So here comes winter and they’re all off to Mexico again. I can’t figure out why they go bonkers here on this island when you mention bridges, then they fly south for hours to get one.
We the stay-behinders, the burst-pipe hunters, the mail monitors, demand validation with a suitable label. Long winters have we toiled through the blinding snow, tending the properties of the tropical travellers, wads of Canadian Tire flyers stuffed creatively about our clothing. Endlessly have we studied the special offers and diligently sent alerts about Handy Paint Pails and 10-packs of Toe Warmers.
“Shall I send you a Tamper Resistant GFI Receptacle? They’re 50% off!” and “Canadian Tire are selling Telescopic Snow Brushes with Pivoting Heads for $16.99!” – all fall on deaf and sunburned ears, awash with seawater.
As if that’s not enough, those who fly to the sunny south even get a romantic name. “Snowbirds”. What about us? We should have a name too. But what? “Snow remainers”? “Snow sit tighters”? “Snow hang-on-in-there -ers”? Hardly head-pivoters, as names go. It does rather seem that somehow the seasonal travellers have pinched the only good name around. But if birds fly (which they generally do, around here at any rate) then surely we need to have a name that reflects the fact that we don’t, and that we stay here on the ground. The very cold, white ground. “Snow slugs”? I have to say I don’t personally like the idea of being called a slug, though you may feel differently. “Snowsitters”? Now that isn’t bad, though it does tend to conjure up the impression of some mad eejit sitting out in the snow in a comfy armchair with cocoa, pipe and slippers. On the other hand you might say it suggests to you a determined cadre of warriors, firmly esconced in the snow, resisting all attempts to move them, when actually no-one’s trying.
In my hunt for an appropriate label, I have decided that I am a Snowbear (with suitable apologies to the real Ursus prettyscaryus). Because although bears may be zippy runners, climbers and swimmers, I don’t think they do a lot of flying. If you consult the Mighty Google in the sky (where else?) you will discover that bears don’t have wings. Ah well that would explain it I suppose.
So until next time, I remain yours with several mail keys, Alison, North Island Snowbear (Ursus openthatoneforus)
I heard a nice meteorological chappie yesterday talking about the “atmospheric river” BC is currently experiencing. I listened carefully. We’ve all been feeling like we might just get washed into the Salish Sea if it doesn’t stop raining soon. It seems September and October of this year have had 200% of the usual rain, and this week in two days we had what we’d normally get in the entire month of November.
Thoughts of arks floated through my mind. And rang a bell….
November 2015 All Aboard For Unnecessary Mountain
At last the rain has stopped. I was beginning to think I’d have to get hold of an ark from somewhere. I wonder if I could get one on EBay? Or perhaps our new hardware store might have one. I’ve told the cats that if it starts raining again they will have to pack their bags and get ready to evacuate. In fact if the weather forecast is right then we should all be getting our ducks in a row. Along with all other available species.
The planning begins.
I have promised Sketch and Drifter that they can be the two representative cats, though they are both male and I’m not altogether sure that was the idea when Noah packed his ark. But they don’t like each other so I think the chances of them getting up to anything dodgy in the ark are pretty small. I look around at the rest of the species living in my house. One teddy bear. One hippopotamus, one owl. One wise man (for seasonal duties). One black and white stuffed creature with orange nose and red-and-white hat, species undetermined. One papier-mâché cockerel. Oh dear. Things are not looking good for the resettlement stage of the enterprise. They’ll just have to improvise when it comes to the procreation stuff, but I have a bad feeling about the owl and that wise man.
I see a few blue jays flying around outside but how am I to catch them? Did Noah go charging around shooting assorted birds with a tranquiliser gun? As far as insects are concerned I know I can lay my hands on a few pairs of termites and carpenter ants but unless I do better than that we might not even get there.
Get where? Didn’t Noah just float around for a while until the floodwaters receded and deposited him somewhere? Did he have a say in it at all? Could he navigate? Did he have GPS? If my ark is fitted with GPS then I think I’ll head for another island and see how it compares with Gabriola. Preferably one with lots of good food and drink. I know there is Madeira on Madeira, and there are canaries in the Canaries, but are there any sardines on Sardinia? Rum on Rum? Champ on Champ? Yes, there really is an island called Champ Island – it is Russian, and champ is food. In case you didn’t know, it’s an Irish dish made mostly of mashed potatoes, with a few chopped spring onions and just a dash (that’s Irish for “lots”) of melted butter. Mmm! I look up Champ Island on Wikipedia.
