Who can tell?

I apologise, humble and devoted reader, for the lateness and lack of content in this musing.

I have reluctantly dragged myself from my foetid sickbed and am ill equipped to grapple with any of the really big issues.

What I do wish to canvass is the recent grab for musical stardom by Australian test cricketer, Brett Lee. 

Mr. Lee, a tall fair haired fellow, has long cherished a hope to be recognised for his musical talents.  Good luck to him, I say.  Fairly recently he released a song in the subcontinent and I understand that he hopes for substantial sales by reason both of his high profile there and his canny teaming with Indian teen idol Asha Bohsle. 

Again, well done.  A canny move.

Unfortunately, like so many modern “Pop” stars, he has let a golden chance to contribute to good English slip through his grasp.

The song that he recorded glories in the title “Can You Tell A Girl You Don’t Know That You’re The One For Me”.

Frankly I have no idea what the man is talking about.  What does he mean?  As far as I can see, he is asking another person whether that person can tell a third person who they have not previously met, that the second person is the girl for me, being Brett Lee.

To try to make it clearer, let us imagine that Brett is addressing his question to a friend of his, say Kylie Minogue.  Let us further assume that Kylie does not know, say, Nicole Kidman.  Whether or not Brett knows Nicole does not appear to be germaine.

Thus Mr. Lee’s question might become, “Kylie Minogue, are you able to tell Nicole Kidman that you, Kylie Minogue, are the one for me”.

If that doesn’t make sense, try it again using say, Britney Spears and Germaine Greer (assuming that Britney and Germaine are not acquainted).

The point is that it doesn’t really make any sense.  Why couldn’t someone tell someone that they don’t know that someone else holds them in high regard.  No, I think that Brett is asking a different question, but what on earth can it be?

“Can one tell a girl one doesn’t know that one’s the one for one?” is not helpful.  Is it?

Possibly the construction makes some sort of sense in Hindi, but it’s telling me nothing.

Anyway, back to the sickbed.  I can smell bread baking.  Is that you, Grandpa?  I’m moving toward the light, wait for me….

Jade Ornament

Timmy, from Aprilseas writes;

“Can you please tell me what a ‘Jaded Mandarin’ is and why it was appropriate for Judas to refer to Jesus as such in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’?”

Well young man, I have been itching to turn my attentions to youth issues and am confident that I am sufficiently in touch to grapple with this important work.

For those who do not already know, “Jesus Christ Superstar” is a searing depiction of the life of Christ which differs in many important particulars from the accepted bible story. It was written by Andrew Weber (I think an heir to the carburettor fortune) and Tim Lloyd Rice, a nonentity. He did the words.

So, why does he have Judas describe Jesus as a “jaded Mandarin”?

A “Mandarin” was a high ranking Chinese official. He would have been in charge of a Chinese empire such as the Ming Dynasty, when they made those merciless vases.

You may have been thinking of a ‘mandarin’, a small, orange citrus fruit which I concede would have been puzzling indeed. You can tell that this is not what he meant, because when Judas makes his impassioned accusation he uses a capital ‘M’. This makes all the difference.

You can also gather this from the context. As you correctly observe, Judas is reported by Mr. Tim Lloyd Rice as describing Jesus as a ‘jaded’ Mandarin and you can’t be jaded if you are fruit, only if you are a person.

I will concede that he does confuse matters a little by also referring to him as a ‘faded’ Mandarin, which probably does tend to suggest the citrus rather than a regal eminence who would have had batteries of servants attending to such things as keeping him out of the sun and ensuring he was arrayed in glorious, bright silks at all times.

On the other hand, we have all seen when a mandarin rolls down between the windscreen and the dashboard and you can’t hook it out for a while, its skin does tend to dry out and it loses its characteristic orange colour. It fades.

Lloyd Rice is suggesting is that Jesus had been a Chinese emperor but that he got sick of it so he returned to Israel to resume his work there. He was a high official in China, became disillusioned for some reason, possibly to do with the quality of vase mercy, and packed it in. He became jaded. It was not his person that became faded, but his enthusiasm for Mandarining.

