HORNIMAN AND SIR

This is a song I remember from very early childhood on BBC's Listen With Mother. I can't find any reference to it online. It was probably one of those very ephemeral things that was written for one episode of the programme, sung and forgotten ... except that I'm sure they sang it quite often. I can remember almost all of it except for part of one line. Whenever I'm walking in the rain, I find it going through my head.

Here are the lyrics:

Horniman and Sir,
Off we go together.
Horniman and Sir,
We don't mind the weather.
Dashing through the puddles,
Splashing through the rain,
[dah dah dah dah dumdy dah]
and off we go again!

If you happen to remember it, please get in touch! I'm beginning to think I'm the only person on the planet who remembers this song. Who wrote it? Who sang it?

[Edited 121017 to change the word "Todd" to "Sir"]

BREAKING NEWS! 24.12.17

With a great deal of help from Mary, I have acquired an audio recording of the original broadcast. I won't have time to deal with it properly over the next few busy days, but as a little Christmas present for everyone who's commented on this thread over the past seven years, here's the updated version of the verses. The sound is a bit blurry on some of the lines, but we're pretty sure it is as you can see here. Oh, and it's not HORNIMAN - it's HORNYMAN! (I've also added a few simple guitar chords if anyone fancies trying to play it. Afraid my skills don't quite reach to transcribing the piano part accurately - someone else is welcome to try that once we upload the audio.)

Merry Christmas everyone! 

Johannes Würmchen

My mother, who, unlike my father, was not really a German scholar, had a little German nursery rhyme which she'd recite every time we saw a ladybird. Most English-speaking children, of course, will come out with some variant on this one:

Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home!
Your house is on fire and your children alone!

But Vere had a German rhyme. As someone who didn't do German at school, and whose sum knowledge of the language is the vocabulary associated with Christmas carols (sheep, angels, trees, anyone?) I had no idea how to spell many of the words.

For some reason it came back to me just now, and I've spent about half an hour trying to track it down via Google and my Langensheidt Compact German Dictionary. Since it doesn't seem to be anywhere online in the version I know it, I'm quoting it here.

Interestingly, the modern German word for "ladybird" seems to be "Maikäfer" but Vere's word was the more poetic, and probably now archaic, "Johannes Würmchen" which seems to mean something like, "St John's little bug".

Here's Vere's version, anyway:

Johnnes Würmchen, flieg!

Dein Vater ist im Krieg,

Dein Mutter ist im Pomerland,

Und Pomerland ist angebrannt.

(Ladybird, fly away! Your father's off to war, your mother's in Pomerania, and Pomerania is on fire. At least that's what they told me angebrannt meant - it doesn't seem to be in my dictionary, so if you know different ...)

Vere almost certainly learned this from her own mother, Allison Robertson, who had gone to a sort of finishing school in Bad Kreutznach in the latter years of the 19th century when she was a teenager. Alice (as she was usually known) spoke fluent German.

Gote Bridge reopening - a cause for celebration!

Above - Gote Bridge after the floods. All those stones were brought by the floodwaters. The original riverbank starts where the little bit of grass, bottom right, can be seen.

Ever since the floods in November last year, everyone living in this neck of the woods has had their lives disrupted by the closed bridges across the Derwent. Some, like the Workington North Bridge, collapsed completely, but others, like Broughton Bridge and Gote Bridge in Cockermouth, are not beyond repair. Work is now starting, dredging the river and repairing the bridges, and some of them will be opening in March and April.

Those of us who live in and around Cockermouth will be very happy indeed when Gote Bridge opens on March 24th, and it occurred to us this evening that they'll probably move the barricades ever so quietly in the dead of night. Should we let them? We think this should be cause for celebration!

Let's find out when they're planning to open the bridge, and descend upon it en masse to dance, sing, shout and cheer! ...and drive cars across it, of course.

Above - dredging the Derwent

I've created a Facebook group to help spread the word, here but you don't have to be a member of Facebook to get involved. Just tell your friends, spread the word, and let's have some fun!

Radio Cumbria calls

I've been invited to contribute to a feature on BBC Radio Cumbria called Little Cumbria. I hope this doesn't mean the contributors are being compared to the cast of Little Britain ... surely not! Cumbrians are far too sensible for that. Aren't they?

