ROOTS

The real names of 20 reggae DJs from the 60s to the 80s:

Count Machuki - Winston Cooper
King Stitt - Winston Spark
Pama Dice - Hopetone Reid
U Roy - Ewart Beckford
Dennis Alcapone - Dennis Smith
I Roy - Roy Reid
Scotty - David Scott
Charlie Ace - Valden Dixon
Big Youth - Augustus Manley Buchanan
Dillinger - Lester Bullock
Dr Alimantado - Winston Prince
Clint Eastwood - Robert Brammer
Jah Woosh - Neville Beckford
Prince Jazzbo - Linval Carter
Prince Far I - Michael James Williams
Trinity - Wade Everal Brammer
Jah Stitch - Melbourne James
Lone Ranger - Anthony Waldron
Eek A Mouse - Ripton Joseph Hilton
Yellowman - Winston Foster

Source: thanks to Mr Tim Wells (I Tim)

 
THAI TEXTS

The 20 best modern Thai novels:

1 Arkartdamkeung Rapheephat: The Circus of Life 1929
2 "Seeboorapha": Behind the Picture 1937
3 "Dorkmai Sot": A Person of Quality 1937
4 "K Surangkhanang": The Woman of Easy Virtue 1937
5 Thanom Maha-Paoraya: An Elephant Named Maliwan 1937?
6 "Seinee Saowaphong": Wanlaya's Love 1952
7 "Seinee Saowaphong": The Ghosts 1953
8 Marlai Choophinit: The Field of the Great 1954
9 Khuekrit Prarmoat: Four Reigns 1957
10 "Utsana Phleungtham": The Story of Jandara 1964
11 Bunluea Theiphayasuwan: Thutiyawiseit 1966
12 Chart Korpjitti: The Judgement 1981
13 Wimon Sainimnuan: Snakes 1984
14 "Nikhom Raiyawa": High Banks Heavy Logs 1984
15 Praphatsorn Seiwikun: Time in a Bottle 1985
16 Atsiri Thammachoat: Time and Tide 1985
17 Wanit Jarungkit-Anan: The Hood of the Cobra 1987
18 Chart Korpjitti: Mad Dogs & Co. 1988
19 "Sila Khoamchai": The Path of the Tiger 1989
20 "Daen-aran Saeng-thong": The White Shadow 1994

Source: as chosen by Thai Modern Classics

 
SNACK ATTACK

The best snacks for children:

1 Peanut butter
2 Sweet potato chips
3 Healthy baked treats (eg banana bread, zucchini muffins)
4 Whole-grain cereal
5 Cheese
6 Eggs (hard-boiled or scrambled)
7 Low fat yogurt
8 Quesadillas
9 Hummus
10 Pears
11 Noodles
12 Smoothies
13 Snack mix (nuts, pretzels, whole-grain cereal, banana chips and popcorn)
14 Ovaltine milk mixed up with caffeine-free Ovaltine (chocolate or malt)
15 Low-fat ham

Source: As chosen by nutritionists at parents.com

 
DANCING AROUND THE WORLD

An international alphabet of dances:

Abuang (Indonesia)
Bergomask (Italy)
Colinda (Africa)
Debka (Israel)
Ezcudantza (Basque)
Fackeltanz (Austria)
Gopak (Russia)
Hanacca (Moravia)
Ijswals (Netherlands)
Jabadao (Brittany)
Kyndeldans (Sweden)
Lezginka (Iran)
Maxixe (Brazil)
Numba (Kenya)
Okina (Japan)
Planxty (Ireland)
Quadrille (France)
Redowa (Bohemia)
Springer (Norway)
Tango (Argentina)
Urva Franka (Macedonia)
Verbunkos (Hungary)
Wireng (Java)
X (?)
Yumari (Mexico)
Zapateado (Spain)

Source: various; do you know an X?

 
KINGS OF MUSIC

Updated list! A pack of 52 kings:

1 King of surf guitar - Dick Dale
2 King of ragtime - Scott Joplin
3 King of ballads - Peabo Bryson
4 King of tango - Carlos Gardel
5 King of reggae - Bob Marley
6 King of the kazoo - Rick Hubbard
7 King of disco soul - George Macrae
8 King of the waltz - Richard Strauss
9 King of kora - Sidiki Diabate
10 King of swamp blues - Tabby Thomas
11 King of honking tenor sax - Big Jay MacNeeley
12 King of crock - Teddy Glenn
13 King of bluegrass - Jimmy Martin
14 King of 12 string guitar - Leadbelly
15 King of calypso - Harry Belafonte
16 King of violinists - Fritz Kreisler
17 King of the twist - Chubby Checker
18 King of slide - Elmore James
19 King of western swing - Bob Wills
20 King of conga - Desi Arnaz
21 King of belly dance music - George Abdo
22 King of salsa - Eddi Torres
23 King of Afro-Cuban jazz - Machito
24 King of rhumba rock - Papa Wemba
25 King of mountain soul - Ralph Stanley
26 King of mambo - Perez Prado
27 King of endless boogie - John Lee Hooker
28 King of pop - Michael Jackson
29 King of country music - Roy Acuff
30 King of pipers - John Ban Mackenzie
31 King of rai - Cheb Khaled
32 King of soul - Otis Redding
33 King of rock and roll - Elvis Presley*
34 King of merengue - Dioris Valladares
35 King of the blues - B B King
36 King of zydeco - Clifton Chenier
37 King of Jewish reggae - Ron Wiseman
38 King of swing - Benny Goodman
39 King of rock 'n' soul - Solomon Burke
40 King of jazz - Paul Whitehead
41 King of slow soul - Percy Sledge
42 King of new age music - David Lanz
43 King of harmonica - Larry Adler
44 King of delta blues - Robert Johnson
45 King of Latin music - Tito Puente
46 King of corn - Spike Jones
47 King of hi de ho - Cab Calloway
48 King of gospel music - James Cleveland
49 King of champagne music - Lawrence Welk
50 King of vibes - Lionel Hampton
51 King of disco - Sylvester*
52 King of skiffle - Lonnie Donegan

*Earlier, Elvis was known as the King of western bop
**Hotly contested by Harry Casey (KC), Maurice Gibb and Giorgio Moroder.

Source: various (list updated and moved from March as there was too much 'king of' stuff together)

 
LOOKING FOR TROUBLES

Five unlikely bands who had hit singles with songs about the conflict in Northern Ireland:

1 Madness (Michael Caine)
2 The Police (Invisible Sun)
3 Bananarama (Rough Justice)
4 Spandau Ballet (Through the Barricades)
5 Boney M (Belfast)

 
SCOTTISH NATIONALISATION Lesson 56

Here is this week's vocabulary lesson for those aiming for Scottish citizenship:

1 fit fit fits fit fit? - a required saying in Aberdeen, particularly while trying on shoes in Saxone* on Union Street and meaning 'which foot fits which shoe?'

2 yawrigh? marigh, mnaepesht, ahwal'is, yonnae botes? monnae botes, fer's skipr - required in Anstruther and the East Neuk, meaning 'Are you all right? I'm fine, I'm not intoxicated, I always walk this way. Do you work on the boats? I do, my father is a ship's captain.'

3 he disnae ken whit bucket day it is - required in south Edinburgh, meaning that the said person is of such low intelligence that he doesn't know which day to put his garbage out for collection.

4 eat up, yer at yer blin' auntie's - required in Aberdeenshire, a phrase meaning help yourself to more cakes and sandwiches, your aunt is blind and won't notice that you are squandering her resources.

5 ah ha'e ha's but ah'll hae tae hae a ha' - required in south Fife, as overheard on a Kirkcaldy bus, where two elderly women were discussing their clothing plans for a forthcoming wedding - 'I hate hats, but I will have to have a hat'.

*Saxone, the shoe shop chain gets its name from a shock football result many decades ago, when Kilmarnock (of whom the Scottish founder of the chain, then just one market stand, was a keen supporter) beat Glasgow Rangers 6-1 (in Scots, sax-one) The shop name pronunciation has changed now to 'sax-own'. This, commonly believed to be a myth, appears to be strange but true.

Source: RcL

 
PATTER MERCHANT

Lots of people have been looking for the stuff about Glaswegian slang - it's in the March archive, about halfway down, by the way. Click on the left - or use the search box above (not all the site is Google archived yet - try the 'similar pages' click which helps sometimes). Watch out for other havering sites trying to pass off lots of widespread Scottish expressions as being Glaswegian. See youse...

 
SMASH HITTERS

To celebrate the 25th anniversary this month of Smash Hits, UK teen-pop magazine, Diamond Geezer chose five acts from each April's charts which summed up each year in British pop music:

1978 Suzi Quatro, Blondie, Kate Bush, Andrew Gold, Showaddywaddy
1979 Squeeze, Racey, M, Sex Pistols, Village People
1980 Liquid Gold, The Jam, UB40, Madness, The Pretenders
1981 Shakin Stevens, Bucks Fizz, Kim Wilde, Landscape, Toyah
1982 Bucks Fizz, Imagination, Japan, Dollar, Classix Nouveaux
1983 Culture Club, Duran Duran, Jo Boxers, Bonnie Tyler, Nick Heyward
1984 Shakin Stevens, Thompson Twins, Depeche Mode, Captain Sensible, Madonna
1985 Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Tears For Fears, Go West, King, Dream Academy
1986 George Michael, Samantha Fox, Falco, A-Ha, Five Star
1987 Mel and Kim, Madonna, Terence Trent D'Arby, Fine Young Cannibals, Curiosity Killed The Cat
1988 Pet Shop Boys, Bros, Climie Fisher, Tiffany, Sinitta
1989 The Bangles, Simply Red, Jason Donovan, Transvision Vamp, INXS
1990 Madonna, Snap, Happy Mondays, Candy Flip, Adamski
1991 Chesney Hawkes, James, Wonder Stuff, Roxette, Dannii Minogue
1992 Right Said Fred, Shakespear's Sister, Soul II Soul, SL2, Curiosity
1993 Bluebells, Shaggy, New Order, East 17, Boyzone
1994 Take That, Ace of Base, Tony Di Bart, Haddaway, Bad Boys Inc
1995 Take That, Outhere Brothers, Bobby Brown, Let Loose, Deuce
1996 Prodigy, Mark Morrison, Gina G, Cast, Upside Down
1997 Backstreet Boys, Supergrass, No Doubt, Spice Girls, Sash
1998 Run DMC, Savage Garden, Ultra Nate, Robbie Williams, 911
1999 Martine McCutcheon, Eminem, Phats and Small, Britney Spears, TLC
2000 Westlife, Atomic Kitten, Steps, Point Break, 5ive
2001 Emma Bunton, Robbie Williams, Sugababes, Ash, S Club 7
2002 Gareth Gates, Britney Spears, Shakira, Will Young, Blue
2003 "A world exclusive as we go inside the bedrooms of Blazin' Squad. We find out why Westlife have turned into cowboys, we hang out with Girls Aloud, meet those saucy lads from Triple 8 plus we're giving you the chance to win your own private screening of the new S Club movie 'Seeing Double' for you and 24 of your mates!"

*As an extra gimmick, I have highlighted one from each year who was the least likely to have made it in America.

My first Smash Hits, circa '79, had Gary Numan on the cover. It went from being a lyric magazine, to pop and indie music mag and ended up by the 90s being a teeniebop mag for boy-band loving girls.

Source: with permission from diamondgeezer - someone who also likes lists. Check out the Unoriginal Miscellany via his homepage for some funny lists.

 
YOU AND YOU

A '_U_U' alphabet:

auau - the Maori word for 'frequent'
Bubu - Malaysian resort known as the 'best sexy body beach'
Cucu - a Romanian surname
dudu - the Dudu, made by Kona, is a fancy mountain bike, a snip at $3000
Eueu - shortened or pet form of the name Eugenia
fufu - a type of porridge eaten in Africa
gugu - gugu badhun is a nearly extinct Aboriginal language spoken in Queensland; also the name of a strange Thai doll
huhu - a rum and mint cocktail, the speciality here
iuiu - Alpinia carolinensis, a large tropical plant
juju - West African fetish or charm, or the magic associated with these
kuku - a large New Zealand wood pigeon
lulu - any outstanding thing
mumu - an earth oven in Papua New Guinea, where you will also find a...
nunu - ...which is an initiation house: men hide in the roof space to frighten women and boys
ouou - a name given to dogs in Iberian countries (a bit like bow-wow)
pupu - the Hawaiian term for a snack meal or starter
Ququ - a not-so-common French surname
ruru - a New Zealand owl, also called the mopoke / morepork, from its cry
Susu - a people of West Africa, living mainly in Guinea
tutu - frilly ballet skirt; also Nobel winning churchman Desmond and minor jazz record label
uuuu - a Swiss webhosting company
vuvu - a Brazilian percussion instrument
wuwu - the Taoist term for 'non-thingness'
Xuxu - a strong German brand name drink, made of vodka with a strawberry flavour
yuyu - the Japanese word for poltergeist (probably)
Zuzu - the little girl in homely movie It's A Wonderful Life

Source: various

 
CITY LIFE

Some 'city of' nicknames:

1 Kobe (Japan) - the city of pearls
2 Fengdu (China) - the city of devils
3 Baltimore (US) - the city of firsts
4 Bangalore (India) - the city of draught beer
5 Dundee (Scotland) - the city of discovery*
6 Tacoma (US) - the city of vacant lots
7 Meissen (Germany) - the city of porcelain
8 Kansas City (US) - the city of fountains
9 Puerto Madryn (Argentina) - the city of whales
10 Agadir (Morocco) - the city of the blue men**
11 Oxford (England) - the city of dreaming spires
12 Puebla (Mexico) - the city of tiles
13 Baguio (Philippines) - the city of pines
14 Escazu (Costa Rica) - the city of good witches)
15 Chicago (US) - the city of big shoulders
16 Oporto (Portugal) - the city of work
17 Leiden (Netherlands) - the city of refugees
18 Galway (Ireland) - the city of tribes
19 Antwerp (Belgium) - the city of the Madonnas
20 Philadelphia (US) - the city of brotherly love
21 Prague (Cz) - the city of a hundred spires
22 Austin (US) - the city of the violet crown***
23 Auckland (NZ) - the city of sails
24 Moyobamba (Peru) - the city of orchids
25 Adelaide (Australia) - the city of churches
26 Mandalay (Burma) - the city of gems
27 Kuching (Indonesia) - the city of cats
28 Guangzhou (China) - the city of five goats