I admit that this is a bold interpretation. I am confident that there is nothing about this in the Bible, but perhaps Lloyd Rice had access to a Dead Sea Scroll or something. It would help to explain why we hear so little of what Jesus got up to between His birth and the miracle at Cana. That is to say, he was in China overseeing the creation of an army of blokes made of pottery or something like that.

In any event, the implication must be that Jesus was a Chinese official There is no way that Lloyd Rice would have tortured history and common sense just to get, what must be conceded, is a pretty terrible line.

There is another of Judas’ utterings that causes me concern. Again, I don’t accuse Lloyd Rice of anything other than a bold interpretation but I invite you to consider this.

When Mary Magdalene is treating Jesus with myrrh to ease the heat in his forehead, Judas burst out with this memorable complaint:

‘Woman your fine ointment – brand new and expensive
Could have been saved for the poor
Why has it been wasted? We could have raised may be
Three hundred silver pieces or more
People who are hungry, people who are starving
Matter more than your feet and hair’

Now the first concern here must be Judas’ complaint that the ointment that was being used was “brand new”.

Is there any other way to get the stuff? I mean to say. What is Lloyd Rice suggesting? Second hand ointment? I have never seen that in the Trading Post.

Also, why should the ointment have been saved for the poor? Judas suggests that they could have raised three hundred silver pieces or more. The inescapable conclusion is that Judas thinks that the apostles should have onsold the ointment to the poor at a profit.

I think this would have been a difficult one to sell to the others.

People who are hungry and starving may matter more than Mary’s feet or hair, but is smelling nice the best way to spend what little remains of their money? Should they not have been encouraged to spend it on food? Surely if they did wish to smell better, they could have achieved this more economically using frankincense?

A Feast of Film

I was sitting around with a few friends the other day, having a quiet beer. It was nice. There were about a dozen of us at a long table. I was at one end and couldn’t quite hear what was going on at the other.

I could discern that they were talking about food. We often do and as usual there was talk of getting a dinner party up. It never actually happens because everyone is a bit twee about food. Well, not me. I have been known to eat sandwiches out of the bin, or just cut the mouldy bits off cheese and eat the rest. But the rest of them are pretty fancy and too threatening to cook for.

Suffice it to say, I was sort of half listening to the conversation up the other end of the table while I nursed a pint of ale and thought beautiful thoughts. You know the sort of thing; would “The Mouse That Roared” have been better with Bobby Helpmann? would the butts of all the cigarettes smoked in Australia between the hours of 3.00 and 4.00 pm fill up the Victoria Square fountain? what is the girl who played “Punky Brewster” doing now? That sort of thing.

I was jolted from my reverie (much like Coleridge while composing Kublai Khan) by what sounded like a dinner party theme being suggested at the other end of the table.

“Did you say ‘Cool Hand Luke’? “ I squealed delightedly.

All I got was stony stares.

“No. We said ‘Cordon Bleu’.”

There was a pause of a couple of beats then we all dissolved into fits of laughter. Fits I tell you.

But tell me this, cherished and discerning reader, wouldn’t a “Cool Hand Luke” dinner party be great?

I don’t claim to be a student of the film, but no-one who has seen it could forget the scene in which Luke (a young Paul Newman) bets that he can consume some ludicrous number of boiled eggs. It might have been fifty at a sitting.

The film is set in a prison farm and the contest excites the imagination and sporting instincts of his fellow inmates who bet heavily and gather around barracking and offering a wide range of suggestions.

As I recall he does get the eggs into him, though I may be wrong. What I do remember is the pacing around and massaging of the stomach needed to achieve it. I also recall one of the senior prisoners who has bet on Luke, proffering one of the eggs and falsely insisting that “it aint nothin’ but a little ole pigeon’s egg, Luke”.

What a great dinner party theme that would be.

Everybody could bring eggs which could be boiled then consumed to the point that people’s stomachs all stick out and they feel like they have swallowed a football bladder then had it inflated. I’m not saying it would be pleasant but it would certainly give you something to tell the grandkids (unless it rendered you infertile).

