A little New Year poem from Ogden Nash

 Alfred, Lord Tennyson's inspiring poem about the bells that ring in the New Year has been featured on here, as has Charles Lamb's sad poem The Old Familiar Faces.  

The American humourist Ogden Nash (1902 – 1971) wrote a little verse about the New Year in a rather different spirit:

Good Riddance, But Now What?

Come, children, gather round my knee;
Something is about to be.
Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark! It’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year. 

The poem's title is spot on. It expresses very well what some people feel at the end of yet another horrible year: they can't wait to see the back of it. Good riddance indeed! 

The title also suggests that the coming year might be even worse. We have no idea what is in store for us; we shall just have to wait and see what comes.

The Twelve Days of Christmas

The Christmas carol The Twelve Days of Christmas is - ostensibly - about the increasing number of unusual gifts received by a very lucky person. 

The final verse lists them all:

On the twelfth day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Twelve lords a leaping,
Eleven ladies dancing,
Ten pipers piping,
Nine drummers drumming,
Eight maids a milking,
Seven swans a swimming,
Six geese a laying,
Five gold rings.
Four colley birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves and
A partridge in a pear tree. 

Just like the carol The Three Ships, The Twelve Days  of Christmas has inspired some beautiful artwork.  

Here are two examples of cards that I like very much:

This is a seasonal postage stamp from 1977:

I have always liked this carol because of its cheerful tune and the pictures it inspires; I had no idea that it is believed to have hidden meanings:

More about John Buchan and the colour green

Looking for reasonably significant references to the colour green in John Buchan's books involves eliminating a very large number of descriptions of natural features such as uplands and downs, mountains and moors, water and trees and discarding a large quantity of protective outdoor clothing such as felt hats, capes and tweed coats. The much smaller number of occurrences of specific shades such as apple green and olive green are not of much interest either. 

After the routine references to the colour green have been removed, some examples of interest remain; it has taken two articles to cover what might be described as “the best of the rest”. 

The first article about John Buchan and the colour green  contains green references taken from his writings; this article contains more such references, and it also lists some green people and places of interest in his life.

Some miscellaneous green references
This section of the article has been inspired by some amusing material in Buchan's Prince of the Captivity that I quoted in the article about his Island of Sheep: 

“There were too many houses at Bournemouth, and too many people at Broadstairs, and a horrible band in green jackets at Eastbourne, and a man who made ugly faces at Littlehampton...”

Using that as a model, I have listed some miscellaneous, mostly minor, green references from various novels.

There is an archaeologist called Wintergreen, some green lizards, some wallpaper with pink and green parrots, an envelope heavily sealed with green wax and a strange girl dressed in an unusual shade of green who wears one green glove in The Dancing Floor; there is a Liberal candidate called Orlando Greenstone, a knitted tea-cosy in purple and green and an ancient hostelry called the Green Tree in Castle Gay.

There is a man called Green, a little green lamp, more green lizards, a Border dining club whose members wear faded green coats, green face paint and a translucent green tablet in The Island of Sheep; there is veined green marble, green alabaster, green imperial jade, two green doors and an emerald necklace in Huntingtower.

There is a man called Greenlees and a green drawing room in A Gap in the Curtain; there are green crabs, a green awning, green wooden seats and many references to Greenland in A Prince of the Captivity; in addition to the material already quoted, there are green sun-shutters, green sickness, a pink and green hearthrug and a green dressing gown in Greenmantle.

Defence Against the Dark Arts Part XXVII: The artwork of Frank Kelly Freas

Frank Kelly Freas (1922 – 2005) was an award-winning American science fiction and fantasy artist. He was active for more than 50 years, during which time he produced many illustrations for books and magazines and their covers. 

He was mentioned in an article about two amusing short stories, and one of his magazine covers was featured on here for Halloween. 

I like some of his pictures so much that I would rather own them than many of the works by the great masters! 

I like so many of them that it was very difficult to decide which ones to select for this article. I have chosen a representative sample that includes some of my favourite images.

I have a copy of one of Kelly Freas's artwork books; it has a foreword by Isaac Asimov, it contains many of his best works, and it has a very well-known picture on the cover:

This image is unforgettable:

A tale of two very convenient 'accidents'

The article about workplace memories was inspired by a few comments made to me by fellow workers many years ago. 