*from the famous Antarctic ship made and now docked there
**from the uniform of camel drivers
***from the surrounding purple mountains

Source: various (There are hundreds more of these, often sounding suspiciously like they were made up by local officials trying to tempt people to 'the city of roses, warmth, festivals' etc, of which there are many. These are just some of the more interesting ones.)

 
Hello and welcome to Vitamin Q, a temple of triviality...

Just to remind you: this sort-of-blog belongs to Roddy Lumsden, a puzzle writer and poet from Scotland now living in Bristol in England. I post lists, curiosities and fragments which please me as a lover of trivia and reference. They tend to reflect my interests which include pop, nature, words, Scotland, food, folklore and literature. I post a few items most weeks, so do bookmark and return.

If you wish to reprint any lists online, please include the source, or credit both me and this site if it is an original list. You can offer ideas, lists, corrections and book deals via the email address. I strive to come up with original presentation of material here, but sometimes I adapt and adopt from other sources, on and off line. If you feel I have purloined, let me know and I will make amends.

If you've surfed in from good old Google, you may find that what you want is in the archive, not on this page, but I hope you have fun searching! the two apparently Most Wanted Lists on this site are the presidential nicknames and the strawberries in arts and films which can both be found in the January archive. Now read on, and don't forget there are crisps and crumbs of hopeless knowledge aplenty in the archive - just click on the dates up on the left...

And thanks to the reader who described VitQ as 'stuff, but in a good way'. That, I hope, is just what it is.

 
GAMES Part Two

My ideas for revitalising certain sports:

1 Hurdles to have electric charges
2 Soccer to have two balls at once
3 Snooker to be played on a round table
4 Ice hockey to be played with bare feet
5 Cricket matches to take place in a twelve feet square room
6 Fly fishing to be for nuns (that's for nuns not by nuns)

Source: RcL

 
I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE...

They were called 'the new Bob Dylan':

1 Peter Astor
2 John Prine
3 David Bowie
4 Elliott Murphy
5 Melanie
6 Andy White
7 Ryan Adams
8 David Gray
9 Bruce Springsteen
10 Graham Parker
11 Dan Bern
12 Ben Kweller
13 Steve Forbert
14 Beck
15 Elvis Costello
16 Donovan
17 Josh Joplin
18 Willie Nile
19 Conor Oberst
20 John Hartford
21 Loudon Wainwright III
22 Jewel

Source: various

 
A BUNCH OF SONGS

A CD's worth of genuine songs and tunes about pigtails:

1 Pigtails and Ribbons - Sonny James
2 Pigtails Plaid Skirt - The Church Keys
3 Pigtail - Penguin Café Orchestra
4 The Girl With the Pigtails in Her Hair - Charlie Barnet
5 Where's Pigtail - Inca Eyeball
6 Pigtails - The Saints
7 Since the Days of Pigtails (and Fairy Tales) - Chairmen of the Board
8 Pigtails on Parade - Ruby Wright
9 Pigtails and Kneesocks - The Greenhornes
10 Pigtails in the Ink - from the musical I Love You Madam President
11 Pigtails and Blue Jeans - The Upsetters
12 Pigtails on a Rock - Screamfeeder
13 Pigtails and Freckles - from the musical Mr President
14 Pigtail Man - Jackdaw

Source: this helped

 
STRIKE A LIGHT

Rhyming slang is most often associated with working class London, but is used all over Britain, as well as in other countries. Here are some names of people, real and made up, modern and historical, whose names are used in rhyming slang.

Catherine Hayes (ryhming slang meaning - days)
Charlie Beck (check)
Jack Horner (corner)
Dan O'Leary (weary)
Jerry McGinn (chin)
Johnnie O'Brien (iron)
Johnnie Russell (hustle)
Rosie Lee (tea)
Tom Noddy (body)
Hank Marvin (starving)
Jack Jones (alone, as in 'stuck here on my Jack Jones')
Lionel Richie (itchy)*
Pete Tong (wrong)

*Two other soul singers appear in similar British slang. A ten pound note (which is brown) is sometimes called a James Brown. The five pound note (which is blue) is occasionally referred to as a Harold Melvin (due to his band the Blue Notes).

