Proximity

A CBC News photo from Gilmour Street

Awaking to two texts from one's daughter in Ottawa, saying she's safe, but shaken, is an effective way to banish sleepiness in a hurry.

She's safe? Wait a minute. She was in danger?

I quickly checked my newsfeeds, and learned there had been a shooting this morning, on Gilmour Street in downtown Ottawa. This is two blocks north of elder daughter's office.

At 7:30 am EST, elder daughter had not yet left her apartment, a ten-minute walk away. Police had cordoned areas off, and her office wasn't fully operational for another couple of hours. In the interim, the now ever-present barrage of fuzzy social media reports: "Multiple victims" "Active shooter" "Suspect at large" Rather like that ghastly October morning five years ago, when no one knew what was happening, and terror froze everything.

It seems to have been at an Airbnb. Four young men, unknown to the surrounding neighbours: one dead, three seriously injured, including a fifteen-year-old. The neighbours suspect a gang incident. The police are describing it as a "targeted attack", which apparently means everyone else is safe. Really?

This is on top of the agonizing ripples of bereavement affecting nearly every sizeable city across Canada, as the identities of the sixty or so Canadians aboard last night's doomed flight out of Iran are revealed.

My daughter told me she was safe this morning. So many families can't say that this evening.

Music for Hades

I was carefully stretching this morning, in order to stroll down to the coffee shop as smoothly as possible. I was a little late, because Tempo, the morning classical music programme on CBC Radio, was on, and my goal is to be out the door before it starts. (This would involve rising before 8 am.)

As I gently pulled my leg past 90 degrees, an unnamed Offenbach composition began, and as it played, and I stretched, a band arrangement, performed slightly off-key and a bit slow, ran through my head.

The piece was the Overture to La Belle Hélène, one of the 96 (96!!) operettas that Jaques Offenbach composed, but I'm pretty sure that our junior high band selection was entitled "Offenbach in Hades", and featured three or four well-known tunes, including, of course, the "Can-Can" from Orpheus in Hades.

I hadn't thought of this in years, but knew, as I listened, which musical phrase would follow, because I had played it (badly) when I was fourteen or fifteen.

When I was fifteen, I met a young man who played cello in the Portland Youth Philharmonic. I haven't thought of him in years either.

The tune that summoned back memories this morning begins at the 1 minute, 20 seconds mark.

The darkness comprehended it not

The tree is down and, along with the decorations, is packed away in the storage locker. (Sure, I miss live trees, but I haven't been able to smell them for the past three Christmases.)

Our cards and lights, however, will remain up until Candlemas. The Resident Fan Boy, making his way home through the heavy January rain in the darkness of just after sunset, told me that he was never happier to see our lights glowing in welcome.

Drumming out Christmas

Since we moved, one shortcut into town takes me past our old house on Collinson, a fine opportunity to torture myself with nostalgia. It was the one home I truly loved; I was reasonably fond of our other homes, but this one had my heart. Our daughters were young in it, and I adored the size, shape, and location of it.

The people who live there now ring the portico with lights, much as we did, and seeing the familiar shape and glow from Quadra Street nearly did me in.

In Victoria, it's very common to take the tree down a day or so after New Year's Day, although we cling to the tradition of leaving it up for the Twelfth Day of Christmas, which is today.

I'm frantically cleaning and pulling a dinner together for the friends who come and help us ease through this rather depressing chore.

On our old street, in our old house, the tree was being dismantled on the second day of the new year. Oh well. It's their house, now.

Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast

I'm not a hockey fan, but as a former ESL teacher with a healthy helping of Québecois students, I love the vim and vigour of this Québecoise, a former monstre and terror of nuns.

(I also have loved ones and friends that are Habs fans. I'd never hold it against them.)

Herne the Hunter dawdles home

It's happened. After residing here for a little over three months, my feet have automatically taken me home.

I'd had an idea of dropping in on Demeter, but found myself striding up Chester Avenue, where I spotted a small boy straddled a small bike with training wheels, pushing himself up the hill.

