Tag: Fun

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.

Can I be funny?

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I actually wrote some 3 minute plays for the Titchy Theatre at the weekend.

One was based on Samuel Becketts “Waiting for Godot”, but my version was “Waiting for Gordon”.

The idea was that two cooks are standing outside the village hall waiting for Gordon Ramsey to come and judge a cookery competition.

First they see a man walking up the hill, but it can’t be Gordon as he’s wearing a cowboy hat and carrying a guitar. The contestants realise it’s a local man and that guitars are not cookery implements, those are called banjos!

Then they see someone else, but although he’s carrying a suitcase and has blond hair and looks like Gordon, he goes into a local bed and breakfast hotel and is not the famous chef.

One of them confesses that they are not sure if Gordon is coming today or tomorrow and cannot check as they don’t have Gordon’s agents phone number.

Finally they ask what time it is and realise that their pavlova will be ruined and their Victoria sponge will be burnt. The final line is “oh well, we will have to come back tomorrow!”

I actually got a few laughs (the script was better that the explanation, and the actors helped make it funnier!)

Singing

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Do you sing for pleasure, to earn money, to learn something new? Or for mental or physical health?

Singing is good for lung health. It can strengthen both your lungs, chest muscles and help improve your voice. It helps with breathing and can help control your worries. I’ve found it helpful with controlling anxiety. It doesn’t cure it, but it calms it. Yes you could get stage fright, but singing with a choir helps because you are singing with others and that supports all the participants. You learn together and grow together. After about 20 years of singing with the group we sound pretty good. New people join and the group changes, but we all enjoy going or we wouldn’t be there

Some songs are earworms, rolling round and round in your head. Others are hard to pick up. We sometimes drop a tone or sing flat. It’s hard as a low singer to hit the high notes. Some songs are really annoying, but others in the group love them. But as we are all different then we all like a variety of music. Participating is good for you. I’d recommend it to anyone.

Performance

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Play under a gazebo, Titchy Theatre. We had a good attendance and people seemed to enjoy the small, two page playlets. We had a variety of performances, one play imagined life as an elevator where different floors matched with ages of life and what people do then. Like childhood, aging, and even death. Another was about memories of tandem riding, and various memories of the riders, a third about a noisy neighbour. It was really good to see people’s thoughts down on paper, and the actors enjoyed doing it despite only seeing the scripts about an hour before the performance.