As silly as it may sound I like the song about English Country Gardens. Clare and I want to start growing one in our yard – we call it a fairytale garden. We’ve got the hollyhocks (for flower dolls) and foxglove. We really just need to make the space and fix the soil. (We have horrible soil here – mostly red clay).
I assumed it would be easy to find a source for this song, but it seems this is the only link to most of the song. I don’t know who that character is. I’m going to have to buy a cd that contains the song and upload it. Or something.
Oh wait – if you like obnoxious midis, here you go.
I’ve mentioned Jeremy before. He’s the English guy I knew in the 70’s. We were going to get married, but didn’t.
I’ve not mentioned his stroke – at least not here. About 9 years ago he was taking a walk and had a stroke up on a moor. I didn’t know the taking a walk on the moor part – I found that out today when I heard he’d been honored by the British Stroke Association with a Life After Stroke award in art.
That got me thinking about Ilkely Moor. Have you seen the moors of Yorkshire? They are desolate, but have an uncanny beauty – something that haunts you when you leave them. Ilkely Moor is just another moor, but there is a Yorkshire folk song written about it.
Basically it’s about a guy who dated someone else’s girlfriend but forgot to wear a hat on the moor while he was dating the girl. His friend warns him that if he continues to go on the moor without a hat he may get a cold, die, and be eaten by worms that in turn are eaten by ducks. The guy whose girlfriend he dated may the duck and “get his own back”. Kinda gross, I know, but funny too. I have a tea-towel with the words and some cartoony drawings.
Here are the lyrics. A YouTube video of a bunch of rowdy Yorkshiremen singing the song follows.
When Clare was born my cousin gave her a rattle shaped like a cat. It had a nice soft sounding rattling noise, probably because it was covered in soft pink fabric over a layer or two of batting.
My husband, avid Devo fan at the time took that opportunity to sing Pink Pussycat to her while shaking the rattle for Clare. She loved it.
No soothing lullabies for Clare – she was a punk-rocker at a very early age.