This wouldn't have been remarkable, except for his bike helmet, which had various branches seeming to sprout from the helmet-holes. (Chester Avenue is, as usual, strewn with branches from the ancient plane trees after the latest windstorm.) He looked rather like Herne the Hunter.

I came abreast of him, and inquired: "Camouflage?"
"He's dawdling," answered his father, bringing up the rear. "He's so slow, things are growing out of him."

O schadenfreude

For the third time since we returned from Hades, we accompanied Demeter to the Butchart Gardens for Christmas tea. The first two excursions featured heavy downpours; Butchart's has its own micro-climate:
it's either hotter, colder, or wetter than what you'd expect in the Victoria area.

But this time, we were blessed with a semi-sunny day, although a thick cloud of mist had been trapped in Brentwood Bay, like a bowl of meringue.

After the ritual ride on the carousel - I rode the zebra this time, while younger daughter rode a deer with a nose reddened for the season, and the Resident Fan Boy sat astride a medieval charger - we feasted on tea, scones, sausage rolls, trifles, and real gingerbread.

Demeter, who has reached the age where every experience might be the last opportunity, wanted to stay and perambulate, because the Christmas lights come on at 3 pm, an hour before sundown. The Resident Fan Boy escorted our daughters to the bus home. Demeter accompanied me with her walker to the Five Gold Rings in the Sunken Garden, then made her way back by the wheelchair route. She's in this picture, dressed in gold. (You may have to click on the photo to enlarge it.)

Excited little boys pelted by me, pursued by their parents, past flowerbeds planted with electric lights, and I climbed the stairs out of the sunken garden, to meet Demeter by lanterns hanging from the bare branches.

We caught the bus, which took us past a kilometre or so of headlights, hundreds of cars headed in for a rare rainless Christmas season night. And there we were, headed swiftly and unimpeded in the opposite direction.

Yuletide treasure

The rainy night, with its sinister swinging shadows, created by high winds, has left a shiny new day and new year.

This morning, the pavements were littered with twigs and chunks of bark blasted off the aging trees of our neighbourhood.

It's the eighth day of Christmas, so we're still exchanging a few gifts, and enjoying the last precious hours before elder daughter flies away back to Hades.

I thought I'd hastily leave a record of some of the treasures given me this Christmas - aside from time with family.

Calculating

...and December flits by like an Anna's hummingbird: here for the blink of an eye, then vanished out of sight, leaving nothing but a sound rather like a clicking abacus.

This is the first Christmas in some years where I have felt Christmassy for a sustained period. It's probably because we're Christmassing our new dwelling, marking it with the holidays, much as a cat rubbing around my ankles.

Elder daughter has returned to be with us for twenty days. It's the eighteenth day. Already.

It's also the seventh day of Christmas, as we tremble with trepidation on the threshold of one far too interesting year into the, as yet, blank face of 2020.

I wish you and yours all the possible joy of it, and that much joy may be possible, all evidence to the contrary. Perhaps it's better if we pass through the evidence, and create some better evidence. Whaddaya say? Who's with me? (What's that clicking noise?)

Ying-tong merrily on high

As November drifts out the back door, and Christmas barges in the front - wasn't Advent supposed to be a time of fasting and reflection? - we find our social life is picking up, which is something that never happened in Hades.

As a result, I was in the kitchen, having hauled out a simple recipe for an appetizer to take to a neighbours' do. The trouble is, there's no such thing as a "simple recipe"; they all seem to require a deal of chopping, so I fired up a CD I'd borrowed from the library - yes, I am a dinosaur - and eased the cutting time by listening to a blast from the recent past: a collection of the corniest and slyest from A Prairie Home Companion's latter years, interspersed with such choral offerings as "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" (Monty Python - yes, yes), "Be Prepared" (Tom Lehrer - yep, yep), and then, I positively paused in my chopping in bafflement. A tenor began with what sounded like an Eastern European lullaby, before the choir careened off into a frantic gabbling of nonsense, interrupted periodically, by horse whinnies, raspberries, and explosions.

