Tony Walsh’s rendition of his 2013 poem This is the Place at the recent Manchester vigil is a ‘must watch’ performance. In the modern era of soundbite politicking, it harkens back to the days of true oratory and its message is the more powerful for it:
Nothing more to say.
“Goodbye, Mr Bond”
(Ernst Stavro Blofeld)
I’ve not penned a limerick-as-eulogy for a while, but the life of Bond actor Roger Moore deserves comment. He died at the grand old age of 89 and the obituaries that have poured forth have been uniformly warm and gracious in respect of the fundamental decency of the man.
He was always humerous and self-deprecating in interviews, something that was not a PR affectation, but, judging from the many personal reminiscences of the public, it was both genuine and borne of the belief that he had been extremely lucky in his life.
Personally, I think he passed muster as Simon Templar in The Saint and as Lord Brett Sinclair opposite Tony Curtis in The Persuaders more than he did as James Bond (I’m in the miniscule minority that thinks Timothy Dalton was and remains the best Bond). Nevertheless, as a Bond he remains an icon.
So here is my erstwhile homily:
St Peter may think that it’s quaint,
(But, then again, maybe it ain’t),
That double-oh-seven
(A ‘Bond’ now in Heaven)
Was already known as a Saint!
Postscript: Various newspapers have printed a number of the public’s reminiscences of meeting the man behind the raised eyebrow. Today’s online edition of The Independent printed the following anecdote (long but well worth reading) under the headline:
Roger Moore dead: This anecdote about the James Bond actor just keeps getting better as you read
‘What a man. What a tremendous man.’
“Sir Roger Moore died at the age of 89 yesterday, and tributes have poured in for the kind and benevolent James Bond star from friends, family and fellow actors.
None sum up his gentleness and good humour quite as perfectly as this anecdote from Mark Haynes however, a scriptwriter from London who had a chance meeting with Moore at an airport when he was seven.
“As a seven-year-old in about 1983, in the days before First Class Lounges at airports, I was with my grandad in Nice Airport and saw Roger Moore sitting at the departure gate, reading a paper. I told my granddad I’d just seen James Bond and asked if we could go over so I could get his autograph. My grandad had no idea who James Bond or Roger Moore were, so we walked over and he popped me in front of Roger Moore, with the words “my grandson says you’re famous. Can you sign this?”
As charming as you’d expect, Roger asks my name and duly signs the back of my plane ticket, a fulsome note full of best wishes. I’m ecstatic, but as we head back to our seats, I glance down at the signature. It’s hard to decipher it but it definitely doesn’t say ‘James Bond’. My grandad looks at it, half figures out it says ‘Roger Moore’ – I have absolutely no idea who that is, and my hearts sinks. I tell my grandad he’s signed it wrong, that he’s put someone else’s name – so my grandad heads back to Roger Moore, holding the ticket which he’s only just signed.
I remember staying by our seats and my grandad saying “he says you’ve signed the wrong name. He says your name is James Bond.” Roger Moore’s face crinkled up with realisation and he beckoned me over. When I was by his knee, he leant over, looked from side to side, raised an eyebrow and in a hushed voice said to me, “I have to sign my name as ‘Roger Moore’ because otherwise…Blofeld might find out I was here.” He asked me not to tell anyone that I’d just seen James Bond, and he thanked me for keeping his secret. I went back to our seats, my nerves absolutely jangling with delight. My grandad asked me if he’d signed ‘James Bond.’ No, I said. I’d got it wrong. I was working with James Bond now.
Many, many years later, I was working as a scriptwriter on a recording that involved UNICEF, and Roger Moore was doing a piece to camera as an ambassador. He was completely lovely and while the cameramen were setting up, I told him in passing the story of when I met him in Nice Airport. He was happy to hear it, and he had a chuckle and said “Well, I don’t remember but I’m glad you got to meet James Bond.” So that was lovely.
And then he did something so brilliant. After the filming, he walked past me in the corridor, heading out to his car – but as he got level, he paused, looked both ways, raised an eyebrow and in a hushed voice said, “Of course I remember our meeting in Nice. But I didn’t say anything in there, because those cameramen – any one of them could be working for Blofeld.”
I was as delighted at 30 as I had been at 7. What a man. What a tremendous man.”
I’m not a great fan of the comedian Frankie Boyle, but I did chuckle at his description of the UK Prime Minister, Theresa May, on a recent edition of the TV show ‘Have I Got News For You’:
“Theresa May looks like the colour grey didn’t care whether you lived or died.”
{This was posted in the spirit of gender and colour balance cf my reference in an earlier post to Lorna Wallace’s description of POTUS as a “Tangerine gabshite walloper”}
I was lacking inspiration for this week’s ALAW until I realised that could be an inspiration in itself. So here is a last-minute limerick that is not very good, but it is anapestically correct!