Source: some from Brandreth's Joy of Lex. Others added by me.

 
MORTAL REFRAINS

This a shortened form of an article I wrote on morbid poetry and the 'death' pop songs of the early 60s. If you're looking for the usual trivia and lists, skip on down the page.

Songs of Love and Death (and More Death)

Introducing a selection from Julia A Moore in The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse (1930), editors D B Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee commented:

The Sweet Singer's verse is concerned to a large extent with total abstinence and violent death -- the great Chicago fire, the railway disaster of Ashtabula, the Civil War, the yellow fever epidemic in the South. She sings death by drowning, by smallpox, by fits, accidents by lightning-stroke and sleigh. "Julia is worse than a Gatling gun," wrote Bill Nye; "I have counted twenty-one killed and nine wounded, in the small volume she has given to the public." She also greatly relishes normal infant mortality, especially in cases where the little victim possesses blue eyes and curling golden hair.

Moore (1847-1920) was known as "The Sweet Singer of Michigan" and, as a poetaster, appeared blissfully unaware of her badness (plus ca change!), just as much so as Scotland's great bad poets, William MacGonagall and the less known James McIntyre, the "Cheese Poet" - who is claimed by Canada where he lived his adult life, but they can't have him - so called for his predilection for painful odes to (you've guessed it) cheese.

Moore was the foremost poet of what became known as the "Graveyard School", poets who mixed puritanical dogma with musings on death which contained a high tide of syrup and a tsunami of gore. Her Selected Poems, Mortal Refrains, is still sought out today by bad verse buffs and those with a bone-licking taste for the grisly. The style was later adopted by Hilaire Belloc for his well-loved Cautionary Tales for Children, but Belloc's black waggery lacked the priggish schadenfreude of the 'real thing'. Here are the poor Chicagoans burning to death:

And sadder still, to hear the moans,
Of people in the flames
Cry for help, and none could get,
Ah, die where they remained.

And one of Julia's many child corpses, Little Andrew (guess what happens next!):

On one bright and pleasant morning
His uncle thought it would be nice
To take his dear little nephew
Down to play upon a raft,
Where he was to work upon it,
And this little child would company be --
The raft the water rushed around it,
Yet he the danger did not see.

In the gloom department, Britain lagged behind the Americans for a while, but this was soon remedied by one Harry Graham, a Coldstream Guard (hence his some time pen-name Col. D Streamer) who, in 1899, published Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes, a collection of ditties of the sort that children love but are no longer allowed to read. Graham wrote short, rhymed poems in which someone came, horridly, to grief. For example:

In the drinking well
Which the plumber built her
Aunt Eliza fell.
We must buy a filter.

Both this book and its sequel sold very well and though Graham went on to pen many books of comic verse, it was his morbid ones which were best relished. An early century craze began, with newspapers publishing their own columns of reader-penned gory verses, growing ever more outrageous, named "Little Willies" (from whence, dear fact fans, may spring the phrase "it gives me the willies") after an unfortunate anti-hero of Graham's who fell in the fire. One of these runs thus:

Willie saw some dynamite,
Couldn't understand it quite.
Curiosity never pays;
It rained Willie seven days.

Though the musical sphere was hardly a rain-butt of sunbeams (the blues after all existed in the shimmer and mirk of sex and death), it was to be half a century before the black humour of death was to creep into song writing in such a faddish way, with the advent of the "Death Song" in the late 1950s. In his excellent book The Death of Rock 'n' Roll (Faber 1993), Jeff Pike blames the death of James Dean for the appearance of these songs, since the heroes of many early ones are too beautiful to live and are about to make a car journey that's gonna prove it. The first big hit, Mark Dinning's Teen Angel (basically, girlfriend crushed by speeding train becomes adolescent heavenly harpist), caused a bit of a fuss; it was even banned over here, but it winged its way to the top of the US charts in 1960.

In one of the best known of the death rock songs, Tell Laura I Love Her, we can guess pretty early on what is going to happen, but that's the point: "He saw a sign for a stock car race / A thousand dollar prize it read." Soon a mangled Tommy is serenading his girl from the wreck of his car. The contemporaneous craze for stock car songs probably helped the genre along, but it was the revving of a motorbike (soon to hit a truck) which ushered in the biggest, baddest teen death song of them all, The Shangri-La's number Leader of the Pack, a much parodied number which was so successful and hard to follow that the craze died out with it, seemingly at its height.

The tears were beginning to show
As he drove away on that rainy night
I begged him to go slow
But whether he heard, I'll never know.
Look out! Look out! Look out! Look out!

