u-certificate

garden gnomes (Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs) on shop shelf

Having found this tiny Snow White amongst a veritable army of dwarfs in a local store, I was going to call this post “size matters”.

I’d probably have gone on to talk about the poor thing slaving away to cook and clean simply because she was terrified of the monsters she lived with. But perhaps female subjugation isn’t a very nice subject to treat so superficially, so I did a quick search on trivia associated with the film to see what else I could write.

Over on IMDB, I found that the certification of the original Disney film was controversial: although The British Board of Film Censors gave the film an A-certificate because they thought the enchanted forest and the witch were too frightening for younger audiences, most local authorities overrode the censor’s decision and gave the film a U-certificate.

In fact, it seems as if the censors knew what they were talking about and many of the young audiences wet themselves in fear. I can only wonder what would have happened if the dwarfs had been giants.

pedantry & poetry

"James Anderson becomes only the fourth England player to take 300 Test wickets during the first Test against New Zealand."

Cricket Tests are renowned for how long they last, but the BBC news to the right seems to imply they might go on for weeks: if Anderson was the fourth to take 300 wickets in the first Test, then three others had done so before him.

Just how long does it take for 1200+ wickets to be taken?

Elsewhere on the BBC last week I read their College of Journalism blog post: We all love lists, but are they all journalism?
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there’s a bug

yellow wild flower and bug
When I walked across the neighbour’s field the other day, it was almost waist-deep in spring flowers: poppies, wild lupins, hawkweed, oxeye daisies, little purple vetches… The brightest of all were these golden blooms which were glorious from a distance, but not so nice up close as nearly every one harboured some kind of bug-eyed monster.

(Incidentally, I’m beginning to think I should change the blog tag-line to “Mostly first person poetry, prose, pedantry and plant pictures.”)

spa’ku

We laze in jasmine-scented waters
while stainless steel appliances
fart us into relaxation.

white jasmine close up
As usual, it’s a fragment rather than a hai’ku. You can read more such pieces here on the blog, or check out my multimedia collection Poems from the Pueblo: haiku and assorted fragments. (The link takes you to the publisher’s video on Vimeo).

writing it slow

blackthorn blossom
Years ago, I wrote a long and rambling free verse poem that started “My mother makes sloe gin”. It was a runner up in a poetry competition, but despite the minor success, I was aware that it was rather flabby; I think I’ve been trying to force it into some kind of form for near on a decade.

That said, I had completely forgotten this version, which I think must have been written some time last year for a sonnet competition and abandoned when it wouldn’t conform to the formal constraints. Since the sloe trees are in full bloom this weekend, it seems a good time to post it:
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