There is always a mountain to climb
When you struggle to find a new rhyme,
But I’m pleased to relate
That it’s not yet too late
To publish my limerick on time!
Postscript: By sheer coincidence I was sent the following pic after my earlier post about haiku and limericks. It took a minute or two to see the joke (I’m obviously a bit thick), but it made me laugh when I did:
Putting the P into Pilsner …
If all goes to plan I shall be in Brussels when this is posted, in the country of moules, frites and bière – especially bière.
It may be sacrilege to admit it, but personally, I’m not overly fond of many of the Belgian beers. I do like some, but the naturally-fermented lambics and most of the beers brewed by Trappist monks are imho either distasteful or overly strong or both.
So, in general, I find it wise to avoid the beers that have pictures of monks or monasteries on their labels. And I’m always careful if asking for a large bière blanche; in some bars it is very large indeed and arrives in what is, effectively, a glass bucket!
It’s possibly the after effects of drinking such a bucketful that inspired the creation of the Manneken Pis, the famous Brussels statue of a small boy peeing eternally – it’s not (but it should be) and that is the thought that inspired this week’s limerick …
It’s a question that’s hard to dismiss
But the answer is quite simply this:
‘It’s palpably clear
That an excess of beer
Is what makes the Manneken Pis!’
A brief discourse on avian contraband …
Having enjoyed a couple of trips to the thermal baths during my recent foray to Germany (see posts passim), I was interested to hear that a colleague on a visit to France had also indulged, but being in the land of the Gauls he was, of course, confronted by the French ban on the wearing of swimming shorts in public pools – a ban on any swimwear that is baggy and not skin-tight. In other words, Speedos were the order of the day for him.
I first came across this bizarre constraint a couple of years ago when attending a wedding in France. The Speedo requirement was enforced in all public pools including the one on the campsite at which we were staying. We were told this was for hygiene reasons and I have since read that this is, indeed, the case. So, whereas I’m quite happy in my baggy dookers (as they are known en Écosse), we looked for, and found, a tighter-fitting pair that passed muster in the French pools; a sort of hybrid between so-called budgie smugglers and boxers.
Meantime, back in Germany, my sister’s family always dread the moment their pater familias emerges from the changing cubicles at their local spa as he is a relict of the golden age of budgie smugglers and an unapologetic advocate of the Speedo approach to swimwear. Slim, athletic youths may be able to carry it off, but late-middle-aged men can’t and that is not debatable!
Anyway, the point of all this is to bring you a limerick, so here it is:
A chap should know when he goes
To France, they will always impose
A sartorial rule
When you bathe in a pool,
That forces you into Speedos.
Postscript: I don’t think that it is widely appreciated that the person to blame for the Speedo blight on the world was, in fact, a Scot.
According to the Rampant Scotland website, Alexander MacRae was born in Kyle of Lochalsh around 1890 and emigrated to Australia in 1910 where he established a hosiery business at Bondi Beach in 1914. Ultimately his business marketed Speedo swimwear in 1928; a product that eventually evolved into the abomination that are the budgie smugglers of today.
Berger & Wyse made me smile again!
After her all-too-close an encounter with a canine’s canines, sympathies go to my Ice Cream Buddy via the medium of a limerick where the guilty mutt discovers the power of speech and serves a contrite warning to others:
While out for a walk in the park
Misuko was heard to remark
“I wouldn’t come near,
In fact, I’d stay clear.
‘Cos my bite is much worse than my bark!”
It’s taken a while, but I finally got around to re-hanging the ‘picture’ wall to include the latest Gray’s School of Art short course exhibits. Looks good!
It’s not false modesty to say they’re “okay, but not fine art”. Perhaps they don’t even match my strapline of artless but enticing, but what they are is a set of half-decent B&W analogue prints that gave a great deal of pleasure in the taking and making of them (frustration too, but mainly fun). And anyway, this quote from Susan Sontag gives us all hope:
“Time eventually positions most photographs, even the most amateurish, at the level of art.”
I can wait …
Postscript: Here’s a pic of my ‘new’ Nikon F3 HP film camera with its motor drive, 50mm prime lens and 35-135mm zoom lens. It was given away, free, to a good home; well to me anyway!
Until now, my B&W analogue pics have been taken with a Canon EOS 300 camera with autofocus and a variety of modern lenses (although I don’t always use autofocus). It will be interesting to see how the Nikon matches up.
According to Ken Rockwell’s web site, the F3 was in production from 1980-2001, remaining so even after the F4 and F5 were introduced. He gives the F3 the accolade of being one of Nikon’s best pro cameras.
The HP model was introduced in 1982 and going by its serial number, mine was made in 1983 – 34 years old and still in almost mint condition!
It could be verse …
I’m never quite sure why the Japanese literary art of haiku is so revered.
