BACK<<<to the CLASSICS discussion

We also clapped to:

Three sailors went to sea, sea, sea
To see what they could see, see, see
but all that they could see, see, see
was the bottom of the great blue sea, sea, sea

Then they same lyrics with China

I don't recall the rest, and our version might not be online--there are many of them!!!

There at least one other one we clapped to, but I can't remember the words.

Karin that last one was the most complicated clapping game I think we ever did 😂

Lulu had a tugboat
The tugboat had a bell
Lulu went to heaven
The tugboat went to

Hell-o operator
give me number nine
And if you disconnect me
I'll kick you from

Behind the refrigerator
There was a piece of glass
If you sit upon it
You'll cut your little

Ask me no more questions
I'll tell you no more lies
The boys are in the bathroom
pulling down their

Flies are in the backyard
Bees are in the park
Lulu and her boyfriend
Are kissing in the dark!

Ahem! Ahem!
Me mother has gone to church
She told me not to play with you
Because you're in the dirt.
It tisn't because you're dirty
It 'tistn't because you're clean
It's because you've got the whooping cough
and eat margerine

I'm sure the recorded version of Playmate had rain barrel and I can't remember what you do with it, but it's "slide down my cellar door". The cellar door in this case is a slanted cover where coal or items can be unloaded and they fall into the cellar, therefore it's a natural slide. This goes back to times when kids only had the items around them to play on!

As far as subversive kids' songs, there was

Ta Rah Rah Boom De Yay
We have no school today
Our teacher passed away
We threw her in the bay.

Yes we did that one,

Ta Ra da Boom de ay
Our teacher passed away
We have no school today
Hip hip hip hip hoo-ray!

but that all fell apart when our lovely 39 year old teacher Mr. Shahroudi had a heart attack whilst playing basketball with some of the students. My mam read it to me out of the paper, saying don't you have a teacher named Mr. Shahroudi? That was on Sunday. On the Friday I had said, I can't figure out this maths problem can you help me? and he says, you're so close to getting it, think about it think! and let me have a piece of candy from his stash. And Monday it rained....and rained....and rained. I stood in his former classroom, we had no work to do with the substitute, and just stared out the window, thinking of Mr. Shahroudi's soul - just a little way above our heads.

Ah I don't want everyone to be sad!

One bright day in the middle of the night
Two dead boys got up to fight
Back to back they faced each other
Drew their swords and shot one another
A deaf policeman heard the noice
And came and shot those two dead boys
If you don't believe my story's true
Ask the blind man - he saw it too!

"One was blind and the other couldn't see,
So they picked a dummy for the referee."

Doing family taxes for the next few weeks, so if you don't see me it's because I get so little time on here (my rules so I can sleep)

Karin wrote: "Doing family taxes for the next few weeks, so if you don't see me it's because I get so little time on here (my rules so I can sleep)"

No worries Karin, I have to rehearse for a show we're doing on the 11th of April, so maybe have less time as well x

Fascinating how often the children's rhymes are about tragedy, death, crime, etc.!

Yes, but perhaps it's because it's their way of trying to understand the world :)

We (the Tyneside Mandolin Orchestra) have just had our first post-lockdown concert. What a great night it was!! Now we have two weeks off before cracking on again with music for the Saltburn Folk Festival this summer. Dreamy!!

Congratulations! That's wonderful.

Sounds wonderful, Jazzy!

Many thanks Jan and Rosemarie! Goodnight until tomorrow! x

That's great, Jazzy :)!

Lovely, Jazzy! I miss my choir...

Many many thanks Karin and Michaela, you might be able to join another one?

The Tyneside Mandolin Orchestra (TMO?), not to be confused with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO), sounds like something I'd like to hear. Among my favorite pieces of music are Antonio Vivaldi's mandolin concertos. Perhaps I am on the wrong side of the pond.

If we have any recordings I'll be sure to let you know Jim! We finally performed Palladio, and that was difficult for us as a group.

From Monday
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaidk...

Jazzy wrote: "From Monday
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaidk..."
Excellent performance of the bossa nova and theme from Black Orpheus, a movie I have on DVD.

Thank you! I'm in the back with the pink bow :D

Jazzy wrote: "Thank you! I'm in the back with the pink bow :D"

Are you dressed all in pink?

Jazzy wrote: "Thank you! I'm in the back with the pink bow :D"

I LOVE IT!! So tell us about your instrument. I can't see it through the music stand. Maker? Number of strings? Tuning of strings? How long have you had it/played this instrument? Type of picking technique? Picks or fingers/fingernails?

I must share - my husband, my two sons and one daughter, and two of my three grandchildren have red hair!! or well husband used to have red hair.

Yes Jim! ink a dink a bottle of ink the cork fell out and i'm pink!

Lynn it's an F-style mandolin, made by Dean. It has 8 strings and I use a thin, but not too thin plectrum. I bought it second-hand from a guy called Simon at the music shop, so I named it Simon. There is also a Simon sitting two seats to my left. (Right as the video goes).

I have been playing for 3 years. I started about a year before lockdown and the young man (Tom) conducting us is the instructor for the whole class, he's got a masters in music with the mandolin. Maybe a doctorate, I'm not sure, but he's really good.

I take two classes every monday on the mandolin, each one is 1 1/2 hours. Occasionally I have private classes with Tom.

I keep wondering if i'll actually get any better though!

Jazzy wrote: "Yes Jim! ink a dink a bottle of ink the cork fell out and i'm pink!

Lynn it's an F-style mandolin, made by Dean. It has 8 strings and I use a thin, but not too thin plectrum. I bought it second-ha..."

