'By yon bonnie banks an' by yon bonnie braes
Whaur the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond'
(Traditional Scottish - first published 1841)
AnElephantCant possibly do justice
He lacks the descriptive ability
Loch Lomond is quite
The most wondrous sight
An ocean of beauteous tranquillity
The morning mist lies low and eerie
The Elephant records in his Captain’s Log
Then the sun breaks through
Shows a sky of clear blue
And quickly dissipates Kermit the Fog
AnElephantCant claim to be useful
When he is asked to propel a canoe
He is not to blame
Perhaps it’s a shame
He is a pachyderm not a gnu
If each picture paints a thousand words
It is best if the Elephant is quiet
A very quick message
Black pudding and sausage
And the wee stove that Rab brought to fry it
<
We are all in this together
But the rich don’t have enough
The poor are just so greedy
Do they really need so much?
Rich people only work if they know they will get richer
Poor people just won’t work unless they are really poor
So it seems a whole lot fairer to take money off the old folk
Who cares? We know that they’ll be dead long before me and you are
Stop moaning all you folk out there
All this griping is unhealthy
If you want some help from George Osborne
All you need is to be wealthy
Forty plus years of PAYE
NI Vat and Council Tax
Stop your whining
There’s a silver lining
Davie Cameron knows the facts
It costs old folk 300 quid
To save Georgie 40k
You are out of luck
He doesn’t give a hoot
Because you are old and bald or grey
So you thought you’d have some comfort
A warm fire a cup of tea
You daft old cretin
You should not bet on
Any help from a rich Tory
AnElephantCant quite grasp the problem
That is vexing the Westminster louses
Should they tax the rich?
And if so then which
Those who make loads or the ones with big houses?
AnElephant doesn’t live in a £2 million mansion
Please forgive our sad lack of conceit
We are not being funny
But with that sort of money
You could jolly well buy our whole street
We don’t earn £150 thousand per annum
We would be up to our big ears in peanuts
If we did we’d be nice
And give up a slice
At that level we would not even see cuts
In London the story is different
Old Boris calls £250,000 chickenfeed
For a weekly column
We find this appalling
A cash-obsessed addict in need
The Government says they cannot tax the wealthy
On their income because they avoid it
We think they mean evade
We are being betrayed
If they have a conscience it is time they employed it
This Elephant is a quite simple beastie
We do not ever pretend to be clever
But we do get irate
When Cabinet millionaires state
OK chaps we are all in this together
Here is something we did suggest last year*
When Wee Dave thought Big Phil the bee’s knees
So George here’s our thought
Why not tax the whole lot
On the cash their wives ship overseas?
If our leaders won’t take cash from their rich chums
(At least not in the way of taxation)
We will ask a hard question
And make a suggestion
That may cause Dave and Nick some vexation
We detest all these bankers and traders
Their greed could cause the next revolution
We don’t want to nobble ‘em
But they are the problem
We believe they should be the solution
These folk make obscene wealth in this country
Then ship it to where their wives stay
They like a good laugh
They say don’t be daft
Tax is what little people pay
So this Elephant suggests independence
For the City of London’s rich gents
We are not being funny
Let them keep their money
And we charge a gazillion pounds rent
*
http://anelephantcant.blogspot.com/2011/03/taxation-vexation.html
On the news that theRoyal Bank of Scotland, 84% owned by the UK government/tax-payer, is to relocate hundreds of call centre jobs to India.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/herald-view/a-jobs-export-that-goes-too-far.16944722http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/political-news/anger-as-rbs-transfers-scottish-jobs-to-india.1331003045
AnElephantCant grasp Royal Bank logic
They are giving more workers the sack
You and I are the donors
Of their gigantic bonus
Still they won’t lend us our own money back
They have 350 who earn quite good wages
Over £1 million every year
They send good jobs abroad
This logic is flawed
250 more are out on their ear
They take 785 million pounds for their bonus
While the rest of us struggle for cash
It’s what we deserve
They announce with great verve
And they just keep on building their stash
They say that they must pay out our money
Or all the good people will leave
From our point of view
That’s just what they should do
And don’t treat us as though we’re naive
The taxpayer owns 84% of this bank
But they make 250 people redundant
More folk on the dole
They keep digging the hole
Can you climb out? AnElephantCant
We suggest to all Royal Band customers
Why not deposit your cash somewhere else
This is not a threat
Just have a nice debt
And tell Stephen Hester his business plan smells
I spent yesterday afternoon with my grandson, who is 6 years old.
When I picked him up from school at 3pm he asked me if I knew anything about science or about projects.