I don’t know if anyone else remembers an ill fated attempt by the Egg Marketing Board to shift part of the Egg Mountain or whatever the glut was called back in the seventies. They suggested that grown adults could enjoy themselves by taking an electric frying pan to a party and dance around while they made glorified omlettes. The resulting mess they gave the scintillating title of “Egg Combo” and the mystifying gatherings at which one was encouraged to produce same they called a “Combo Party”. It didn’t work.

How much better would they have done to promote “Cool Hand” parties. Introduce an element of competition and I am sure that people would have moved heaven and earth to get as many boiled eggs into themselves as possible.

What other movie themed dinner parties could there be?

Who could forget that enchanting scene from Die Blechtrommel (“The Tin Drum”) when Oskar’s mother gorges herself to death on fish? One could start with herring then move on to fried and salted fish of various sorts, move to pickled sprats and finish with a couple of litres of the oil out of sardine cans. All followed up by a quick visit to hospital. Delightful.

Alternatively one could just pop a horse’s head onto the table and guests could pluck at live eels as they writhed from the nostrils and eye sockets. That would get the Vogue Living editors talking.

There is also the Lardass Logan scene from “Stand By Me”, or a ‘lock in’ style gorging session as seen in “La Grande Bouffe” or whatever it is called. That would also be good though it might be hard to find the necessary Bugatti.

Hmm. I like this. I would be interested to hear other people’s suggestions about movie themed dinners.

Returning To Your Usual Program

In Australia there is much talk about our own slang and how rich and diverse it is. Whenever there is an event that is expected to draw visitors from other countries, the papers are full of tips to enable non Australians to penetrate the mysteries of the Australian idiom.

Thus the American or British tourist is fully prepared to deal with “bonzer”, “cobber” and “stone the flamin’ crows”.

Oh, yeah, “dinkum” too.

Well, I hope they don’t totter squinting into the blazing Aussie sun expecting that knowledge to do them any good. No one has used those expressions in ordinary conversation for decades.

Ordinary spoken Australian English is largely a mish mash of American and English terms with not much of our own. The benefit of this is that we go some way to understanding both and it gives us some flexibility. Although we use the American “truck”, we all know what a “lorry” is, which is a handy extra rhyme if you are writing a song or some old style poetry.

I suppose that in a way we borrow the bits of each that appeal to us, which is probably a good thing, but despite the smug self congratulations about our quirky use of the language, I doubt that there is much that would confuse most American or British visitors.

There are a few common words that are used distinctively in Australia, the best example probably being “footpath”. The Americans call the same thing the “sidewalk”, and I understand that the Brits call it the “pavement”. This first struck me when listening to an old song from the fifties, sung by an American, in which he refers to his feet “leaving the pavement”, when in fact “sidewalk” would have been an equally good fit. Presumably the lyrics had been written by a pom of some sort.

I understand that a “footpath” is taken to mean what we would call a “walking trail”, but I can’t see too many hilarious misunderstandings coming about by this rather subtle difference in usage.

Mostly, we seem to use American expressions, but we stick with the English spelling. This is slowly being worn away, but I imagine that the same thing is happening in England. It has been a long time since I read about anyone being sent to “gaol” rather than “jail” and I bet it is the same in Britain.

Mostly, however, we use the English spellings to the point that we are a bit smug about it. Aluminium, theatre, metre, cheque – there are hundreds of ‘em. Some people are so pedantic that they will correct other Australians when they read these “Americanisms”. I am not proud to admit that I do this all the time.

Which brings me to “programme”.

The advent of electronified computerising brought with it the proliferation of the reviled Americanism “program”.

It popped up everywhere and for the delicate, the careful and the tedious such as me, it was like a hair shirt. I felt like a lone voice crying out. Think Charlton Heston in the big scene of “Soylent Green” ( Soylent Green is people!) or that bit of “The Omega Man” when all of the phones start ringing. Probably he did similar in “Planet of the Apes” or, to select at random from his filmography, “Christmas Night with the Two Ronnies”.

The point is, my distress at reading “program” was at least the equal of anyone else who found themselves utterly alone and without hope. There was tearing of hair and rending (or renting, I am never sure) of garments. Many is the “Upper Burnside Keg Demolition Squad” tee shirt that had to be replaced because of it.

Until one day when, having nothing better than a whole lot of urgent work to do, I settled myself down with the old office Shorter Oxford.