That sounds like so much fun! I really rely on my weekly piano playing at church. Music in groups is just a necessary outlet for me. It looked like you were all having a great time and the music was good. It made me smile.

So are the 8 strings spaced or do you have 4 pairs of double strung.? I recently restrung my ducimer...wow it sounds better. Even my husband immediately came in and commented on the better sound. Dulcimer can have a wild variety of sting arrangments. I have moved from 4 strings to 3 and really like it better. The melody string was double strung so 2 D strings together.

Oh more babbling here LOL. I have given up my Martin classical guitar entirely. It was too large...the spacing on the fret board was becoming a problem as my fingers age, and the body of the instrument itself it just too large. Mandolin looks like a perfect solution for that!

Thanks for the link! Pink is such a fun colour :)

I googled Palladio, written for string orchestra by one Karl Jenkins in 1995.

That's the one Jim, look on youtube for a mandolin orchestra playing it! They're brill.

Many thanks Karin, aww!

Jazzy, one of my favourite quotes is this:


If you can get this youtube link, here's the entire film (the nanny is played by Julie Andrews) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jh9S...

I love Eloise! Thank you Karin! xx

Jazzy wrote: "I love Eloise! Thank you Karin! xx"

Fact: I had to hide my daughter's copy of Eloise because her well-meaning, childless aunt wrote that my daughter reminded her of Eloise (for the types of antics--my daughter is the stereotype of the introvert, quiet, etc) so she started imitating them and making up more until I did that.

Thankfully, when that live-person film made it to video, she was old enough to not imitate it. We didn't see it in the theatre--this is not my Aspie daughter, btw.

But my daughter's favourite colour isn't pink.

oh i didn't like pink either. but then i got a pink bicycle, then a pink guitar and the dresses on sale that fit me were also pink so i got a 'pink ladies' bow for Grease and i would wear them all to my guitar classes. One day I wore a blue dress and the man behind me said, Your frock doesn't match your guitar!

Jazzy wrote: "oh i didn't like pink either. but then i got a pink bicycle, then a pink guitar and the dresses on sale that fit me were also pink so i got a 'pink ladies' bow for Grease and i would wear them all ..."

My daughter likes pink and will wear it again now (for some years she wanted to dress like a boy, but she is not trans--she just had it in her head that girls couldn't do a number of things so wished she was a boy for a few years as a child--not the same thing, of course, and she changed her mind as she grew up and saw she could do more things than she realized!) but she loves warm colours more.

She wears boots--often combat boot style, tight jeans and t-shirts most of the time (Shorts in the summer, but still the same style of boots but aerated invisibly for summer), but if she attends a wedding she'll wear a dress. But the boots are a lot better than the used (from my nephew) blue sneakers that were passed onto my son (he didn't like them.) that she wore for 2 years in high school--flip flops/thongs in the summer.

Did I mention that this is the daughter who majored in sculpture? Not my Aspie daughter, who majored in math.

My son is going to Greece! Not on us--he is a last minute replacement for a high school and college youth orchestra, so they are paying.

Life just isn't fair--neither of my daughter's has been overseas and this will be his second trip (the other was very cheap thanks to generous financial aid with a different youth orchestra he played in for a few years as a teen.)

That's fantastic! Greece in spring is just lovely!

Hoping that your son has a blast but leaves the dynamite at home, Karin, lest he blows himself up. ;)

Spectacular!

So, I've been working a few hours a day on the Naoki prizewinners, and I've gotten up to 1965 so far. What I've learnt so far, besides an extraordinary amount of information about their lives is that we really need a lot of budding young translators to work on these books!

Do any of them stand out for you, Jazzy?

Actually I've liked ALL of them.

11-1. Chiyo Tsutsumi "Chiyo Tsutsumi could not attend any school due to a weak heart, and while confined to bed learned the classics by herself. When she became paralysed, it was difficult for her to speak or use her hands, and it was only thanks to the efforts of her devoted husband, that she was able to produce work." She died aged 38.

17. 1943 No prize awarded
(Shūgorō Yamamoto's Nihon Fudōki (小説　日本婦道記, lit. Chronicles of a Japanese Woman's Duties) was chosen, but he declined the prize.)

32-2. 1954 Yukio Togawa
Takayasu Inu Monogatari (高安犬物語, lit. Takayasu Dog Story)
This is a man who loved dogs all his life, and discovered a new species of wild cat native to Japan.

34-2. 1955 Eikan Kyū 28 March 1924-16 May 2012, aged 88
Honkon (香港, lit. Hong Kong) Known as 'the god of making money' he was the first foreigner to win the prize.

Thanks, Jazzy!

You're very welcome!
I would just read all of them, sadly i couldn't put loads of information as there might be 4 winners in a year.

Jazzy I agree that more translators of Japanese books would be a wonderful thing! I loved The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa and The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yōko Ogawa. There are other available English version books by Yoko Ogawa that I have added to my enormous To Be Read list, but Hiro Arikawa only has the one book translated to English.

Those are great books. I read a lot of Japanese literature, one of my favourites was by Naoki prizewinner 58-1. 1967 Akiyuki Nosaka - Grave of the Fireflies. Based on his own childhood, during the second world war, when his daughter was born this book was written out of guilt and grief. It was made into a film by Miyazaki.

Miyazaki's work is so moving, poignant. I love his Howl's Moving Castle Animation. I read the book after watching the film. My teenage son and his friends introduced me to it. Miyazaki's addition of war planes into the book was genius and also personal. Did you know his father had a factory that built Kamakazi plane parts during WW2?

I do now! :)