Look out, indeed. Since then, pop lyricists have kept a hand in death's shroud, but this has tended to have more to do with the accompanying imagery. There was Bobby Goldsboro's Honey, Terry Jacks' Brel-inspired Seasons in the Sun and Red Sovine's trucking tear-jerker Teddy Bear, but these and others were visitors from the lands of folk and country, emotion-exploiting genres where death, in Stetson or fool's-cap, is a constant, lurking force.

Of all songs connected with death, the champion is Gloomy Sunday, a 30s Hungarian number which has been connected to the deaths, mainly by suicide, of over 100 people. Its author eventually committed suicide, as did both the members of Badfinger who wrote the classic Harry Nilsson / Mariah Carey weepie Without You. In the heyday of doomy new wave, two teenagers were reported to have committed suicide after listening to the wonderful Morbid Fear by sub-Joy Division group Tunnel Vision, while fellow Northerners Clock DVA provided the soundtrack to Jeffrey Dahmer's stranglings and choppings.
Hard rockers know that the scent of blood is always appealing to the pubescent boys who make up their core audience and have hacked and chopped accordingly. No more so than in Death Metal with its four (supposedly) distinct sub-genres: Norwegian Style, Grindcore, Brutal Black Death and Doomdeath and bands such as Meathook Seed, Fermenting Innards, Filthy Christians and (with a nod to the 60s death songs) My Dying Bride.

It is interesting and ironic, looking at Jeff Pike's introduction to The Death of Rock 'n' Roll to note that, unlike the speeding trains of the death-rock songs, or the child playing too close to the fire in a piece of Graveyard School doggerel, some deaths cannot be so easily anticipated. After a run-through of what we should expect in the following chapters - a chronicle of fast living, midnight string-ups and sundry early deaths - Pike ends, "Please, don't anyone reading this kill yourself." It is signed, Seattle 1993, only months before Kurt Cobain's shotgun (whoever pulled the trigger) brought death back to the hub of rock and roll.

Source: from the book The Message: Crossing the Tracks Between Poetry and Pop (edited by Lumsden / Trousse)

 
THAT LOVING FILLING

Keanu Reeves on sandwiches:

What's your favourite sandwich? 'I have a couple: a toasted baguette with peanut butter and apricot jam with really cold white wine. Mmmm. Philadelphia steak sandwich is really good. Oh, and a really good Italian sausage sandwich. But then you can't beat toasted Swiss cheese and tomato with a little mustard on. Ooooooh, or Black Forest ham with German black bread. Oh my God, and coleslaw and Swiss cheese with Russian dressing.'

Source: Empire magazine, circa 1996.

 
AIEOU

Trying to find words which consist only of vowels is a dissapointing business. Most of them are very short (ea, oo etc). When you get over three letters, it's a scarce field, unless you include 'y' as a vowel, to which we say 'oy, no!' here at VitQ. There are quite a few words which are imitative of sounds, such as aiee (ouch), iaou (a cat's mew), euoi (a shout of bacchanalian frenzy). This last one is debatable since, as with the longer euouae (a cadence in Gregorian chant music), the 'u' derives from the Greek 'v'. Then there is the ieie, a type of Pacific pine tree, but it seem to be more commonly known as just the ie. Also tropical is the ooaa, a bird which is more commonly spelled using added punctuation marks (o-o-a-a). There are two longer words, but both are rather obscure proper nouns: Iouea is a genus of fossil sponges, while Uoiauai is a Brazilian native language.

Source: various

 
SWEET TOOTH

30 traditional British sweets which used to be sold in jars:

1 bonbons
2 hoarhounds
3 barley sugar
4 bull's eyes
5 soor plooms
6 sports mixture
7 chocolate limes
8 ginger creams
9 pan drops
10 strawberry sherbets
11 fairy drops
12 kola cubes
13 Berwick cockles
14 coulter's candy
15 Everton mints
16 sherbet lemons
17 pomfret cakes
18 kop kopps
19 midget gems
20 pear drops
21 rhubarb rock
22 American hard gums
23 comfits
24 brandy drops
25 satins
26 butternuts
27 granny sookers
28 poor bens
29 rosebuds
30 wine gums

Source: various. You can still buy most of these.

 
GAMES Part One

Here is some nostalgic children's games trivia. My second book contained a list poem called Games. Here it is:

Games

Peekaboo - Horsey Horsey - Ring a Roses - The Farmer's in His Den - In and Out the Dusty Bluebells - Dead Man's Fall - White Horses - What's the Time Mr Wolf? - Tig - Stone Scissors Paper - Kerbie - Ducks and Drakes - Join the Crew - Prisoners' Base - Hide and Seek - Hopscotch - One Touch - Tipcat - British Bulldog - Chappie Knockie - Chickie Mellie - Manhunt - Knifie - Kiss Cuddle or Torture - Long Sighs and Silences - Saying Nothing's Wrong - Letter Never Sent - Arriving Hours Late - Playing with Her Food - Darkly Hinting

You get the idea - a list of lots of children's games tailing off into adult 'mind games'. But I'm always curious as to how many of these real games mentioned are well-known and which are known under different names elsewhere.