I don’t remember the exact words, it was quite gentle, but the entry made it quite clear that the word “program” uses the same suffix, “gram” as any number of other words. Anagram, diagram, pictogram. They are all the same. The spelling “programme” was introduced in the 17th or 18th century to try to make the word seem more French.

More French! How extraordinary. What on earth for? I can only assume that it was done by theatre types or some equally disreputable group. If there is such a thing.

This should have been a moment of shame for me. For years I had been smugly insistent on a less correct spelling. Instead, it became my great joy. I immediately took to catching people out with it and assuming the high moral ground that I find so comforting.

I caught tons of blokes out, and loved every minute of it. I know I should be ashamed, but what are you going to do?

Subsequent editions of the Oxford have changed the position and now they suggest that the word was introduced into English from the French, and thus the spelling “program” is US and computer.

Well, it’s too late now, Oxford Dictionary, you have created a monster.

Taking a Mile

Danny Kaye, for those of you who remember, was an old fashioned “all ‘round entertainer”. He would make with the comedy, the music, the singing, the dancing and the acting. Apparently he was immensely popular in his day (mainly the forties and fifties I think).

Perhaps you saw some of his movies in your childhood – they were often competing with Elvis and Jerry Lewis on movie matinees. If so, you should remember the famous “vessel with the pestle/flagon with the dragon” patter from “The Court Jester” or the archaeological high-jinks of “Merry Andrew”. He did that old fashioned comedy with heart, the sort of thing that one so rarely sees these days.

The thing about his films is that they aren’t any good. They reek. They are shithouse.

Danny may have been talented but he was much given to whimsy- and saccharine whimsy at that. It is universally accepted that he was popular, but on the evidence of my own observations it seems so unlikely.

Still, many of us would have had his classic “All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth” inflicted on us as children on the basis that it is a kid’s song and is “funny”. Whatever that means.

If you were exposed to it in your tender years, I challenge you to go back and listen again. That’s right, I challenge you.

You may well remember the chorus. Perhaps you fondly recall the stuff about being unable to whistle. However, I bet you don’t remember the nauseating semi spoken introduction or the excruciating “comedy” voice that Danny affects. If you make the effort to listen again, I am sure that like me you will find that a pleasant enough song from your infancy is in fact be like fingernails on a blackboard. Long scraggy nails on an old weatherbeaten blackboard. Fingernails off one of those Indian blokes in the Guinness Book of Records, that are all twisty like goats’ horns.

Danny had lots of songs though. His movies were musicals and he did most of the singing, so there is a lot of his crap out there. The one that I want to examine is from the movie “Hans Christian Andersen”. I don’t mean “Wonderful Wonderful Copenhagen”, though God knows it could use some analysis. I mean any song containing the lyric “Salty old queen of the sea” is bound to be lewdly and deliberately misinterpreted by our jaded modern youth.

No, instead I ask you to turn your mind to “Inchworm”.

It isn’t one of his really big ones, though you might have heard it. In case you haven’t, I shall try to give you a word picture.

The song opens to the haunting lilt of what sounds like a children’s’ choir.

“Two and two are four” they shriek tunelessly.

“Four and four are eight” they insist.

“Eight and eight are sixteen” they moan in despair (and with little regard for scansion),

“sixteen and sixteen are thirty-two” is their grisly conclusion.

At this point, the man of the hour, Danny Kaye, asserts himself in a manner reminiscent of no-one so much as Bing Crosby, thus:

“Inchworm, inchworm
Measuring the marigold..”

In the normal course one would relish the relief that Danny’s even tones provide in distinction to the excoriations of the children’s choir, but even though he does not seem to be doing a comedy voice, his words make us focus on what is actually being said.

The suggestion is that the inchworm is, as he says, “measuring the marigold”.

Now correct me if I am wrong, selfless reader, but is not an inchworm a grub of about an inch in length which perambulates by stretching and contracting its body in a linear progression that creates a distinctive inverted “u” shape?

Well, of course it bloody well is. We have all seen it.

So how on earth can such a creature go from measuring “two and two” to “sixteen and sixteen” ?

I mean to say.