Normally people are invited to keep a diary for a week, writing exactly 130 words per day, and these are read out during the Ian Timms show in the early evening. Steven Greaves, the producer, chatted to me on the phone, and when I mentioned that this would sit rather well with the Flickr project I'm doing, 2010 - A Year In Pictures, he suggested we combine the two. I'm still not entirely sure how they're going to provide links to my photostream on the radio, but to make things easier I'm creating a page on links on our own website. It should be easier to read out marshallmcgurk.com/flickr.htm than http://www.flickr.com/photos/allybeag/collections/72157623205933005/!

So I've to select 5 of the photos I've uploaded to the YIP project, and write 130 words about each. Well. How hard can that be? Actually, that's the hardest part. I could write several pages about each, quite easily, but only 130 words? It's a good exercise for the brain, though, and I seem to have managed it, though it feels a bit like writing War and Peace via SMS-speak.

All five of these mini-masterpieces will appear here shortly.

Not Gerry, but Scamp

YOU HAVE TO BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

All I'd wished for was something to occupy me for 4 hours in Workington, while I was waiting for my car to be serviced at Kwik-Fit. I could see how I could spend maybe two of those hours wandering round the shops, so I took my bike with me in order to have a bit of an explore further afield as well.

SWANS
First I cycled down to the Mill Field and took photos of a family of starstruck swans who kept posing for the camera like the supermodels they know they are. Had a look at the Yearl with its rushing torrents of water, chatted to a dogwalker, discovered a couple of cycle tracks I hadn't known about, and headed back to the centre of town, having used up only 1½ of those 4 hours.

LOST IN SCOPE
The charity shops were calling me. In Scope, I found the two voluntary ladies discussing a small dog, which was sitting, quite unconcerned, in the middle of the shop floor. It had apparently just wandered in and sat down. Collarless, its identity was a mystery.

The volunteers didn't know what to do. They tried phoning the dog warden, who doesn't work Saturday afternoons, and suggested just turning the poor beast back out into the street, which seemed a bit heartless, with all the traffic out there. They phoned the police, who wouldn't have anything to do with it, and said they should "reject it" which amounted to the same advice as that of the dog warden.

They phoned various animal shelters and vets, but most of them were closed on Saturday afternoons. By this time another customer had become interested, and tried feeling for a microchip under the dog's skin, but couldn't find anything. She also noticed he had lost a claw, and had a rather sore looking patch on his paw.

A RAY OF HOPE
The volunteers were becoming quite disturbed by it all. We all had animals of our own at home, so couldn't take him back with us without causing domestic chaos. Then I remembered that our vet's surgery in Cockermouth have an out-of-hours service - I'd used it once before late at night. I finally tracked them down on my phone, and they said, "yes, bring the dog in as soon as your car is ready - just ring to let us know when you'll be here, and we'll go to the surgery to meet you." Nice people. I have to recommend Millcroft Vets here, as no-one else offered to do anything helpful.

UNEXPECTED DOG-WALKING
So it looked as though I was lumbered for the rest of the afternoon. I was the only one with a car, and the time to spare to look after the animal. The other customer, whose little boy looked like he would happily keep the doggie, helpfully nipped out and bought a cheap collar and lead, which we attached to the stray, and off I marched out of Scope, with the most unusual thing I've yet acquired in a charity shop.

A TEMPORARY NAME
Feeling a bit silly walking a nameless dog I decided to give him a temporary name, so he became Gerry for the duration. He did look very like a Gerry for some reason.

MORE PATTABLE THAN MY DOGS
I was surprised at how many people stopped and patted him - particularly quite small children who were more at his level. Nobody ever stops to pat my dogs! Gerry was perfectly behaved. He trotted along all cheerful and alert, never bothering if we passed another dog, never barking, never rushing ahead or trying to pull me along. You could tell he came from a good home where he was well looked after, and of course this meant that someone, somewhere, must be frantic with worry about him by now.

WORKINGTON HALL
We walked around the shopping area for a while, hoping someone would suddenly come rushing over shouting, "There he is! Thank goodness!" but nobody recognised him. I could see I was going to be on my feet all afternoon, so I checked my bike was securely chained to a railing, and headed off for the grounds around old Workington Hall, a nice grassy area for dogs. (I'll come back later with the sad & disgraceful story of Workington Hall.)

