HISS

Sign in Helsingborg. In our Swedish (even though I do actually speak not one word of Swedish as such) Signs for Fridays Series.

Limerick Challenge!

At the suggestion of Kristen I am launching a Limerick challenge: for you to try your hand at The Limerick and write your very own.

If you feel like it put your limerick in the comments spot of the limerick post yesterday (here) and we'll all have a good laugh (with not at you I promise!)

Limericks

Now it's high time for some more Limericks. Limericks? you say. (I mentioned them last post but here we delve deeper... I like saying "delve" it makes me happy. You try. It's even better if you can add "dig" in, too. See if you can get "dig and delve" into several conversations today.)

Limericks are sometimes looked down on. Reasons given are:
1/they're simple
2/short
3/only have 5 lines
4/and they're not very hard to write

(come to think of it, isn't that pretty much what some people think of children's picture books? yes but never mind, onward)

And because they're not hard to do, All And Sundry joined in evidently--mostly in pubs while drunk--so, worst of all, they tended to be:
5/"bawdy".

Shakespeare wrote them (he has some in two of his greatest plays Othello and King Lear) so if they're good enough for Shakespeare...

But the master of Limericks is Edward Lear. There had long been an oral tradition of nonsense poetry in the English language, from nursery rhymes to schoolyard chants and drinking songs. But Edward Lear was the first English writer to make nonsense poetry into an art form: something worth writing and publishing in its own right.

So without further ado, one of my favorites (complete with Lear's own line illustration):

the father of nonsense

Edward Lear (1812-1888), the British poet and painter known for his absurd wit, has been called "the father of nonsense" and wrote, what else but, The Complete Nonsense (a bind up of all his various nonsense: nonsense alphabets, nonsense botany, nonsense songs, nonsense stories, nonsense pitures, nonsense rhymes), which is the first book I remember reading all the way through. I was about 7 and adored it. I didn't know it was allowed. To speak and write such a load of nonsense like that. And get away with it. Get it in a book, even. And have it published.

And he did the drawings too!

(Lear of course gave us Quangle-Wangles, Pobbles, and Jumblies. And marvelous things like a runcible spoon.)

Things have not been the same since. Of course I immediately set about writing and illustrating nonsense limericks like him.

In Lear's limericks the first and last lines usually end with the same word rather than rhyming. And mostly they are well and truly utter nonsense and have no punch line or point whatsoever. Wonderful in other words.

One limerick that isn't a Lear Limerick but is one of my all-time favorites:
There was an old faith healer of Deale
Who said "Though Pain isn't real
When I sit on a pin
and it's punctures my skin
I don't like what I fancy I feel."

In that one, the last line isn't a repeat of the first line and stronger as a result, I think. (When it's the same word, it has always felt to me like a bit of let down.)

Here's one of my favorite Edward Lear Limericks:
Do you have a favorite?

BAD sign

(in our small Swedish Signs for Fridays Series)

Fourth Plinth

(Plinth is a nice word. And Fourth Plinth is even nicer. It's also quite nice to say it twice. Fourth Plinth Fourth Plinth. Except then you feel as if you have something wrong with your tongue)

Trafalgar Square has four plinths. (Sorry. Why are you telling us this again?) The plinths are these enormous pedestals that stand at the four corners of the square. Three of them hold statues of George IV, Henry Havelock, and Sir Charles James Napier. (No, seriously, why?)

The fourth plinth (fourth plinth fourth plinth) on the northwest corner was going to hold a statue of William IV, but they ran out of money. And then no one could agree which hero or king should go up there. So, instead, they didn't put anyone there.

So the fourth is vacant.

These plinths are usually reserved for statues of Kings and Generals but for the next 100 days, there will be real live people standing on the fourth plinth as living statues, taking it in turns, for an hour at a time, (even if it's 2AM and pouring rain).

Jason Clark, 41, an NHS nurse from Brighton, was the second person to stand on Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth

Anyone can apply (but you have to live in the UK) and you can watch what people are up to here on the live video. There's a warning on the site that they may be up to all kinds of anythings... (one man dressed up as a poo).

Read more here.

(I think, due to them being the most famous feature of the square, wouldn't the most appropriate statue to put on the fourth plinth be of a great big giant pigeon?)

PS random odd fact

random fact for today

it will be... shortly...
(in America at least)
12:34:56 7/8/9

and all over the world, in a couple of months, it will be
09:09:09 09/09/09

What does it all mean? Nothing

and now i have a headache.

"Best kids' books ever"

Nicholas Kristof of the NYT has made his list of the top 10. His kids have too.

Needless to say they aren't the same.

Not even close.

I don't think I'm even going to try and make my own top 10 list ... although I will say (because it's one of my all time favorites and I can't help it) ... what about Winnie The Pooh FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE?

Which really only goes to prove one thing: making such a list is a fool-hardy and impossible task. Thank heavens. There are far too many wonderful children's books out there to squish into a list of 10. (Why do you have to choose anyway? Can't all of them be your favorites?) Plus, even if you could choose, no one will ever agree. Which is just the way it should be. If books are like friends, then it makes sense you're going to have some that are your particular favorites. Ones that may be entirely over-looked by someone else. It's individual and intimate, the conversation that goes on between the reader and the book. And have you noticed how passionately you will defend your favorite book, just like you would a friend?

But, just out of interest... What book would you have included in the list that wasn't?

fireworks on the hudson

The best sign in Stockholm

The Stomatol sign in Söder.

How cool is that?

Other cool Swedish signs: check them out here.

(don't actually speak swedish. as such. Just pretending. I like it so much in fact--pretending and signs--that I'm going to start a small series of Swedish signs for Fridays... this is the first...)