The bloody creature is not fantastically elastic, is it? It just measures out the same distance for each “step” from the time it attains its majority until it dies, much like many of we humans.

It isn’t Mrs. Incredible. It can’t stretch. How the hell can the length of its measurement vary so widely?

It can’t. Simple as that. If Danny Kaye were really interested in educating children he would have got it right and the eerie children would have had the far simpler job of intoning;

“Two and two are four,
Two and two are four,
Two and two are fou-our
Two and two are….Four!”

How much more satisfying would that have been? Plus it would not have been as misleading for the young ones.

Of course, I can’t help thinking that they should have been saying “Two and two IS four” rather than “are”, but I don’t know if I can deal with that now.

I have come over all sanctimonious. I won’t inflict my analysis of the rest of the song on you, because there isn’t much more and I haven’t actually analysed it. I can’t bear to.

Coming soon, my effete critique of “The Woody Woodpecker Show” theme by Danny Kaye and the Andrews Sisters.

That will flay you alive.

Entente Cordial

I was recently asked about “Coola” and its relationship to lime, in particular as an ingredient of the famous Lime Coola cordial.

Well, I suppose I had wondered about it, but never to the point that I have considered it properly.

Does Coola appear anywhere else? Where?

I suppose I had always assumed that it was some sort of nut or berry and that persons in distant climes (yes, that’s right, climes) were eking out a precarious living by gathering them up and selling them to the local cordial agent at the coola depot.

It is not too much of a stretch to imagine a grass skirted couple returning to their hut at the end of the day, each with a big basket of coola and a broad smile, being welcomed by a throng of laughing children and the gummy smile of the wizened crone who had been babysitting. Perhaps in the humble front yard, between the well tended rows of subsistence crops, there would be a flagpole flying the Union Jack. Through the spotlessly clean curtains at the unglazed window can be seen a picture of Her Majesty whose prim smile is the hut’s only decoration. No, that’s going too far.

Anyway, there is an assumption by me that Coola is a crop or product of some sort. .

On reflection, I have never heard of it in any other context than that of Lime cordial. In fact, I can’t remember having heard of it in relation to any other cordial than Cottee’s Lime Coola.

I suppose I was confusing coola with cola. Not that I have any idea what that is either.

Could it be that it was all some sort of smooth marketing ploy? Was it intended that we associate this sweet, green summer drink with cola and at the same time with coolness? If there is no coola in the drink, is there any lime, either?

As a lifetime consumer of the stuff, I cannot bear the thought that the distinctive flavour is caused by some chemical. Of course, it isn’t very limey at all. I doubt that it would stave off scurvy.

Of course, this raises the issue of brown lime cordial.

In South Australia, almost every household has a bottle of Bickford’s famous lime cordial. It is not as sweet as the Lime Coola and not quite as popular with children, but it is a presence in most households. When South Australians reach drinking age, they confidently ask for, say, a lime and soda knowing that they will be rewarded with a reasonably grown up drink.

Interstate you need to be a bit more careful and ask for “brown lime” or “lime juice cordial” to distinguish it from coola. The brown style of lime is known but not as common. There is not as much context to enable people to know what sort you mean.

Another unsettling issue for a South Australian travelling interstate is that all of the bakeries have “pies and cakes” on their awnings and windows. Where is the comforting “pies and pasties” of a South Australian bakery?

I am suffering from culture shock just sitting here.

Magical Spell

I love a song with spelling in it. I don’t know what it is but spelling out a word to music seems so clever and satisfying.

There are a couple of ways of doing it. You can do a sort of lyrical acrostic like Nat King Cole in L-O-V-E. For those who, by reason of old age or infirmity don’t know what the hell I am talking about, it’s the one that goes “L is for the way you look at me, O is for the only one I see, V is very, very extraordinary, E is even more than anyone that you adore” etc.

This is good, but tortures sense a bit. I have trouble with “very extraordinary” let alone very very. It smacks of tautology and you, gentle reader, know how I hate that.

The other kind of spelling in a song is the simple sort where the letters are just strung out. My earliest memory of this type of spelling is probably VACATION by someone. A fifties sort of surf/girl singer. Maybe Annette Funicello. There is no point in setting out the relevant lyrics ‘cos they are just the letters. There is a challenge to getting them to scan but it can be quite satisfying.