HOME, BOY!
Gerry was very pleased to run on the grass, although obviously I couldn't let him run loose. He had loads of energy for one so small! As we headed back towards the road I realised he seemed to know where he was going, so I let him lead me, in the hope that he'd head for home. I kept saying "home!" in a meaningful voice, and he took me down several footpaths and across the bridge over the Derwent so that we were heading towards Seaton. This seemed just the sort of place he might live - loads of houses there, and for a little while I thought we'd cracked it, but suddenly he paused, and looked puzzled. He couldn't figure out which way to go now. I had to remember that he's only a Jack Russell, not a Border Collie: my dogs can find their way home no bother at all.

"HE THINKS YOU HAVE HIS DOG!"
Back in the town centre, I found him dragging me suddenly towards the door of the multi-storey car park. This seemed like a clue. Perhaps his family had arrived by car and parked there. I was about to go inside to see if he could lead me to his car when my phone rang. Kwik-Fit were ringing to tell me my car was nearly ready, and by the way, there was a man there who seemed to think I had his dog!

WET
I couldn't believe it! How on earth had he tracked me down to Kwik-Fit? I told Kwik-Fit man to keep the dog-owner there, as I'd get there as quickly as I could, just as the heavens opened and soaked both me and Gerry quite thoroughly.

JOYFUL REUNION
So there he was - the dog owner sitting in his car in the Kwik-Fit forecourt. Nice chap, obviously very very fond of his dog, and very very delighted to be reunited with him. I sat in their car for a bit telling my half of the story. Seems they'd been in another shop just a few doors away from Scope, and had tied the dog up outside. When they looked out, he'd gone - spooked by something probably - slipped his collar and departed.

DETECTIVE WORK
They'd been searching all afternoon. They'd been to the animal shelters, (which had been closed) and phoned the police, who, although they'd been no help at the time, had obviously logged the phone call from the shop, and were able to tell him that his dog had been found in Scope. So he'd visited the shop, where the ladies had told him his dog was in safe hands, and they also remembered me telling them that I was picking up my car from Kwik-Fit at 5 o'clock.

I was so happy to see them reunited! Oh, and they do live at Seaton, and the dog's real name is Scamp. (I still think he looked more like a Gerry.)

Someone's nicked my shoes!

I left them on the bench in the women's changing rooms while I used the gym at Cockermouth Leisure Centre, and when I got back, they were gone. I was quite sure they'd just been tidied up by some over-consciencious member of staff, but it seems they really have been stolen. I'm appalled! They only cost £7 from a charity shop, but I'm very fond of them because they actually fit my wide feet and they're great for cycling and they're nice and bright and red and I can't afford to replace them with a new pair of the same quality.

<sob!>

When I joined the gym I asked where the lockers were, and I was told that although there are lockers for the swimming pool there are none for the gym (although they're planning to install them sometime) so in the meantime you just have to carry all your stuff around with you. I don't like putting my street shoes, which are sometimes a bit dirty, in the same bag with the rest of my clothes to cart around the gym, so I generally just leave them under the bench. They're not worth much so I never imagined anyone would take them. But last night the floor was sopping wet - I think it had just been washed - and because I didn't want my laces trailing on it and getting all wet I put the shoes on top of the bench instead of underneath, making them a lot more visible, I suppose.

And of course, because it was warm, the back door was open. Anyone could have slipped inside, had a quick look around the changing rooms, picked up my shoes and nipped out again without being noticed.

Of course I complained, and now they tell me that I'm quite welcome to use the swimmers' lockers! That wasn't what I was told when I joined. I am not happy.

I may just spend a bit of time wandering around the streets of Cockermouth looking at people's feet and showing this photo to everyone I meet: "Have you seen these shoes?"

BLACK CAT UPDATE

Little Snooky2, or whatever his name is, is becoming quite a frequent visitor. If I go to call our cats home, he turns up first, miaowing much louder than Aineko or Oscar do. Last night I opened the door and he was sitting there, quite companionably, with Ainkeo, and they both wanted to come inside. I felt really mean refusing him entrance. It's like your child comes home from school with a new chum, and you let your own kid in but turn the friend away.

But I know cats. I know if I let him in, he'll want to stay, and feel less and less inclined to go home. I also have no idea of the state of his health (although he seems quite bright-eyed and his coat, though needing some grooming seems shiny enough) or what sort of parasites he might be harbouring, ready to pounce on the 2 humans, 2 cats and 2 dogs who already live here.