Oh too bad! It seems the island wasn’t named after the dish, but after William S. Champ, the leader of a relief expedition sent in 1904 to rescue stranded explorers. It is in the Arctic Circle, population zero. This does seem to cast some doubt on whether we’ll be welcomed by locals bearing plates of steaming champ. But why was Mr. Champ called Mr. Champ anyway? Was he named after the food? Was he large, white and fluffy, with yellow hair? Green bits? I look him up on Google and it tells me he has a Facebook account, a Twitter account and is in the U.S. phone book.
Having established that Champ Island might be just a little too quiet in the way of social life, I take another look at the map and decide that it’s more likely we’ll run aground on a mountain anyway. Probably “Unnecessary Mountain”, thus giving it a purpose and rendering it a misnomer. I will tell the ducks to pack their crampons.
The Animals Went In One By One. L-R: papier-mâché cockerel, black and white stuffed creature with orange nose and red-and-white hat (species undetermined), wise man, owl, hippopotamus, teddy bear (Bruin).
It is Remembrance Day, and I am remembering. I’m not old enough to have lived through the Second World War, but I am old enough to remember those who did. My parents, for example – perhaps yours too.
I remember the adult conversations, memories woven into our growing up by the older generation who passed through our world with their stories. The First World War was remembered too, but the second was fresher then, and known as “the war”. “I’ll never forget in the war the day I heard our Joe had joined up.” “Remember the rationing?” “Oh yes indeed I do! The look on my mother’s face one day when she got to the front of the queue and no meat!”
Somehow the stories were all told by those who stayed behind. I don’t remember hearing any tales from men who had fought and returned. Perhaps we didn’t know any. Perhaps it was just too painful to talk about. Better forgotten?
But we did know about the pain, if we listened. My mother would talk of her cousin who was killed in the war. She never mentioned him without saying how very, very fond she had been of him, how upset she was when they heard the news of his death. The pain was still there, even after twenty years. Even after thirty, and forty years.
Growing up, we didn’t know much about him, this “cousin who died in the war”. But he was always there, in my mother’s descriptions of his colourful family, laughing, loving, joking and drinking together in one small townhouse in County Down. It was later that I thought about him most, when my mother was no longer there to ask. When there were only boxes. Boxes of old letters and photographs waiting to speak to us some day when we were ready to listen.
And one day we were. The early letters seemed cheerful, though a long way from home.
“…as regards myself I really cannot complain; apart from the heat, fleas, flies, desert rats and snakes this war is a pleasure.”
He wrote of how he would love to see his wife,
“…but I suppose everyone must play ones part in this war.”
“Don’t forget to remember me to all my dear old friends. Tell them that I do not expect to be home before this war finishes but I know that I have their prayers & good wishes and that means everything to me. […] To me they are people worth fighting for.”
“…I don’t think the day is far distant when we shall all “Let freedom Ring”.
But it was only 1941. Just before Christmas 1942 he received a cable that his baby was dangerously ill. “I almost went out of my mind,” he wrote, “not knowing what to do for the best.” He cabled back asking to be kept informed, but two months later had heard nothing. “Can you imagine it […] receiving a cable before Xmas then silence.” I don’t know when or if he ever got leave but I do know that the baby died. More bad news came in 1944 when his father became ill and subsequently died. Like so many soldiers fighting abroad for years on end, the physical ordeals of war were only part of the story. Feelings of homesickness and missing families would have been ongoing, but being cut off from your family in times of crisis surely must have been the worst of all. Paralysed, unable to help or support anyone.
“Things are mighty tough out here but nothing worries me as much as Dad. If ever the worst should happen it will be a harder blow than I ever hope to receive in Battle.”
There were the letters of worry, the hopes raised and dashed, the assurances to friends and family that he was all right and not to worry about him, letters written before the regiment was to move out – destination unknown.
And then there was the letter from his brother. It was addressed to my grandmother, who was very close to the family. He had been killed in action just a day before his wife gave birth to a little girl.
The last letter my grandmother had had from him was written just before that last battle, and ended with the words:
“No matter where I may go I shall always remember you all, God Bless & spare you All my Love. Your Loving Cousin B*”
It is easy to understand now why we were brought up never to forget. To remember and respect the people who fought and those who died, as well as the ones at home who lived through that time. “Lest we forget.” Maybe they talked about it and maybe they didn’t. But no-one forgot.
