it to me!” Now really, there’s no need for you to be so very impressed; one of my dearest old friends, an urbane Egyptian, once taught me “the only Arabic words you need to know when you’re in the desert” – “Aetini ma’!” “Give me water!”, of course.

A сейчас до свидания! Bye for now! (Isn’t the Internet wonderful?)

Did you know that today is World Poetry day? No, I didn’t either. Furthermore, had you known earlier, a hand-written poem would have entitled you to a nice cup of coffee in certain cafes around the world. Shame I didn’t realise this at the beginning of the day but I bet we don’t have a participating cafe in dear old Dawlish anyway (even if we are becoming more cosmopolitan). Besides, I’ve been far too busy painting and decorating to spare time for drinking coffee or poetry writing.

However, here is a little something in recognition of the day. I’m no poetess but occasionally I have been moved to jot down a few rhyming lines, especially in times of extreme sadness or… hilarity. The poem below came to me as I walked back to my brother Bill’s house from Mannippi Parklands, Tingalpa, Brisbane. It was a few years ago when the park had been flooded and the mosquitoes were taking over the world. (Incidentally, in case you aren’t Australian, Mortein is a brand of mosquito repellent much despised by “Louis the fly”!)

        RAP-BAG MOSQUITA

I’m a motor-mouth mosquita,

I’s a monster born of flood,

I hate da sun,

I likes da rain,

Most of all-

I loves yo’ blood!

I is savvy,

Not a sucker,

I tells ya that up front,

Got a razor-sharp syringe-

Could be worse, don’ whinge-

Ma weapon could be blunt!

Spray away to yo’ heart’s delight

An’cover yo’sel with cream,

I waits all day,

I got all night-

Aint “afraid of the man

With the can

Of Mortein”!

Cos I’s a different breed a mosquita,

Immune to “Rid” and “Stop”,

Get through clothes,

Wi’ ma steely nose

And, yo man,

 I’s extremely hard to swat!

~~~~~~~~~

World Poetry Day Info’

World Poetry Day is a celebration of poetry, literature and free speech, observed by UNESCO every year. The day is aimed at encouraging creativity, inspiring the teaching of poetry and restoring a dialogue between poetry and other arts, such as theatre, dance and music.

PEN International also uses the day to highlight the imprisonment, murder and abuse of poets, writers and journalists around the world.

“By paying tribute to the men and women whose only instrument is free speech, who imagine and act, UNESCO recognises in poetry its value as a symbol of the human spirit’s creativity,” says Irina Bokova, director-general of UNESCO.

“By giving form and words to that which has none – such as the unfathomable beauty that surrounds us, the immense suffering and misery of the world – poetry contributes to the expansion of our common humanity, helping to increase its strength, solidarity and self-awareness.”

When is it?

World Poetry Day is marked on 21 March. The date was chosen during UNESCO’s 30th session, held in Paris in 1999.

How can you pay for coffee with poetry?

Austrian coffee company Julius Meinl has announced more than 1,000 of its outlets around the world will offer coffee drinkers the chance to pay for their beverage with a poem. You can find a map of all the participating stores on the Meinl Coffee website. Last year, coffee drinkers from 1,153 coffee houses in 27 countries paid for their coffee with a poem.

On last year’s scheme, CEO Marcel Löffler said: “We are proud that more than 100,000 people who live in different places of the world, have different interests and jobs and ideas, and talk different languages, still have something to share: their hearts. They embraced emotions, slowed down and replaced the normal currency with poems. On March 21st, coffee lovers gathered from around the globe.”