Monday Quote

"Australian history is the story of man in opposition to the landscape. Our explorers were driven - as we all are - by the need to survive, by ambition and vanity, by greed desire and curiosity."

Albert Tucker 1914-1999

Monday Quote

Merry Are The Bells

Nursery Song

Merry are the bells, and merry would they ring;

Merry was myself, and merry could I sing;

With a merry ding-dong, happy, gay, and free,

And a merry sing-song, happy let us be!

Waddle goes your gait, and hollow are your hose;

Noddle goes your pate, and purple is your nose;

Merry is your sing-song, happy, gay, and free,

With a merry ding-dong, happy let us be!

Merry have we met, and merry have we been;

Merry let us part, and merry meet again;

With our merry sing-song, happy, gay, and free,

And a merry ding-dong, happy let us be!

This song and illustration can be found in The Nursery Rhyme Book,

edited by Andrew Lang and illustrated by L. Leslie Brooke (1897).

This charming little nursery rhyme was used to great effect by

Baby Bear in her VCE drama presentation for Semester One.

They had to work in groups of four and produce something about

alienation and isolation. At two points during the

30 minute performance the four of them said one line each of the

last verse, in deadpan voices with deadpan faces.

It was her idea and it worked brilliantly.

There was nothing jolly or merry about it at all!

Monday Quote

"Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement." - Snoopy

Monday Quote

" . . . Waiter! raw beef-steak for the gentleman's eye,--nothing like raw beef-steak for a bruise, sir; cold lamp-post very good, but lamp-post inconvenient--damned odd standing in the open street half-an-hour, with your eye against a lamp . . ."

The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens

Monday Quote

Ode to a pair of socks

Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks
that she knit with her
shepherd's hands.
Two socks as soft
as rabbit fur.
I thrust my feet
inside them
as if they were
two
little boxes
knit
from threads
of sunset
and sheepskin.

My feet were
two woolen
fish
in those outrageous socks,
two gangly,
navy-blue sharks
impaled
on a golden thread,
two giant blackbirds,
two cannons:
thus
were my feet
honored
by
those
heavenly
socks.
They were
so beautiful
I found my feet
unlovable
for the very first time,
like two crusty old
firemen, firemen
unworthy
of that embroidered
fire,
those incandescent
socks.

Nevertheless
I fought
the sharp temptation
to put them away
the way schoolboys
put
fireflies in a bottle,
the way scholars
hoard
holy writ.
I fought
the mad urge
to lock them
in a golden
cage
and feed them birdseed
and morsels of pink melon
every day.
Like jungle
explorers
who deliver a young deer
of the rarest species
to the roasting spit
then wolf it down
in shame,
I stretched
my feet forward
and pulled on
those
gorgeous
socks,
and over them
my shoes.

So this is
the moral of my ode:
beauty is beauty
twice over
and good things are doubly
good
when you're talking about a pair of wool
socks
in the dead of winter.

Pablo Neruda

Monday Quote

'I didn't do it'. Bart Simpson

Regular blogging is recommencing. Serious computer problems put a bit of an obstacle in the way for a while!

Monday Quote

.He danced with a young woman with no hair, but who wore a wig of shining beetles that swarmed and seethed on her head. His third partner complained bitterly whenever Stephen's hand happened to brush her gown; she said it put her gown of its singing; and, when Stephen looked down, he saw that her gown was indeed covered with tiny mouths which opened and sang a little tune in a series of high, eerie notes."
— Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

Monday Quote

A time capsule buried at Jersey Zoo in 1988 contains the following popular quote by Gerald Durrell, often used in conservation awareness campaigns:

We hope that there will be fireflies and glow-worms at night to guide you and butterflies in hedges and forests to greet you.

We hope that your dawns will have an orchestra of bird song and that the sound of their wings and the opalescence of their colouring will dazzle you.

We hope that there will still be the extraordinary varieties of creatures sharing the land of the planet with you to enchant you and enrich your lives as they have done for us.

We hope that you will be grateful for having been born into such a magical world.

Monday Quote

'Inside the room, the Skinless Boy grinned and let the illusory flesh that covered half his body slide away to reveal the red ochre bones of the skeleton beneath.'

Drowned Wednesday, Garth Nix

Monday Quote

'Well he would, wouldn't he?"

Mandy Rice-Davies, on being asked in court if she was aware that Lord Astor denied sleeping with her.

Quoted in 'The Trial of Stephen Ward' by Ludovic Kennedy, 1964.

Monday Quote

Once you begin being naughty, it is easier to go and on and on, and sooner or later something dreadful happens.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

I've decided to scrap the Saturday and Sunday regular blogs as I rarely get near the computer at the weekend. So no actual daily blogging, but five days a week is pretty good for me, IF I can keep it up!

Can I manage Daily Blogging?

Of course not. I can't do anything remotely optional daily. But I really love the posts on Bear Chick's blog, so much that I have shamelessly pinched her ideas and changed them. I will be attempting to do:

Monday Quote

Tuesday Artist

Wordless Wednesday

8 Things Thursday

Update Friday (update on my 'cunning plan')

Saturday Book Review

Creative Sunday.

And with no further ado - Favorite quote Monday - 'I once bit a man who didn't like Spinoza', Joyce Carey, The Horses's Mouth.

Follow-up on overlocker - getting there, getting there. George worked out that the upper knife wasn't engaging and has sorted that out. I;ve bought new needles today (between us we broke all the ones that came with it!) and will have another go after a restorative cup of tea.