By the time we met his mum at 6pm we had been to the pond, collected frog spawn, taken pictures of pond and spawn, and designed a project plan!
I suggested that we diarise the development of the tadpoles.
He said 'We can use the computer, I'll just do it in Word'!
When I was his age I dipped a slightly squinty nib into an inkwell!
AnElephantCant say that he’s certain
Whether wind farms are good things or not
From what he has read
There is much to be said
On both sides so he gives it some thought
Clean energy is clearly a benefit
As Scotland strives to keep our planet green
But these structures might be
Considered unsightly
Can we build turbines that generate unseen?
AnElephantCant pretend he’s a big fan
Of the US tycoon Donald Trump
It is fair to say
He likes his own way
If he can’t get it he pure takes the hump
The last chap who tilted at windmills
Was in a book that our Don might have read
This affable clown
Was abruptly knocked down
He did not listen to what anyone said
So oor Donald is building a golf course
And would like the horizon protected
He thinks he can tower
Over our future power
He does not want to see wind farms erected
He thinks that he can tell our Government
What can be built off our scenic east coast
They have a mandate
From Scotland’s electorate
I don’t remember him getting our votes
Could he possibly have ulterior motives
For trying to get this project binned?
We could make whoopee
Poking fun at his, em, hair
But perhaps he just doesn’t like a strong wind
He claims he is trying to save Scotland
He holds our scenery in the highest esteem
Are we being unfair
To say he didn’t care
Until it affected his money-making scheme?
We have a wee message for Donnie
We are a friendly and peace-loving race
Please listen carefully
We don’t like a bully
So gi’e us peace and don’t get in our face
AnElephantCant always avoid clichés
The artist has mentioned this a million times
He gets sick as a parrot
All stick and no carrot
But the rhymer sometimes needs one for a rhyme
We know the doodler has oodles of talent
He takes to drawing like a duck takes to water
Your scribe’s in the dog house
As poor as a church mouse
With prospects like a lamb to the slaughter
This pachyderm grows old and confuseder
Is there some animal who never forgets?
Does every dog have his day?
Where there’s a will there’s a way?
Over the hill or just hedging his bets?
Why is the horse such a source of sad clichés?
About water but not about drink
Get on when he’s high
Close the door wave goodbye
And a nod is as good as a wink
Perhaps the writer just isn’t the brightest
He can’t find his way even to Rome
His goose is well cooked
He has leapt but not looked
The lights are on but there’s nobody home
Let’s put an end to this shaggy dog story
Let’s pretend the fat lady has sung
This dodo is dead
Let’s put it to bed
And wish the cat had got more than his tongue
The rhymer knows that his work is quite hackneyed
Does he lack skill or just have a bad attitude?
But time is the thief
He’s sick to his back teeth
So he signs off with a new duck-billed platitude
A dear friend has brought this to the attention of the Elephant:
http://forargyll.com/2012/02/dermot-oleary-backs-marys-meals-big-blue-mug-campaign/There is no apology for the change of style and mood.
AnElephantCant contain his excitement
About the charity that’s called Mary’s Meals
No jokes this time
But a cheery wee rhyme
To tell everyone just how he feels
Mary’s Meals started feeding 200
Now it is 600,000 children each day
There is only one rule
They feed them in school
They never turn one child away
This Elephant does not usually do serious
He is aware that he sounds like a bore
But the laughs are adjourned
Where kids are concerned
He knows that he could and he should do much more
Please buy a mug which will help save these children
It’s quite big and it’s a shiny bright blue
AnElephantCant
Eliminate want
But he is trying and asks you to do too
http://www.marysmeals.org.uk/
Half AnElephantCant pretend that he’s useful
When the talented one goes on vacation
He sits here forlorn
Amidst winter’s storm
While the doodler doodles in some exotic location
Yep Phil is off taking the sunshine
In some paradise isle in the Med
It has to be nicer
Than the snow and the ice here
This Elephant’s tootsies are cold even in bed
An artist can make an impression
His pictures can depict a story
With minimal appliance
He can abstract compliance
And be decorated in surreal glory
The scribbler sits sharpening his pencil
It is the best it is the worst of times
He knows he’s no Dickens
But still the plot thickens
The rhymer has to keep finding new rhymes
Or he can continue to recycle old ones
He can re-use many happy returns
He sheds a wee tear here
The irony is clear here
It is the doodler whose surname is Burns
50 things I have done at least once in my life.
I was inspired to draw up this list when reading a blog I always enjoy and much admire:http://bensgrandpasblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/all-these-places-have-their-moments.htmlI make no claim that they are necessarily good things or in any way exceptional, just hopefully a quite interesting sequence of snapshots of a life.