A slight variation is where you link double letters but still manage to keep the scansion. I humbly submit the timeless classic “Beer Run” by (I think) Todd Snider:

B, double E, double R, U, N
Beer Run
B, double E, double R, U, N
Beer Run
All we need is a ten and a fiver
A car and a key and a sober driver
B double E, double R, U, N
Beer Run. (reprise. Ad infinitum)

Do you see the the clever way that by saying “double E double R” the songsmith has managed to get a couple of extra syllables for scansion, plus has run the last letter of “Beer” with the first letter of “Run”.

It is nothing short of majestic.

I am not sure if it is in the original version, but there is a cover of “I Feel Like Making Love”, the George Benson classic, in which, instead of singing the lyric as it is written –

That’s the time
I feel like making love, to you

the artist renders it thus;

That’s the time
I feel like making L, O, V, E, T, O, Y, O, U ooh ooh ooh

It doesn’t look like it would fit, but it does and has a lot of impact.

HOWEVER it has recently been drawn to my attention that Fergie, in her signature piece “Fergalicious” indulges in quite a bit of spelling. She personalises it by, for example, spelling thus;

I’m the F to the E, R, G the I the E

I have no problem with this idiosyncratic approach. All are welcome under the warm umbrella that is spelling in songs.

What does irk me is this, a little later in the song:

T to the A to the S T E Y, girl you tasty. (reprise)

What the hell does Fergie (or the evil puppetmaster who writes her lyrics) think she is doing? Modern youth are so busy learning crap like life skills at school that they don’t have time for grammar and spelling. It is quite likely that this is the only spelling they will hear during their impressionable learning years and it is wrong. The malleable young mind is no doubt having trouble with the idea of dropping the “E” when you add “Y”, which is not obvious, so there is no need to toy with them.

Until they bring back parsing and analysis in primary schools I demand that lyricists check the dictionary before they spell at us. And not send flawed material out. I mean to say, how is it clever to spell out a work if you are allowed to make the spelling up so that it fits?

Assuming that it isn’t an honest mistake.

Having said that, those of you who are devotees of the haunting lyrics of Jonathan Richman, as I am, will be eager to point out that in his song Girlfriend, he sings;

I’d have found a thing that I understand.
I understand a girl- friend.
That’s a girl. Friend.
A G I R L F R E N
Yeah a girlfriend baby, that’s something that I understand.

Well, that may not be exact but it is how I remember it and the spelling bit is faithful. So isn’t my hero Jonathan as guilty as Fergie?

Let me explain.

It’s different when it’s Jonathan. So get stuffed.

Bedroom Antics

Dave Lyall, a mate of mine, had a barbeque once, some years ago.

I went there with another mate, Shabbo. There were plenty of beers and good company so a cheery time was had, as usual.

When Dave was showing Shabbo and me out, he was struck by a great idea. He had fairly recently discovered an old bit of foam rubber that had presumably once been a mattress. It was fairly thick and still pretty springy and in the course of God knows what experimentation, he found that if he put it on his bed, the combined springiness of his actual mattress and this lump of foam meant that he could do little gymnastics displays.

He would put the foam on his bed, then prop the bedroom door open. Then, by standing in the passage directly opposite his bedroom door, he could get a few steps of run up and flip onto the bed.

He set it up for us and demonstrated. We were impressed. He could do a handstand or jump up and do a somersault.

It certainly looked like great fun but it wasn’t quiet. There was thumping and crashing and great shouts of laughter. The noise was actually tremendous.

Dave was living in a maisonette or half house. I think they are known in some places as Semi Detached. In any event, the point is that it shared a wall with the neighbour on one side. I have lived in plenty of these places myself and the noise does travel. In some of them you can hear every floorboard creak. I can remember hearing my neighbour stirring his tea.

The point is, when you really kick up a ruckus, you have to expect the neighbours to hear it. On this occasion we were not really surprised that, after one particularly impressive and violent manoeuvre, we could hear a small child on the other side of the wall. The child had clearly been awoken and was crying.

Reasoning that it was too late at that point, that the child was already awake and that we may as well continue, I took my place to have a go myself.