Two incidents involving another colleague surfaced in my mind recently while I was thinking about the past. Again, they seem much more significant now that they did at the time. They provide supporting evidence for some of my ideas about psychological black magic, one of the unseen influences that inspired the creation of this blog.

The first 'accident'
It all started when a colleague, a computer programmer I shall call Mrs M., realised that she had made a mistake after making some requested changes and putting the updated software onto a spool of magnetic tape for the computer operators to release into the live system. She suddenly thought of a possible problem; rather than confess and follow the proper procedures, she fixed the error and when she thought that no one was looking went to replace the original tape with the new one that she had made.

Mrs M. got caught by the operators in the act of substituting the new tape for the old one. She was not too popular with them and they had a big argument. She became very upset and said, “Why can't they trust me?” 

The atmosphere was becoming increasingly charged, then her phone rang. It was a neighbour: Mrs M.'s little girl had just fallen from her bike and the neighbour had carried her inside. She was slightly hurt, and the neighbour wanted Mrs M. to go and collect her.

So Mrs M. was off the hook – for a while at least. She had a perfect pretext for escaping from the office and the trouble that she had created.

Something about John Buchan and the colour green

After listing some connections and references to the colour green in the life and works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and covering some similar occurrences of this colour in the life and works of Rudyard Kipling, the next step was to look for green connections in the life and works of John Buchan. 

Buchan's works certainly contain a very large number of references to the colour green, but they are mostly casual and incidental. Many come from his frequent and routine descriptions of landscapes and the sea for example, and some just describe clothes of a colour suitable for wearing in the countryside and other wide open spaces. His books would greatly shrink if all these adjectives of colour were removed, but this would make little difference to most of the stories!

Even so, I have found some green references that can't be discounted quite so easily.

Buchan's exciting adventure story Greenmantle is an obvious candidate for inclusion, but its green aspects have mostly been covered already. 

The colour green in The Three Hostages
The Three Hostages has also been the subject of a previous article, but the green elements were not mentioned as they were not of particular interest at the time. 

A major character is called Doctor Greenslade.

One of the cryptic clues to the location of the hostages is “the green fields of Eden”.

One of the hostages, who is hidden in plain sight in a low-class dance hall, is frequently referred to as “the girl in green”.

A small green bottle plays a large part in defeating the villain Dominick Medina.

When Richard Hannay is sent for treatment to the practitioner Madame Breda, he finds that her front door has been newly painted a vivid green.

Richard Hannay tells his young friend Archie Roylance to look out for a green light. Archie is a great birdwatching enthusiast; nesting greenshanks and green sandpipers are mentioned in this connection.

Minor references include a set of green Chinese jars and a green herb fire.

Stone Age Internet: dial-up, dongles and Easy Cafés

The article about the great and positive influence of computers and the Internet describes how I relied on the Internet to educate and entertain me during the recent Covid lockdowns; this one covers my introduction to and first few years of using the Internet. 

I became aware of the existence, function and possibilities of the Internet by degrees over some years; I was fortunate in that I was able to take my time when learning how to use it and to have several options when deciding where to use it. 

I built up my usage slowly until the Internet became an essential part of my life, both personal and for work. This blog would not exist without the Internet for a start; I would not have had the great convenience of being able to do the bulk of the research and other tasks for my freelance assignments at home without the Internet either.

My introduction to the Internet
I first heard the name many years ago, when two computer engineers were talking about something called 'The Internet'. I didn't understand the significance of the facility; I thought that it was just for downloading software patches.

I was not very interested and soon forgot about it; life was very difficult at the time and I was fighting for survival on several fronts. 

My first experience of using the Internet 
A year or so later, the company I was working for installed the Internet on all of its workstations. It had previously been available on just one terminal, a key one in the Press Office. The boss was worried about the cost of putting it onto many PCs; he was also afraid that people would spend time surfing instead of working. However, he soon relented as many people really needed it for their work. We were given email addresses, which were very useful. Personal usage was permitted, but we were asked to keep it to a minimum. 

I cautiously tested the water, and as part of my job soon learned how to find information online. I also did some moderate and discreet personal browsing. As I slowly became aware of the possibilities of the World Wide Web and the large amount of interesting and useful information to be found online, I decided that I would have to find somewhere else to access the Internet: I wanted to do some intensive and extensive research.

I had not yet rejoined the Public Library after my long absence, so I didn't know about their free Internet access. Instead, I started to use Internet cafés or cybercafés as they were a very visible and convenient resource.