Tag: Fun

Bright lights over Bentilee

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I’ve just got back from the local theatre, Claybody Theatre at The Dipping house, Spode Works, Church Street, Stoke upon Trent, Stoke-on-Trent.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable performance. It was set in 1967 on the Bentilee housing estate, on the edge of the city of Stoke on Trent. A city of potteries and coal mines and steel works that had since suffered industrial decline.

It’s late summer on the estate when several people see a bright glowing light in the sky that goes from red, to slightly greenish to a blue hue. It ended up on TV with locals talking about what they had seen, but no real explanation. (this was the era of science fiction programmes on TV, like The Invaders, or Space family Robinson and even Fireball XL5.)

What I enjoyed was the local knowledge. The speech was real Stoke on Trent accents, with a smidge of Durham and a twang of American or Irish.

I won’t go into detail with spoilers, but there is a mixture of 1960s memories, a touch of romance, a lot of local in jokes. It was useful knowing Bentilee estate, I have worked there. The comedy made the audience chuckle and laughter out loud. I do enjoy Deborah McAndrews writing. The play got a loud round of applause at the end. Good to see local friends who had come out to see it!

Vesta meals

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Tasty 1970s food before real foreign food was a thing. I particularly liked the chow mein vesta made (I don’t know if it’s still manufactured).

This is my faulty memory, I thought it came with prawn crackers but when I saw the photo I remembered they had a little packet of thin strips of noodles that you had to fry so they puffed up into little squiggles of crispy noodles. I’m guessing that the food was cooked In pans, certainly it was before microwaves, and it was unusual to have anything like this (except dehydrated mashed potato). I remember the jingle ” for mash, get smash!”

Tranklements

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What’s your favorite word?

Tranklements is an old fashioned word meaning bits and bobs, a collection of odds and ends, shiny things like a magpie would collect.

I think it is an old historical word from the Midlands of England. Certainly I’ve only really heard it used in The West Midlands around the Birmingham area. I think its a dialect word.

In context you could say I’m just getting my tranklements together if you wanted to gather your lace making kit or a bag full of knitting stuff. Or bits of costume jewellery, a bag full of paints or makeup.

I like it because it sort of explains what it means just in the sound. It should be used more often!

Inchworm

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My friend posted a video of a caterpillar stretching and then the back end moves forward to meet tne front so the middle of it rises up in a hump.

I posted the question “Inchworm” and she agreed.

Then I remembered a song “Inchworm, Inchworm, measuring the daffodils?” from a film I watched in the 1960s. So I googled it. It’s actually “measuring the Marigolds”. It’s a film with Danny Kaye from 1952 about Hans Christian Andersen.

Wikipedia says:

The song’s lyrics express a carpe diem sentiment, with the singer noting that the inchworm of the title has a “business-like mind”, and is blind to the beauty of the flowers it encounters:Two and two are fourFour and four are eightThat’s all you have on your business-like mindTwo and two are fourFour and four are eightHow can you be so blind?

Subsequent verses include the lines “Measuring the marigolds, you and your arithmetic / You’ll probably go far” and “Seems to me you’d stop and see / How beautiful they are”

Loesser wrote a counterpoint chorus that, sung by itself, has become popular as a children’s song because of its arithmetical chorus:Two and two are fourFour and four are eightEight and eight are sixteenSixteen and sixteen are thirty-two

In the film, a children’s chorus sings the contrapuntal “arithmetic” section over and over inside a small classroom, dolefully and by rote, while Andersen, listening just outside, gazes at an inchworm crawling on the flowers and sings the main section of the song. Loesser loved the intellectual challenge of such contrapuntal composition, which he also did in other works such as Tallahassee.[1]

Kate playing fiddle

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2014 drawing, we used to go to the pub and watch the Boatband playing cajun and folk music. Sometimes I would get up and sing a song a cappela, I like “Summer time” from the musical “Porgy and Bess”. I never remembered to learn new songs, life was too busy then. Now I long to time travel back to those days. I’d give anything to be back then sitting listening to the fiddle, guitar and accordion while beautiful music scurled around us.

A film called “Yesterday”

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I’m watching a film called Yesterday starring Himesh Patel, Lily James and Ed Sheeran. The premise is that a failing musician has a bike accident when all the power goes off in the world for 12 seconds.  He wakes up in hospital and when he gets out he finds out that none of his friends have heard of the Beatles (a 1960’s and 70’s pop group).

The story continues to tell the tale of his life and integrates Beatles songs into it. I don’t want to say much more, but it’s great to hear those old songs again. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up as I watched the film.

If you want to see something funny and life affirming on a wet Sunday night this is one worth watching.

Ten things

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List 10 things you know to be absolutely certain.

I know that apples fall down off trees.

I know cats are devious creatures!

I know bats don’t always live in belfry.

I know cheese can be put in a curry.

I know time seems to move forwards.

I know there are no Elephants on Mars.

I know Wales is different to whales.

I know that salt does not taste like sugar.

I know I like to watch the sky at night.

I know I don’t know about a lot of things!

I wanted to create a list that wasn’t contentious, that could almost be a poem, that I didn’t have to type out my working out, and I hope people will find humerous.