They are very deliberately in no meaningful order.
1. Swam in Indian Ocean on Christmas Day
2.
Danced sur le pont d’Avignon3.
Visited Franz Kafka’s Castle in Prague4.
Saw Shakespeare on stage5.
Went to Turin, Italy to buy a briefcase6.
Sailed over the sea to Skye7.
Started my own business8.
Went to school in foreign language (Afrikaans)9.
Built a toy fort for my son10.
Saw Mont Blanc from the terrasse of my home11.
Sailed into Sydney Harbour12.
Saw a shooting star in Venice, Italy13.
Wrote a children’s book14.
Drove through Pyrenees in a 2CV15.
Had a pet chameleon
If he had written
Haikus we would drink far less
Whisky on Burns Night
Happy Birthday, Rabbie, and thanks for everything!
In the continued absence of the smart and talented half of AnElephantCant (if the brain isn’t here, guess which part of the elephant you are left with), I feel like a bit of a rant.
We are all aware of the dumbing down of the English language, in whatever flavour we use it.
The ever increasing use of email stripped the written word of much of its form and formality (and I confess to being as guilty as anyone in this) with the omission of pronouns, punctuation and even capitals.
Now the use of text has created a whole new language, much of it well-nigh incomprehensible to old fuddies like myself, and has wiped out almost entirely all previous notions of spelling and grammar.
This is not necessarily a bad thing per se, but I do wonder when ‘text’ became a verb and created the ugliest and most unpronounceable word in the language in its past tense.
Texted! Really?
But I am much more dismayed by the collapse of proper pronunciation in much of our day-to-day speech.
Here in Scotland this has, I believe, always been the case to some degree.
The omission of the ‘g’ at the end of ‘-ing’ is a widespread example of this, but the most common is the glottal stop which replaces the ‘t’ or even ‘tt’ in the middle of a word.
This is applied even in the name of our own country, Bonnie Sco’land!
We also lose the ‘t’ from the end of words, giving us cannae, willnae, dinnae and disnae.
And don’t get me started on such linguistic atrocities as ‘gauny’ or the execrable ‘um ur’ which in some circles seems to have replaced ‘I am’.
(My apologies to non-Scots speakers here – some of that must be utterly unintelligible.
And now onto the English!
By this I mean mispronunciations not found in Scots speech, but widespread among TV folk.
Let’s start with the much-abused letter ‘r’.
It is often omitted when it should be pronounced, as in poor, which becomes poo-wah.
Think also of door, car, sore, and pretty much anything ending in the comparative –er.
It is like a mass audition for the ‘Fwee Wodewick’ scene in Life of Brian!
Now, to be fair, this callous abandonment is compensated by the apparently spurious addition of the wretched ‘r’ to words ending in ‘aw’.
Think saw, claw, flaw and that famous Scottish footballer, Denis Lore.
If the family pet hurts its foot, imagine the consternation over its poor paw!
A more recent abomination is the emphasis on the internal ‘g’ in words like singing and ringing. In fact, it is pronounced as though there is an additional ‘g’, giving sing-ging and ring-ging. Why?
Do some morons think it is posh?
Or do posh people think it
The park can be a wondrous place
Full of strange exotic secrets
A twilight land of shadowy shapes
And dark mysterious creatures
T Rex and mammoth flourish here
Imagination has a feast
A creative mind (with grandpa’s help)
Conjures up amazing beasts
Jack runs tireless through the mud
His spirits never flagging
He’s on the hunt - has he found the tracks
Of the Sabre-dino-dragon?
They nest high in the leafless trees
Not long ago I got involved in one of those conversations. You know the kind of thing, the meaning of life, will we ever win the World Cup, what’s your favourite movie of all time, and so on.
Well, it was the movie bit that got interesting. What does ‘favourite’ mean? The best? How do you define that? And so on.
So we agreed to nominate the film which had the greatest impact on our lives, the one that most changed our way of thinking.
There were the usual proposals – The Godfather (I think II was top here), Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, and so forth.
But my choice caused some disbelief, consternation, and even laughter.
Until I explained the background.
I was brought up in what was then The Union of South Africa, in the late 1950’s.
There was no television.
(This, incredibly, was true until the 1970’s!)
There was not much in the way of radio, and most of that was in Afrikaans.
For those of you unfamiliar with Afrikaans, it is an offshoot of Dutch with a sprinkling of other, mainly African, words.
If you are unfamiliar with Dutch, try to imagine someone speaking German in that clipped, slightly nasal South African accent.
