A Child Digs In The Garden...

...what do they find?
As a result of a breakfast talk between me and The Old Man... I do think of all the gardens of me childhood and what I do find buried there.

First garden... well I be too young to have unearthed stuff there... spending most of me time in me pram and toddling about. I may have found worms. I may have tried eating them. This may be family gossip.
Second garden. Newly built house on a resulting field of clay. Absolutely... clay. So I dug up clay and made little pots.
Third garden... a flat near the station... no garden to dig in as such... fascinated by the red-bodied harvestmen (daddy long-legs) that lived under the gate-pillar cap.
Fourth garden... (we traveled about a lot)... bright cut glass "beads" about the size of pound coin... clear and colours ... I remember blue... Someone said there used to be a glass factory on that site... and I guess these were for chandeliers.
Fifth garden. Yes, fifth.... A heart-shaped sea urchin fossil.
Sixth garden.... Too old for digging having transformed into a moody adolescent....

Travels With My Film-Life: Berlin, 1931 - "Emil & The Detectives"

Ah! You do think I may be deep in the rise of Hitler and such, here in 1930s Berlin.... But no....
I am enjoying the innocence of a ragamuffin childhood as I join village boy Emil, robbed of his money by a bowler-hatted villain who do drug poor Emil as he travels by train to Berlin to stay with his grandmother. (Moral: Do not accept sweets from dodgy strangers, children!) In Berlin Emil is helped by a friendly gang of children (aka "The Detectives") to track down the bowler-hatted villain and find a way to get Emil's money back. Watch out for the car-horn tooting gang leader. Toot-toot!

Based on the famous children's book  "Emil & The Detectives", written by Erich Kastner, this 1931 German version is by Gerhard Lamprecht and has a script written by a pre-Hollywood Billy Wilder.

This is the kind of kids story that makes me feel good. Not sure why. But I remember my favourite children's book was "A Hundred Million Francs" by Paul Berna... which is set in postwar France but in many ways is a very similar story... a gang of ragamuffins track down the villains that steal something precious from them.

On the same DVD as this German 1931 film is the BFI restored 1935 English version...
Here's an extract for you.

An Explosion Of Baby Spiders

Remember when I do consider parthenogenesis? For myself, that is? And do proceed to name all my progeny?

So...
..... it is not parthenogenesis
but the more traditional... er... genesis... when I look up into the kitchen window-corner and do realise that a Daddy-Long-Legs spider ... or rather.... Mummy-Long-Legs spider.... have popped like a dandelion clock and is surrounded by a cloud of flimsy spiderlings.

However I read that these spiderlings are as full of sibling love as some of our own human families. They must disperse as soon as possible or they will eat each other.

Quelle arachno-horreure!

Small Theatres

Scene: A dental practice's waiting room. Several people are seated on chairs.

A small child goes to each seated person in turn and proffers a small furry hat with bunny ears.

Solemnly each person places bunny hat on head.


OK. OK. I was first in the queue. You have to take theatre where you can get it.

Selling a Print - Three Years Later

You may remember that once upon a time, long, long ago.... I wuz printmaking?

The other day I gets a phone call from a woman who bought one of my first series of lino-cuts. That was at an Open Studio three years ago.

She'd still got my card. Could she buy another one in the series?

Of course, say I.

I then panic and try to sort them all out in their nice little black boxes with tissue paper between the layers... and the mounts... and the frames.

A few days later she do come along to pick what she wants. It's a very nice meeting and chat. Though more of a case of a listen on her part. I'd remembered her well because the sale had meant a lot to me... being practically the first, like. And the print series was about childhood. And she had bought it for her boy. And now she wanted another, three years later, also for her boy. In the end she took two more.

And I be well-chuffed. For me it be about communicating something. And I can't tell you how pleased I be that this print meant stuff for both mother and her boy.
Evie Greydollsdottir will be proud of me.

F is for Freda....

This is my sixth born, Freda...
although she insists upon being called Freddy.

She is learning "body-building" and spends quite some time in front of the mirror drawing a moustache onto her upper lip with my eyebrow pencil.

I'm not sure which direction she is going in.....

E is for Evie

Bless her, this is my fifth born... Evie.

Evie is the motherly type. She sweeps, cleans, and wraps up pine cones and puts them to bed... with lullabies.

She tells me that she wants to find a good husband and have lots and lots of babies.

I tell her that she needn't worry about the good husband bit and explain about parthenogenesis.

She bursts into tears.

D is for Dorothy

This is Dorothy.

I don't know where I went wrong here. Dorothy is always angry.

And most of all...

She's angry with me...

...Says I have ruined her life and that there is nothing for it but for her to enter therapy.

...She says she hopes I am "proud of myself".

Sometimes I think that is the kind of thing I am supposed to say to her.

C is for...

My third born I called Catherine.

But she calls herself Candy.

She has turned out to be a bit of a party girl.

She watches Skins and True Blood.

I never know where she is.

I don't think much good will come of this.

B is for Beryl

My second born is Beryl.

Beryl loves reading.

She had considered a career in librarianship. But she has it on first hand knowledge that this is a shrinking career field. Most librarians that she knows are redundant - in fact, if not in nature.

She is instead contemplating studying linguistics.

She informs me that she is particularly interested in the field of linguistic typology.

I don't know what she is talking about.

A is for Aurelia

The children are ready to go out in the world.

This is my first born, Aurelia.

She is very musical.

Her schoolteacher, Mr Dorchester, wanted her to take up the trombone. But Aurelia tells me that she would rather study the cello. When she is not listening to Schubert lieder - she listens to Rostropovich. Her most recent favourites are Britten's Cello suites.

In Which I do Contemplate......

Parthenogenesis.

....on account Old Man and me had passing discussion on stick insects and greenfly. As you do.