When I am Prime Minister I am going to see to it personally that an extra hour is installed in every day. This particular day is Sunday November 1st, and I have yawned and stretched lazily in my warm bed, chaired a meeting between my two cats (no mean feat since they are violently opposed to one another in all matters), indulged in coffee and Kim Philby’s autobiography for an hour and it is still only 8 o’clock. I raise my mug to the wonderful person who invented The Extra Hour to console us for darkening days. And for my next toast, I toast the toast.
Since neither of the cats seem to want to get up, I consider the possibility that it may not be a person I should be toasting. Could cats have invented this business of The Extra Hour themselves? Well perhaps not the two comatose ones on my bed right now, but one of their forebears?
Accepted wisdom may say that the idea was first seriously proposed by a New Zealander, but consider the evidence (My Lord). “DST” may stand for “daylight savings time”, but I aver (Your Honour) that it also stands for “domestic, short-haired tabby”, and I put it to you that the Day With The Extra Hour was introduced by cats to augment their reposing time. The life of a cat is after all hectic. Think of the slumbering, dreaming and dozing that must be fitted into one short day.
And then there is the snooze, not to mention the catnap. And the catnip! And do not forget eating! (They certainly do not.) Eating consumes (if you will pardon the pun) a considerable amount of time, with all the slurping, snorting, crunching and associated purring that needs to be done. Furthermore, it is common knowledge that the job description of a cat states most specifically that one’s surroundings must be checked daily for any changes to geographical layout etc. etc., new smells that may have arrived in the night – any new business arising – you know the sort of thing.
Why it is hardly surprising that any self-respecting feline would want extra time to put their paws up, chill out and slouch a bit.
I have heard the arguments that the aforementioned Kiwi introduced the setting forward of the clock in spring, and in the subsequent fall was simply returning the hour to its usual position. I dispute the veracity of this My Lord, and suggest that his change to our clocks was in fact intended to be permanent, if not in its inception, then most certainly in the following months when it was seen how much adjustment was required. People complained about disruption of their sleep patterns, others were missing travel connections and messing up their record-keeping. Chaos! Why not just leave things the way they were once we’d all got used to it, rather than go through all that again?
The world was divided on the issue.
It was no surprise that into the breach stepped a Kitty Of Good Fortune.
A Kitty Of Good Fortune, played by Puss In Boots. Puss In Boots appears courtesy of his creator, Lynn Van Herwaarden of The Gingerbread Studio 539 Wildwood Crescent, Gabriola Island, BC Canada. +1 250 247 8687
Moginski Muddle-offnikov KGF (a Russian émigré) was that Kitty, and he saw the feline advantages of the upcoming Day With The Extra Hour. A longer day with time for grooming and desultory chats with fellow c(h)ats for one thing. But most of all more time to be petted by humans, a bizarre species normally to be spotted rushing around like headless chickens screaming “good God woman, where in hell are my knickerbockers?” Moginski (Mog for short) thought this a splendid idea and lobbied for The Day With The Extra Hour. Cats everywhere rallied behind him, henceforth being labelled as “Moggies”.
While Mog’s campaign was successful and Moggies everywhere celebrated their victory with a lie-in, lamentably it was Mog’s chief failing that he lived only in the present and failed to see that his much sought-after Day With The Extra Hour would only happen once a year. The full story of Mog’s betrayal and downfall is too long a Tail to be told here but as we all know, governments stepped in to make DST an annual event.
While our Kiwi friend can most certainly be held responsible for the brutal shortening of our day in spring, Your Honour I allege that the matter of The Day With The Extra Hour must be placed fairly and squarely at the paws of the domestic short-haired tabby.
+++++++++
So that’s it! When I get up in the night in future and notice that my two cats are absent simultaneously, I will know that they are not digging in my flowerbeds but putting up placards about their next meeting, or at a secret rendezvous working on slogans.
Paws for the cause! Your right to a longer night! Rally in the alley!
Sue Graves and I having fun at Upton-on-Severn Folk Festival
I must admit that I’m getting a little bit jealous when I see all the folk clubs and even small folk festivals that that are starting to happen in the UK. The real world is beginning to make an appearance. It makes me think about all the UK festivals I went to in the 1990s. All those happy memories
Except for the ones that weren’t…
Redditch Folk Festival. Ah yes – the one I very nearly didn’t go to. Here’s what I wrote about it in 2015:
All Other Districts
There’s a sign in one of our island stores that says “Why are you rushing? This is an island. You’re only going around in circles.” It reminds me of the man in England who apparently drove all the way round the M25 (London’s Orbital Motorway – 117 miles) thinking he was heading north on the M1 to Newcastle-upon-Tyne 283 miles away.