Until that point Shabbo had had a few goes but I had been reluctant as my impressively manly bulk might have proven too much for the bed. Seeing the punishment the others had put it through, I was reassured and decided to try it for myself. My little sister had a trampoline and I rather fancied that I could reproduce some of the skills I had built up on that.

As I stood with my foot braced against the wall to give myself a decent push off, it occurred to me that the party wall was the one behind me, not the one that the bed was up against.

Dave and Shabbo clearly came to the same conclusion at about the same time. Something was not quite right.

Suddenly the colour drained from Dave’s face. He grabbed the big chunk of foam and flung it off the bed.

Sure enough, there lying in the bed was a small child who had been put there by his mother to sleep. We hadn’t seen him and had put the foam over him and proceeded to jump on him vigorously. He was most upset and had gone purple in the face, I imagine from both crying and the near smothering from the foam.

Dave wrenched the kid from the bed and said “Can you move your fingers and toes?” On seeing that this seemed to be in order said “Go and see your mum.”

The fifteen seconds between seeing the child in the bed and establishing that he was uninjured were the worst and longest of my life. Of course once they were over and the kid was gone, I took a sideways look at Shabbo. He was taking a sideways look at Dave who was just kind of sneaking a peek at the two of us.

I can’t remember who started laughing first, but we all broke down completely. We had to quickly fold up the foam and hide it in case investigations were undertaken, but it was almost more than we could manage so great was the laughter.

We got away with it but it is one of those things that I think of every now and then and my blood runs cold.

I hope it amuses you.

A Matter of Weight

If someone is trying to sell their car using the time honoured method of putting a sign in the window, I always think it has a lot more impact if the sign reads “4 Sale” rather than “For Sale”.

When you read “4 Sale” you have to give both words full value and it really makes the point. The other way it just becomes “f’sale” in your mind nothing really clicks. Not that I have ever even been tempted to buy a car that was being sold like this, but if I did, I know which rendering would get me going.

So whenever I see a car with a bit of paper or cardboard blutacked to the inside of the window I check what the owner has done. If the numeral “4” is there, I get a small feeling of satisfaction.

Call me easily satisfied if you like.

There are other small things that please me. Allow me to inflict another on you.

Most people leave their loose change at home in a money box. They save it up so that they can use it for a slightly larger purchase. Beers or shoe repairs. That sort of thing. My wallet has a little change pocket in it, so I tend to carry change with me.

I know what you are thinking and you are wrong. It isn’t a purse, it’s a wallet. It has places for cards and your driver’s licence and stuff so don’t be compromising my machismo with your purse thinking, OK? It’s real manly and impressive.

What I do like is being able to pay with the right money using my little stock of loose change. This is irritating when other people do it, especially when you are impatient to be served, but when I do it it is charming. Apart from getting rid of all those heavy coins you sometimes get an extra little thrill that: the cry “Correct weight!”

I love “Correct weight!”. Everyone involved feels good for a moment. You have got rid of some change, they keep the till topped up. It is warm and human.

Having said that, there is a limit. “Correct Weight” is only wholesome in some contexts. The most common is the pub. The barman sliding the beer moistened coins from those scattered on the bar, the drone of the races in the background. Wholesome hardly covers it.

But when it crops up in a supermarket, there is something not quite right about it.

I don’t know why this is, but I think that it is because the term comes from horse racing. You don’t mind racing being associated with a couple of beers, but milk eggs and bread don’t seem to go.

I have turned my mind to it and decided on where I would and would not be happy hearing “correct weight!”. It probably won’t be the same for everyone, but these are my views:

OK : Pub, hardware shop, fishing tackle shop, footy ground, bookies, Pie Cart, newspaper kiosk and any business run by someone called Murphy.

Maybe: Café, Menswear shop, Sports store, Chiropractic surgery, Gymnasium, Fish and Chip shop, bakery and any business run by someone called Papadopoulos.

No: Nightclub, Your Child’s Nursery, Antiquarian bookstore, Jewellers, Life Coach, silver service restaurant, prosthetic limb suppliers and any business run by someone called Twistington-Smythe. Also weight watchers, but for hilariously different reasons.