As the track faded away, and I stood slack-jawed, I could just make out Garrison Keillor explaining to the audience that this had been "The Ying Tong Song" from the Goon Show.

Okay, that explained a lot.

Vocal Essence on A Prairie Home Companion - March 2012

I was aware of The Goon Show, mainly because I knew the Beatles were fans, and thus rather excited that their producer George Martin, and their film director Richard Lester had had dealings with Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers, and Spike Milligan. I'd had a listen to the Goons from time to time, but found their break-neck speed bewildering.

The song is damn catchy, though. I'm including the lyrics below, because they will be of no use to you whatever, but so you can sing along if you want, although I don't recommend it.

In fact, I suggest you skip this video altogether.

Why? Because this song is an insidious ear-worm, that's why.

I walked out this morning, and caught myself singing: "Ying-tong-ying-tong-ying-tong-ying-tong-ying-tong-iddle-I-po..."
Bloody hell.

This is not a song you want to be singing to yourself on a public street. You get some hard stares.

Apparently, Spike Milligan had a war buddy, jazz musician Harry Edgington, and Harry Secombe had trouble pronouncing "Edgington", so Milligan would yell "Ying-Ton!"

I guess you had to be there.

I also gather, from the comment-field for this video, that "The Ying-Tong Song" has been used more than once at funerals, because of its sombre beginning that quickly veers into that crazy, demented chorus.

Imagine those poor mourners, finding themselves, days afterward, murmuring: "Ying-tong-ying-tong-ying-tong-ying-tong-ying-tong-iddle-I-po..."

Diabolical.


Tenor: There's a song that I recall
My mother sang to me.
Spriggs (off): Oh! (a sigh)
Tenor: She sang it as she tucked me in
When I was ninety-three.

(harp plays a rising chord...)

Spriggs: I diddle, I. Who was that bum?

Bluebottle + Spriggs:
Ying tong ying tong
Ying tong ying tong
Ying tong iddle I po,
Ying tong ying tong
Ying tong ying tong (bluebottle drops behind)
Ying tong iddle I po
Spriggs: Keep lad up. Keep.
Bluebottle: Keep up lad up.


Both: Ying tong ying tong
Ying tong ying tong
Ying tong iddle I po
Spriggs: lad
Both: Ying tong ying tong
Ying tong iddle I po (lad)
Iddle I po (lad)

Ying tong ying tong
Ying tong (Spriggs: iddle) (Bluebottle: ying tong)
Ying tong iddle I po
Ying tong ying tong iddle

Bluebottle (spoken):
Ying tong iddle I po!
(short raspberry, Secombe)

Both: Oh!
Ying tong ying tong
Ying tong ying tong
Ying tong iddle I po
Ying tong ying tong
Ying tong iddle I po
Iddle I po!

(trumpet bit)

Bluebottle:
Ying. Ying tongy tongy.
Ying tong iddle I po.
Ying tong iddle I po.
(Secombe under this: What a lovely lovely boy!)
(or Secombe under this: What a lovely melody devine!)
Ying ying ying tongy tongy.
(Milligan: Get out the rifle, sir.)
(or Milligan: Get off the record.)
Yeeeng.
Ying tong ying tong d'gy-n'o.
Ying tong d'ga.
(Secombe: Get away.)
D'g d'g d'ga.
Ying tong iddle I po.

Seagoon:Hear that crazy rhythm
Driving me insane.
Strike your partner on the bonce (bonk?).
(thump)
Eccles: Ooh. I felt no pain.
(Seagoon screeches)

Seagoon, Bluebottle and Eccles:
Ying tong ying tong
Ying tong ying tong
Ying...

(harp chord rises)

Soprano: Take me back to Vienna....

(Raspberry section, probably Milligan)

Bloodnok: Ohhhhh!
Eccles: Oh!

(harp chord)

Soprano: Take me back to Vienna, where the....

(crash!)

Seagoon, Spriggs and Bluebottle (far off):
Ying tong ying tong
Ying tong ying tong
Ying tong iddle I po

And so on, and so on....