I suppose he was enjoying the ride, or at least he was until he began wondering who’d moved Newport Pagnell and where all the Geordies were. At that stage I suppose he decided to ask for directions and learned the horrible truth. If anyone had told him to relax, he was just going around in circles, he’d probably have tipped his motorway service station fried eggs down their neck.
Funny isn’t it, when you consider that ring roads must have been invented to make our lives easier. Well that’s what I thought…
When I was living in England I drove from Wokingham, Berkshire to Redditch, Worcestershire to go to Redditch Folk Festival. I had done my homework. I had a plan.
a) Find festival site and register. Easy! Paid up and branded, I returned to my car for part “b”.
b) Find B&B to dump luggage. No problem I thought, and the festival program even had a very helpful map of the immediate area. It made things look much simpler than the route I had carefully researched and planned the night before. “Oh well if you can go up there first and then across, then take the first right and third left, it’s going to save me lots of time…” And off I went.
Two hours and one error in the festival’s map later (“then across” didn’t exist, turning the rest of their map and mine into total gibberish), I was just about to give up and go back to Berkshire when I finally managed to get the bed and breakfast owner on the other end of my trusty Motorola Startac with one hand, while steering around the 57th roundabout with the other (I didn’t dare turn off the ring road to stop or I’d still be there now).
“Look, I’ve been driving round Redditch for two hours. The last person I asked said ‘you can’t possibly miss it, just take the first left off the next roundabout and Haddenuff Common is right there’ AND IT WASN’T. The first left said M6 and the only other choice said ‘all other districts’ and if you don’t tell me where the hell I am right now I’M GOING TO GRETNA GREEN.”
After many fraught exchanges like “where are you now? What can you see?” and “Oooh I don’t know that roundabout, are you sure it’s a Royal Mail Sorting Office and not a swimming pool?” and “You’re sure there’s no 3rd turn off that roundabout – oh my God they’ve built another roundabout since Tuesday”, I managed to find it while she “talked me in” like a limping aircraft. I never forgot those roundabouts. I still wake up in the middle of the night, shouting “Oh no! I was told to head for Birmingham here and I never heard of Bees End, Wormwood Bank or Maggot Hill and if I go for ‘all other districts’ I’ll never find my way out again, so I’d better go on to the next roundabout. Now what’s this one say – aah – ‘Overunder Meadow, Great Carbuncle, Splutterbottom Bog or all other districts’… Oh shit, now I’m on the motorway heading back to London.”
Sorry. Where was I? Oh yes –
c) Return to festival. I spent the weekend in my room, terrified to go out in case I never found my way back again.
No, not really. I did manage to make it back to the festival site once the landlady and I had diagnosed the fatal flaw in the program’s street map. However if I expected sympathy from the festival locals and regulars when I told them about getting lost in Redditch then I’d another think coming.
Snorts of laughter. “Oh everyone gets lost here. We live in Redditch and we get lost all the time!”
There was no Wikipedia in those days, otherwise I might have been forewarned:
“Redditch is occasionally noted for its confusing road system dominated by a system of dual carriageways.”
If you ask me that’s a bit like saying Adolf HItler was occasionally noted for being a little bit bossy. And look at this!
“…the story of an elderly couple admitted to hospital with severe dehydration after spending more than sixty hours trying to navigate the highway system is an urban legend.”
Hmm, Wikipedia. Are you sure? It doesn’t say whether they were looking for the Folk Festival at the time.
In the first part of our “Introduction to etticatte,” we covered how to handle alterCATions, how to behave when going out to dinner, the correct way to manage introductions and greetings, acceptable behaviour with regard to someone else’s kittens and generally how to behave with discretion. Today we move on to some more challenging topics, but ones which should be well within the reach of every smart and streetwise cat.
Encountering royalty When being presented to royalty – such as the Queen of England for example – do not attempt to chew her shoes or suck her husband’s socks. Inappropriate contact with these items or any other part of their clothing may result in confinement to the Tower of London or worse still, beheading. Do not speak unless spoken to. As you are a cat you will be excused the full curtsey, and may content yourself with nodding your head and purring by way of introduction. This is not the moment to cough up a furball.