Here's a brief rundown of what some of the games are:

Horsey Horsey - a dandling game with baby on knee and a song about horses

The Farmer's in His Den - a children's ring game in which the child in the centre has to choose others to be a wife, a dog, and then 'a bone', this child being mercilessly patted (ie thumped all over)

In and Out the Dusty Bluebells - a children's dance game accompanied by the song of the same name

Dead Man's Fall - a piece of mindless boys' genius. Boys take turns to stand at the top of a slope. They are then asked to choose a weapon (eg bazooka, machine gun) by which they will die. The other boys then mime this weapon and the boy has to fall 'to his death' as ostentatiously as possible

White Horses - was a 'crossing' game similar to the next one, but I'm not sure of the rules. Compare also the game where kids crossed an area using various movement, 'baby steps' etc. I can't recall what we called it, but elsewhere it is called Mother May I?, Captain May I?, Crocodile Crocodile, or Follow the Leader. One website suggests 'baby steps, giant steps, hops, jumps, twirl steps, backwards steps, leaping steps, waddling steps and tiptoe steps' were used. Elsewhere, I see ballet steps and scissor steps too.

What's the Time Mr Wolf? - one child turns her back to the rest, answering various times to the question, as they sneak closer across the playing area. When the child shouts, it's dinner time! she can then chase the others

Kerbie - the lost art of throwing a football at a kerb to try and get it to bounce off and return to you on the opposite pavement. Sounds simple, but it had rules of great complexity. There are still many thirty something men who long for a game on summer nights

Join the Crew - a brutal game similar to British Bulldog. Children take turns to try and get past a child in the middle of the playing area. If they fail, they 'join the crew'. If they do get across, all other participants must try to cross to the other side. The game is best remembered for the inevitable 'stripping' of clothes which occurred

One Touch - staple game of bored boys, involving a football and a wall against which it had to be kicked, in turns, with just one touch. See other soccer games such as laneball, heady kicks, World Cup and three-and-in

Chappie Knockie - the magazine Private Eye has a current discussion in the letters' pages about the name for the ubiquitous game where a child knocks on a door and runs away. Knock Down Ginger, or Knock Up Ginger. But in Scotland, it was chappie knockie. Bigger and crueller children got really quite adept at making life misery for some. Bottles balanced on door handles could be sure to fall and smash when the handle was turned from the other side. A paper bag on fire, when stamped out, would be sure to contain something smelly and nasty

Chickie Mellie - I've never known this played, but it exists in Oor Wullie (basically a 1960s/70s Scottish Bart Simpsonesque cartoon strip character). Wullie plays the game using a string with a tied button, taped above an old lady's window. Hiding nearby, he can manipulate the string, thereby knocking the button on the window pane to repeatedly scare the woman. Oor Wullie was written and drawn by a clergyman

Manhunt - basically, a game of hide-and-seek for older boys, played in two teams, at night, through gardens. No one ever knew the rules, no one ever seemed to win, but boy was it exciting

Knifie - another lost art - I don't recall the complex rules. It was already dying out when I was a child in the 70s. It involved throwing a penknife into grass, and various 'Twister' style contortions to do with moving to where you threw the knife. Played only by wiry tough boys

Kiss Cuddle or Torture - perennial 'learn love the hard way' playground game for 7-11 year olds. Kissing is rare and usually quick, cuddling is for when girl catches girl. Torture is the main dish of the day and involves Chinese burns or dead legs, or for blushing boys, more kissing

Source: RcL (rules of White Horses or other types of steps would be welcome, or any thoughts.)

 
IT'S A WRAP

Three names for 'sausages wrapped in bacon':

1 pigs in blankets (England)
2 weenies in scarves (Canada)
3 kilted sausages (Scotland)

 
HOPELESS

Some things I can't do:

1 pick up spiders
2 work showers
3 do handstands
4 understand visual artists when they try to talk about their work
5 drink Bacardi
6 click my fingers
7 drive
8 get Doonesbury
9 open milk cartons
10 dance in public
11 have a boss, ever
12 stand steady on a chair to change a bulb
13 finish songs
14 hold hot plates or cups

 
STINK TANK

Some bad smell trivia for your pleasure. Take a deep breath and don the gasmasks:

A recent Newsround (UK kids' news show) poll among children rated these bad smells (worst first):

1 vomit
2 smelly armpits
3 bad breath
4 'bottom burps'
5 toilets
6 fish
7 egg sandwiches
8 trainers
9 cooked cabbage

...while at about.com, readers voted for:

1 wet dog
2 grampa taint*
3 navel fluff
4 Staten Island
5 Leonard Nimoy's ear salsa

*don't ask me, though I can sort of guess...