I get that (traditionally) a haiku has a strict structure and comprises three lines with a sequence of five, seven and five moras. (Apparently moras are sound structures in Japanese that are similar to, but not the same as, syllables).
… I get that they mostly don’t rhyme.
… I get that they comprise two phrases placed together for contrast.
… I even get that at times (usually?) they seem to lack meaning.
What I don’t get (and this is what I really don’t get) is why they are held up as examples of high literary art when the humble limerick is looked down upon from those immersed in ‘high’ culture
After all limericks have a defined structure like haiku, in their case comprising five lines in which, strictly, the first, second and fifth should each have nine syllables and the rest only six. Admittedly they differ from haiku as the longer lines each rhyme as do the two shorter ones, but that just makes them harder to construct.
You can even get technical in their definition as they are quintains with a strict rhyme scheme and anapestic meter in which the first, second and third lines are triplets, comprising three anapests and the others are couplets with only two. As an anapest is a three-syllabic clause usually with emphasis on the third syllable, a limerick is phrased thus:
Tee tee tum, tee tee tum, tee tee tum
Tee tee tum, tee tee tum, tee tee tum
Tee tee tum, tee tee tum
Tee tee tum, tee tee tum
Tee tee tum, tee tee tum, tee tee tum.
Although that is strict definition of a limerick’s meter they don’t all follow such an exact scheme; however, modern conventions in haiku also break from strict tradition, so clearly both forms are flexible. (It’s rare that my limericks are precise enough in their meter to correspond to the strictest definition, but sometimes a chap has to compromise as you’ll see later).
The modern tradition of limerick writing almost compels them to incorporate clever word play and, if possible, subtle innuendo. If you can get meter, word play and innuendo matched, then you have the perfect limerick. I’m still striving for that. I struggle to achieve more than one out of the three in my efforts in A limerick a week, but it’s fun to try.
Last week’s offering was close to a strict anapestic meter, failing only due to a missing syllable in the last line. In fact, I had a version that did match correctly, but it didn’t read as well as the syllable-deprived version. The final version was:
When a Teutonic torso arose
I was tempted to yell: “Thar she blows!”
‘Cos the scene that I viewed
Was an adipose nude
Afloat in a supine repose.
The alternative, and anapestically correct version, had as its final line:
All afloat in a supine repose.
Try both endings and see which you prefer (hopefully you’ll agree with me that the sacrifice of a single syllable was worth it – either that or you’ll think I’m a complete pillock for letting such things bother me).
So, how did an interest in limericks arise? Surprisingly, not from an introduction to the work of Edward Lear (famous for popularising limericks in the 19th century, although his commonly ended the first and fifth lines with the same word in contrast to current practice).
No, the first that really grabbed attention in my early years was this one:
There was a young fellow called Clyde
Who fell in a cess pit and died.
He had a young brother
Who fell in another
And now they’re interred side by side!
It was the double meaning implied by interred that made it memorable. It is quite a well-known limerick, with lots of variants, but this is the version that I remember and it is still one of my favourites.
I first heard another favourite on a old vinyl record. As an undergraduate I’d won a couple of such LPs in a raffle. One featured a Scottish folk duo, the Corries, on a ‘live’ album that included one very short track, ‘Abigail’:
On the bosom of young Abigail
Was written the price of her tail
And upon her behind
For the use of the blind
Was the same information in braille!
Not very PC nowadays, but still, I think, very clever.
So, there we are. There are many bloggers and twitterers producing limericks today. Not all are clever and too many are crude rather than rude, but there are some really good ones out there and, for me, they hold their own against haiku.
Meantime, here is this week’s none-too-clever, but anapestically-correct limerick of the week:
A limerick’s a kind of a verse
Of the sort that I like to disburse,
But it seems that sometimes
I don’t quite get the rhymes
Or the metrical foot is perverse!
Postscript#1: I’ve only ever written one haiku. It was after a tedious work-related discussion on producing guidelines for almost anything and everything that we do.
Chris, a now-retired colleague, had expressed his frustration in the following way that also reflected our collective practice of resorting to limericks in our business planning:
Generally
Users
In
Denial,
Ensuing
LImericks,
Never
Ending
Storms (in tea-cups).
To me, that sounded like it should be a haiku, but it wasn’t, so with a wee bit of thought it was turned into a wannabe Japanese aphorism in which the juxtaposition of contrasting phrases delivers a meaningless expression – except that in this case it is surprisingly meaningful (to me) in the work context outlined above:
Storms brew in tea-cups
As guidelines grow profusely
Into limericks.
Postscript#2: Limericks are generally thought to be named after the city or county of Limerick in Eire, possibly drawn from a version of nonsense verse popular in the area.
Postscript#3: The ex-Python, Michael Palin, has published two volumes of limericks. Some good, some not-so-good, but with the advantage of having an artist to illustrate them. That’s cheating!