Watching television Television can provide you with hours of entertainment, as can a DVD player, and there are many shows and movies very suitable for cats, if your owner is good at choosing them. Do remember however not to attack the screen during nature programs, even when they seem very threatening to you. Your owner will have paid a lot of money for their 60-inch, ultra high density, slimline panashibachi-bungee-jumpong Widescreen TV with built-in popcorn maker, and watching movies from behind a layer of claw and teeth marks may not fit in with their plans for the weekend.
Eating If you’re served a kipper or other fishy treat, eat quietly, do not make slurpy, crunchy noises and above all do not haul it across the room to eat from your owner’s best hand-woven Persian rug. If your roommate approaches, do not growl, hiss, spit or otherwise attack them, but stand back and share with a good grace. Just because they call you a parsimonious plonker is no reason to retort by calling them a gluttonous gannet with a face like the back of a bus.
Behaviour at the vet’s Never yowl and howl in the waiting room as this is embarrassing for everyone, and may distress first-timers. Be discreet and do not discuss your ailments with anyone, even that wise-looking old Siamese in the next basket. Always exercise self-control, and remember that when the vet sticks a thermometer up your rear end he is not necessarily inviting assault and battery. Assess your priorities. Do you want to get rid of that nasty, eye abscess or wipe the vet off the face of the earth? Think carefully before you act.
If I were to ask you, “what is soup?” you might say “it’s what I used to be in when I didn’t do my school homework or when I hit my little sister over the head with a model train.” You might also say that it was a kind of wettish stuff you slurp out of a bowl with a spoon. “Yes but what kind of wettish stuff?” I might then ask. “Oh it could be tomato, chicken, oxtail, vegetable, whatever” you’d say.
I thought so. In our house in Northern Ireland (in the 1960s) there was only one kind of soup, and that was Soup. For quite a long time I didn’t know there was any other kind, and coming face-to-face with a bowl of tomato soup in someone’s house, was liable to say “”Gosh, how clever – what a lovely-looking red. But I thought you said you were making Soup!”
Whether or not you were familiar with other soups, in Northern Ireland just about everyone made Soup, and still does. My grandmother (“Nana”, who lived with us and did most of the cooking) would use whatever stock she had extracted from Sunday dinner along with any meat scraps she had, boiling them up with a carrot, a parsnip, a handful of dried barley, chopped parsley, soup celery and scallions (“spring onions”). Perhaps a red lentil or two. Known as “lentils”, incidentally. I didn’t meet any other colour until well into adulthood.
If you’re wondering what “soup celery” is, it’s red celery and the leaves were as important as its thin stalks. Good luck with finding any colour of celery leaves. Here on Gabriola I asked where the leaves of the naked-looking celery had got to and was told they cut them off. And they don’t even give them to the pigs, or to their local impoverished writers. They throw them away! I’m thinking of a little local skip diving here once the shock wears off and the weather picks up.
Nana didn’t buy the fresh ingredients separately, but like most other shoppers, just asked for “soup veg.”
“Half a stone of your Kerr’s Pinks please, Billy, and a parcel of soup veg.” The parcel would be a prepared bundle of 1 carrot, 1 parsnip, a little celery, etc. wrapped up in newspaper.
Soup-with-a-capital-“S” was said to restore appetite and health to the ailing. When I was 10 and in hospital after having my tonsils out, I was groggy and refusing all hospital food (probably showing early good judgment). I woke up one day to see a strange wooden face staring at me from my hospital locker. It was a huge lentil bearing a… no it wasn’t, I blinked again. It was a small gonk with orange, fuzzy hair that my mother had brought me. The gonk seemed to be accompanied by Aunty Margaret, and she had brought her usual beaming smile and a flask of her home-made Soup. I immediately named the gonk “William”, devoured every drop of the Soup and from then on ate everything in front of me from that wasn’t tied down. Since William didn’t go on to exhibit any outstanding nursing skills, I think we can safely put my recovery down to Aunty Margaret’s wonderful Soup.
This tasty Soup comes out looking pretty green due to the parsley and scallions. But then the carrots make it orange too. With just a dash of red from the celery, you could say that politically, it’s a particularly well-balanced Northern Irish soup.
According to my Junk email folder, in just two weeks I have made CAD$32,785,000, £11,900,952 and US$4,740,870,000.00 (what, no cents?) Really! It’s true!
First there is a loan offer of US$1 million, then £850,000 from a Dr. Barry Fowler of Nokia, then $25 million from Mr. Mohamed Abudo on the staff of the Bank of Africa (I guess I don’t need the loan then). Next I am to help the poor Nicole Moses Akumi manage her “treasure box” of US$9.2 million (for a mere million – well pooh! to that).
