I reckon I was about 8 years old, maybe 9, when the Junior School took us to a Youth Hostel in Kettlewell. We went on a minibus (there weren't many kids in my Junior School) and stayed overnight, maybe two nights, I don't know. All I really remember is playing in the stream in the sunshine, and everybody in bunk beds in the evening; a tipsy teacher sticking her head round the door and asking us all to quiet down.
I have one photograph from this trip, faded and orangey, like summers were back then. There's a slight scratch on the photo near the face of my "girlfriend" at the time, Jacqueline B. I remember we went through a phase of hanging out together a lot, playing "cats and dogs" (more innocent than in sounds) and one time she kissed me on the lips in the playground. But neither of us really knew what that meant. The scratch came from when I kissed the photograph, and then rubbed away the saliva. It does look like another one of the kids is attacking her with a mini lightsabre, but I know the truth. By the following summer we'd drifted apart, and it would be more than ten years before a girl kissed me on the lips again.
All this came flooding back to me yesterday while I was listening to Bluebird, a track from the new Arab Strap album. There's a bit in the middle of this (otherwise quite tame, by their standards) song, where Aidan Moffat growls...
The shitehawk is nocturnal
He thrives in the night
Hiding in the bushes as he hawks his shite
And suddenly, I was on that minibus again, singing along at the top of my voice along with everyone else...
Charlie had a budgie, a budgie, a budgie
Charlie had a budgie, a budgie had he
It flew in the daytime, it flew in the night
And when it came back it was covered in...
Charlie had a budgie, a budgie, a budgie...
I don't think I've sung that song, or even thought about it that much, for at least 40 years (why would I?). But now I can't get it out of my head...
I did have to google Charlie Had A Budgie, to make sure I hadn't imagined it. Fortunately, the internet confirmed its existence, along with a number of variations, mostly about Charlie having a pigeon, which is just wrong.
(And to this day, I still wonder why it came back covered in... anything.)
My father’s the Lord Mayor of London
ReplyDeleteHe works in the lavvies at night
And when he comes home in the morning
His shoes are all covered in …..
Well, that, at least, makes sense.
DeleteShhhh ... ine up your buttons with Brasso, it's only 3 an 8 pence a tin.
DeleteYou can buy it or nick it from Woolworths, but I don't think they've got any in
Are these ditties along the same lines as
ReplyDeleteHoly moses I am dying
Just a word before I go
If you see a german soldier
stick a bayonet up his......
Holy moses I am dying
Just a word etc
Stick a bayonet up his toe?
Delete(I mean, they only work if there's an implied rhyme, surely?)
Not toe, no.
DeleteCrow? Snow? Status Quo?
DeleteI'm lost, George.
My husband has been known to sing that one George - Must be a Scottish one.
DeleteAnd no, not toe, and not a rhyme.
https://www.afc-chat.co.uk/forums/index.php?/topic/31673-whit-was-yer-first-song-as-a-bairn-ye-can-mind/
DeleteMaybe an scottish east coast thing, Alyson?
There’s another Glaswegian one about being on your holidays in the country. So juvenile but once it’s in the middle, hard to budge it.
ReplyDeleteOnce it’s in your ‘noddle’
DeleteI wish this entire thread could have been in person. Quite entertaining thinking about everyone of a certain age attempting to top each other’s childish limericks like when we were kids.
ReplyDelete