Interlude of Madness - There Once Were Flying Cows.

‘Hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle’

To begin with let’s take this one line by line. I remember when I was about three or four I sat and watched Willow, our cat at the time, for hours and hours on end hoping to catch a glimpse of her Vanessa Mae-ing it. I was of course left disappointed later coming to realise that even if she could indeed knock out a tune or two on an instrument she was just far too tired (and busy washing when she wasn't tired) to bother. ‘Liars!’ I thought. They tell us repeatedly how lying is such a bad thing, a vice, a habit not to be pursued and yet all through childhood it seems children are lied to endlessly. Then I grow up and (while under some influence or other I cannot possibly confirm or deny) meet Valerie the banjo playing badger which pretty much confirmed the whole truth that cats may well be able to play the fiddle after all.

‘The cow jumped over the moon’

Yes. A cow filled with enough helium perhaps, or one that could fly but cows stopped flying thousands of years ago when big smelly cow pats would fall out of the sky on unsuspecting passers by killing, often proving fatal.

Even when they could fly some just weren’t prepared for air or space travel. It was reported in the Annals of the Great Cow Dynasties that many flying cows who ventured as far up into space burned up in the atmosphere. As you should know cows are currently well known as a big contributor to methane emissions so this should not come as a surprise. Perhaps where irony creeps in is they would at times, depending upon how much gas was inside them at the time, create such beautiful firework displays that folk in the know would often charge tickets for the best seats. Naturally all the cow dung splattering around the world was considered to be a bit of a downside. Out of the cows that eventually did make it into space some have been sighted floating aimlessly about unable to steer their way to the moon (where if this dandy little tale is true they were heading merely to jump over it and back to earth), obviously because what they lacked were decent rocket boosters on their udders.

‘Wouldn’t look natural or organic,’ God has been quoted as saying in its defence. I’m betting it didn’t anticipate quite the number of deaths this flaw in the design plan caused, omniscient my backside! Probably why it took their wings away from them but to be quite fair this episode in their ancient history made them all very depressed. Hard to contemplate I do understand but stick with me here I am only relaying the facts (as written in the Annals of the Great Cow Dynasties) to you. Consider it. A clinically depressed cow. Some had it so severe they took their own lives.

How in the Universe does a cow commit suicide? I hear you ask. Well in the texts it says some hanged themselves in barns after dark while others would simply slit their udders. This was a gruesome period of time for cows. Some officials (officials of what no one quite knows but when one is a proper official complete with certificate of officiality it becomes difficult to argue with them) believe more cows perished during the ‘Great Cow Depression’ than died when they had wings and would forget to keep their wings flapping leading them to fall to the ground with an almighty thud. People died. 

‘The little dog laughed to see such fun’

Don’t even start me on this one. Dogs laughing? That’s as messed up as cats playing violins. And yes at the same time I was staring intently at the cat hoping to catch it with a fiddle (even just holding a fiddle might have appeased me), I was also spending equal amounts of time glaring at the dog, Max, waiting for him to burst into laughter. Never happened although I’m almost certain once I heard him bark at me, ‘what the woof you looking at? I want a bitch!’ I was a little startled but when running to my mother and relaying what Max had barked I was promptly sent to my room. I bet Max was in hysterics after that but I couldn’t see being confined to my room.

Let’s not forget in the rhyme the dog was laughing due to such fun he was witnessing. A cat playing violin? A cow jumping over the moon? This is fun? Messed up is what it is! All the dog does is laugh at this incredibly whacky behaviour from his feline and cattle compatriots. Should have stopped eating the meat he was being fed for it obviously had acid in it or some other hallucinogenic substance. Or perhaps he was a dog that liked the odd cheeky joint (not of the meat variety).

This next line needs just a tiny preamble because it is my ultimate favourite moving away from the animals doing trippy things, which yes is a bit out there but at the very least they are living things and can move and well okay they can’t exactly do the things the rhyme claims they did but......

‘And the dish ran away with the spoon!’

Exactly! This is where parents really take the piss don’t you think? A dish running? How precisely does a dish run? It’s a god damn dish they don’t have legs for starters and neither do spoons. I felt sorry for the knives and forks and the plates for they were really left out which led to the horrific cutlery wars of the middle ages (and by the middle ages I do mean in terms of the timeline of cutlery, not our own). Again thanks to the repeated lies of the big folk I’d often wonder in puzzlement why my breakfast bowl would not run when I wanted to watch it do so. I’d therefore throw it on the floor throwing my spoon after it as far as I could thinking, ‘If you’re not going to run fucking well fly!'

To follow: Whatever happened to Little Red Riding Hood?

Also to follow: Review of The Squirrel That Dreamt of Madness by Craig Stone.

Also also to follow: Review of Seth Lakeman 2011 gig & Fleet Foxes 2011 gig.

Music of the moment:

1.) Open the Door by Andrew Page - thanks to twitter.

2.) The Water's Edge by Luke Ritchie - thanks to twitter & his sister Charlotte who plays Oregon in Fresh Meat

Book(s) most recently added to the 'to read mountain':

Colour of Dawn by Amber Jerome-Norrgard.

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