Then I have an offer of working at home typing – well why would I do that when I’ve got all this money, I ask you? And who told them I’m a typist anyway?
While still thinking about the typing I see that I have £800,000 awarded to me by Barclays Bank, quickly followed by an email from “Goodwill Matthew” (apparently Jesus gave him my email address – really, you can’t trust anyone these days!) asking for “2 super giant print bibles in English language”. I have searched my house but am unable to find any. Perhaps I should suggest to the typing-offering-person that I type up a few bibles.
Next I see that I have been awarded 50% of US$5 million from my “fairly friend Madam Mrs. Lilian Chen gpu”. Well I don’t know about you, but I don’t know what a gpu is so I looked it up on Google and all I found was a lot of stuff about graphics cards and the Soviet secret police (1922-23). Madam sounds French, Chen sounds Chinese and Russian secret police sound Russian. And fairly what? Fairly confused, if you ask me, and what is 50% of 5 million anyway? I never was much good at percentages. Perhaps Madam Mrs. is working with my school maths teacher, who knows I am hopeless at percentages and is sending me messages from beyond the grave.
Well if it was a test, I think I blew it. The next email awards me with “A Group Consolation Prize of £450,000” (awwwwww!) I am consoled. At least I was at first, but now I’m trying to figure out who the rest of the group might be. And more importantly, how many of them are they? Not too many, I hope! That’s a tough one, but there’s no time to figure it out now, because another £850,000 has arrived from Nokia. Like the last one, it is a “Nokia Grant Donation Award” and again from Dr. Barry. What a dear man he is! Now I wonder if… but wait! This next chap might be even nicer. Mr. Mark Edward says he is sending me US$10,453,800,000 (though – rather unreasonably I feel – he is only allotting me 45% of this, while he is taking 50%, while 5% are for “expenses”).
You know, I’m beginning to think that all of these messages are from my Maths teacher. And it’s quite obvious that I really do need to brush up on those percentages before I go any further with all this high finance. I’ll be back when I’ve mastered calculus, polynomial regression, dimensional analysis, linear algebra and differential equations.
Do you know, it’s a strange thing, but library issue desks seem to have got lower and lower since I was a child. Has anyone else noticed this? There I was at the age of 8, staring up at the top of this enormous wooden edifice, over which a hand was reaching for my chosen library book. I must say I’m glad they thought of making them shorter – it does seem to make things easier.
I grew up in Lisburn, Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland, and the library was in the same building as the Old Courthouse. The steep, bare stairs smelt of wood and polish and the warm sun shone through huge windows, lighting up the floating stairwell dust.
The Old Courthouse, Lisburn (from lisburn.com)
Through the big, heavy door was the dark Mount Everest of the issue desk, beyond which I found a whole new world in a small, light-green, hard-back book called “Mixed-Muddly Island,”* and I handed it up to the summit. It was stamped with an important-sounding click and handed back down again and I climbed onto the wide windowsill and began to read.
A family sets off in a small boat with a picnic. Then the motor breaks down and they don’t have enough wind to sail home. The oars have been left behind and they start to get hungry. After a time they drift to a beautiful island…
“Come on Alison, you can read that later,” came my mother’s voice and we all trooped down the stairs and into the car.
“I want to go for a picnic on a boat!” I announced.
“Well if we ever get a boat I’m sure you will,” my mother commented, edging the car into the traffic.
Most books in my life would be left in a heap, never to be picked up again, while I would be dressing my dolls and placing them in their bookcase houses or eiderdown villages. “Mixed-Muddly Island” was different and soon I knew every detail by heart, from the island’s brightly painted houses where no one has to do any washing up, to the jolly, dancing postman, the busy wizard with his cats, hens and hedgehogs, and the lovely pink house that is just waiting for the visitors. Friendly locals get to work fixing their boat while they all explore. Half of the island thinks it’s Monday while the other half thinks it’s Tuesday and the two halves can never agree on anything.
When the wind finally changes and they leave, the two children fall asleep in the boat, and wake up just as they are sailing up to the jetty to find that their parents have no recollection of the wonderful island. But both of the children had the same dream – so of course it was all true!
Mixed-Muddly Island has a church, a school, a North End, a South End and many interesting characters who often disagree.
I wonder if Doris Rust ever visited Gabriola?
* Mixed-Muddly Island, Doris Rust, illustrated by Shirley Hughes. Faber and Faber, London 1958.
The Blethering Ant 