TheBanyanTree: TheBanyanTree Digest, Vol 180, Issue 2

Thu Apr 23 06:12:36 PDT 2020

A lovely, lovely read. Thanks, Peter!

Ever onward.

Sidda

On Wed, Apr 22, 2020 at 4:06 PM <thebanyantree-request at lists.remsset.com>
wrote:

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>    1. Re: Past the one month mark (peter macinnis)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2020 15:50:01 +1000
> From: peter macinnis <petermacinnis at ozemail.com.au>
> To: thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com
> Subject: Re: TheBanyanTree: Past the one month mark
> Message-ID: <11c246e7-60d4-efce-cad3-0693993f8ebe at ozemail.com.au>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
>
> Today being Earth Day, V. I. Lenin's birthday and mine, I have had a
> visit (at a social distance) from my twin granddaughters and videocalls
> with the New Zealand grandkids.  We are now all allowed out under
> controlled conditions as things begin to get more hopeful here in Oz and
> NZ.
>
> BTW, don't feel bad about missing my birthday if you did: (a), it
> probably isn't my birthday where you are yet; and (b), I typically lie
> about the actual date, so you would probably see it as the 25th.
>
> Each morning, Chris and I walk in the sanctuary where I work (we workers
> aren't allowed in there right now) where visitors are allowed, so long
> as they avoid each other, and today was no different. I and my
> colleagues have been prowling and plotting, and sharing schemes and
> plans, ready to get into action as soon as the whistle blows.
>
> Despite having world-class idiots of Boris and Donald stature as our
> state and federal leaders, the medical people have kept the loose lips
> buttoned, zipped, stapled and glued, which is why we are now able to be
> getting hopeful.
>
> Fully 10% of Australia's Covid-19 cases stem from the authorities
> letting a single plague ship's passengers off without checking. Without
> that ship, we'd be far better off, and I have staked my reputation as a
> fraud-finder that the cause was a bribe that will, if and only if my
> advice is followed, be uncovered.
>
> Still, we are playing safe. I had to jump through hoops to get to see an
> audiologist yesterday, to be told that my left ear retains ornamental
> qualities, and just one functional quality: it keeps my glasses from
> falling off.
>
> I can no longer listen to opera or orchestral music at preferred levels,
> but I'm holding it all together, even though I am now officially deaf.
> (That said, I an using a massage tool that has greatly improved things:
> the problem is fluid build-up in the middle ear, and this is shaking the
> fluid about and out.)
>
> This past month has seen two e-books go into circulation with Amazon
> Kindle, and a dead-tree book has gone onto the shelves in good
> bookshops: 'Survivor Kids' is about how to cope in the wilderness.
>
> That was supposed to be the point where I hung up my pen, but I found
> two relics on the back-burner to play with.  I watched the re-make of
> 'Whisky Galore' last night, and I had used the islands of Big Todday
> (Todday Mhor) and Little Todday (Todday Beag) for my fictional Ugly
> Islands, written as the background to a statewide science examination.
>
> A miserable intellectual twigmy with the creative talents of a dead
> sheep tried to claim copyright in the whole work when a friend sought
> leave to use it, so I put it on the web, declared it open and challenged
> the dead sheep to sue me.
>
> Anyhow, I later started writing stories a bit like 'Tales of the South
> Pacific' located in the Ugly Islands before setting it aside.  Now,
> having seen the movie, I am playing with it again, Sam, though the new
> movie only has Todday, and failed to set up the second-best joke of the
> whole movie, when a village idiot, holding up the lawmen, suddenly
> declares that "whisky" is the password for no good reason.
>
> After that, there was a book on beach-combing that might be fun to
> research, if not to write...
>
> Meanwhile, I got on the 'Whisky Galore' thing because in the 1949
> original, there was a children's nonsense song 'Brochan Lom' used as
> mouth music in the movie, and I was thinking of teaching that to my
> granddaughters (they have Scots inheritance on both sides), but if you
> listen to it <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f0zm9DfVw0> or
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjim2wN9pqo>, it makes a fine marching
> song, and as Chris and I sought the remaining flannel flowers of autumn,
> these words came to me:
>
> Flannel flower, flannel flower, gentle never tough,
> Flannel flower, flannel flower, soft and never rough,
> Flannel flower, flannel flower, you will be enough,
> Home to beetles, butterflies and other lovely stuff.
>
> I'm working on a few other verses...
>
> Now about Lenin's birthday: in 1970, I was a "quiz star", which entailed
> strangers accosting me in the street and saying "You're Peter from
> Pick-a-box, you must be very intelligent". I always thanked them but
> wanted to say "Look, I may be intelligent, but that's beside the point:
> I have a ratbag mind, and that's how I do it..."
>
> Anyhow, in one show, there was a warm-up "Who am I" question, and when
> Bob Dyer read out the first clue "I was born on 22 April 1870..." I hit
> the buzzer. He was counting on filling two minutes with this, which was
> lucky, because as he said "Peter, I don't believe it!" the name went out
> of my mind, but I can talk under wet cement, so I stalled. I explained
> that I was also 22 April, and had read something about the centenary in
> 'New Scientist', so I knew that the leader of the Russian revolution was
> born that day, he was pattern-bald, had a small beard, and that was when
> the name came back. "Some call him Ulyanov," I said "but we mainly call
> him Lenin or V.I. Lenin."
>
> peter
> whose sig file celebrates his new auditory status
>
> --
> Peter Macinnis,
> Stand-up chameleon,
>
>
> ------------------------------
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> End of TheBanyanTree Digest, Vol 180, Issue 2
> *********************************************
>