It is not the most mellifluous of the world’s tongues.
Now I spoke the language fluently, because I attended an Afrikaans-speaking boarding school in Newcastle in the Drakensberg Mountains, where I was sent for health reasons.
My poor brother was sent along just to keep me company - even then I felt that was somewhat unfair!
Regardless of fluency, Afrikaans is not the natural medium for song, comedy or entertainment for a 10-year old boy.
I am struggling here to get to my point.
I was raised on a musical diet of Al Jolson, my father’s favourite, and Kenneth McKellar, my mother’s, from the long-playing records brought from Scotland.
To this day I know all the words of everything Al Jolson ever sang.
Not just Mammy, Sonny Boy and Swanee, but Toot Toot Tootsie, A Rainbow Around my Shoulder, Baby Face and a hundred others.
I am not here to denigrate these great singers from an earlier era but, for a pre-teen boy, they were not quite doing it.
We went to the cinema, or Bioscope as it was known in South Africa, and saw The Wizard of Oz, Show Boat and other musicals, not always too contemporary!
The drive-in cinema was a great favourite there, for many reasons.
You sat in your car as a family – my parents, my two brothers and I – so you could talk and make the kind of jokes that families do, eat and drink, or even – in the case of my much younger brother – have a snooze without inconveniencing anyone else’s enjoyment of the evening.
You had the speaker set to the volume that suited you, so it didn’t have to be deafening.
I always thought it a great pity that our climate is so unsuited to the drive-in, when it is dark enough it is way too cold!
So one night my father took us to the drive-in to see a new film from America.
I sat open-mouthed, stunned, unbelieving, totally enraptured as Elvis Presley slid down a pole and ‘The warden threw a party in the county jail’!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpzV_0l5ILIYep, Jailhouse Rock.
The film that taught me there was a whole new and different world of music out there.
The film that showed me that a man could sing and dance and – no disrespect to the wonderful Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly - still be one heck of a man.
The film that gave voice to a generation, to their m
Seasons Greetings to both our readers (and their mums)
AnElephantCant stay calm when its Xmas
All those presents on a sleigh with reindeer
He keeps asking his mum
Will Santa get down the lum?
Close your eyes, dream sweet dreams, never fear
He loves Xmas trees decorated with tinsel
Mince pies, jelly, and seasonal cheer
Cards, toys from Santa
From AnElephantCant a
Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year
AnElephantCant pretend he’s enamoured
By the pandas in Edinburgh Zoo
They may look quite cute
In their black and white suits
But they just sit around munching bamboo
They must wish they were back home in China
What with winter and hurricanes and sleet
Can they keep themselves warm
In the eye of our storm
Do they need gloves for their wee hands and feet?
AnElephant believes that they’ve been told to mate here
Not that easy in conditions so Spartan
They will go to great pains
To produce cultural weans
Monochrome with a wee hint of tartan
They are called Tian Tian and Yang Guang
The names translate as Sweetie and Sunshine
If they get it together
In spite of the weather
Then these big bears will really have done fine
They must emulate Angel Shark Annie
Who has just produced nineteen shark babies
Over the forth in Fife
With no sign of strife
So tell Tian Tian no perhapses or maybes
AnElephant just loves being in Scotland
We treat a hurricane just like a breeze here
We are knee deep in snow
But whadya know
We have more pandas than Tory MP’s here!
My grandson brightens up my life
A source of fun and joy
We go dragon-hunting in the park
He is a wild creative boy
We track mammoth footsteps through the mud
He spies their nests high in the trees
He tells me - quick behind this bush
With no thought for creaky knees
But of all the things he teaches me
One thing I did not dream
After all these years I’m tasting
Different flavours of ice cream
I always ate vanilla
That was pretty much a rule
Sometimes I stuck a flake in
I thought that was really cool
But now my little droogie
Makes me think again because
He has chocolate ice cream with a flake
All drenched in raspberry sauce
He eats pooh bear crunch with sprinkles
Chocolate or multi-coloured
He heaps them onto toffee meringue
I feel like quite the dullard
So I’m eating creamy caramel
I’m becoming quite the raver
I try most things he offers me
But I can’t take peanut flavour
A carton a bowl a wafer a cone
No probs I always dug it
An oyster or a snowball
Or my favourite double nougat
But my ice cream was always white
Never green or brown or yellow
Not blue or pink
I used to think
I ain’t that kind of fellow
But now I’m more adventurous
He has taught me quite a lot
Flavours new
And bizarre hues
He just laughs and says so what!
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Nice wee poem and photos Brian.