Other substances claimed to be 'the worst smell' include:

1 mercaptoacetic acid or methylmercaptan (a chemical said to be repulsive)
2 skunk spray
3 hot tar
4 fermented chicken feed
5 lime chutney
6 hockey goalies
7 'Bigfoot'
8 mildew and related moulds
9 the tenrec (Indonesian 'stinking badger')
10 paper mills
11 dead rats and other rotting rodents
12 durian (the fruit that 'tastes like heaven but smells like hell')
13 unchanged bandages
14 baby sick
15 the hoatzin (an Amazonian bird)
16 soft dog food
17 burning human flesh
18 high oysters
19 Shasta daisies (which smell like sweaty feet)
20 boiled urine
21 burnt popcorn
22 poultry farms
23 radiator water
24 tanning hides
25 burnt hair
26 the waste products of maggots
27 ammonia
28 brussels sprouts

The government is on to all this, of course, with UK and US governments having recently developed two chemical smells planned to dispel mobs, though they are not yet legal. This stinky pair is:

1 US Government Standard Bathroom Malodour - which is said to be an overpowering smell of human faeces, but highly concentrated.

2 'Who Me?' - which is a sulphur-based aroma, based on the smells from rotting carcases and decaying food.

Source: various / RcL

 
POP THE QUESTION

Some worries I have as potential father:

1 What if it's a boy? I think the only good names for boys are Roddy and Tyler. And no way is a child of mine going to look like a Tyler.
2 What if a child goes retro and says, Dad, the Kinks rule.
3 When is my child old enough to eat tacos?
4 I already know that I want my child to wear bottle green more than is good for its reputation down in the park.
5 What if my child becomes over-interested in horses?
6 What if I pass on my faults to my child and can't see it?
7 How do I teach my child the difference between 'price' and 'cost'?
8 What if my child wants to talk to me about derailleur gears?
9 My friend who is married to a Portuguese woman has bilingual children. Should mine be able to speak Scottish and English? And what about Welsh and Cornish on their mother's side, and French on mine?
10 And what about nonsense, my mother tongue? Should I teach them to speak that as well?

Source: the fears of RcL

 
SHH! LISTEN...

10 places where magical things might happen:

1 along the pier at dawn
2 in the dust beneath a bed
3 on a Ferris wheel
4 on a bench by a bubbling stream
5 in a walled orchard
6 in the cellar of a junk shop
7 in a sand dune
8 on the lip of a volcano
9 anywhere there is a well
10 in a cool, quiet pantry

Source: RcL

 
SLIPS OF THE FINGER

The 10 words I most often botch while typing:

1 coudl
2 whcih
3 ahev
4 forwrad
5 somehting
6 couls
7 tryign
8 coem
9 thansk
10 eb

Not sure whether these slips are common with others or just me.

 
DROP IN

Though I hate to get scatological, I was writing about owl droppings recently (don't ask) and remembered that the proper name is a 'pellet'. I then recalled that an otter dropping is a 'spraint' and I wondered if there are other such dictionary, as opposed to slang, words for waste specific to certain animals. I suppose a cow has a pat, though that refers mainly to a dried dropping. In Scotland, we talk of cow's 'sharn' and sheep's 'pirls', I suppose from their small curled shape, and I once remember my granny, on seeing a horse unloading, talking of 'horse's oranges'. I think there has probably been enough here recently about horse's back-ends (see below), but if you know of any other dropping terms, drop me a line.

*Dan adds that bear and big cat droppings in the US are usually called 'scat'.

 
SPEAK FOR YOURSELF

Some debatable claims made in songs:

1 We all feel better in the dark, sang the Pet Shop Boys. Not really true of chronic scotophobics.
2 We all like figgy pudding, goes the Christmas song. Those with salt tongues or tender stomachs might not agree. May contain nuts.
3 I like to party, everybody does, goes the current cheesy hit. Not me, I'm past it, in my thirties and like to stay at home with a martini and the telly. I also started to wear slip-on shoes last year.
4 Everybody's beautiful in their own way, sang Ray Stevens, no doubt thinking of Hitler's watercolours, Idi Amin's way with paper dollies and Osama bin Laden's Flower Arranging for Beginners.
5 Everybody' talking about blagism, shagism, dragism, madism... goes Give Peace a Chance. Well, they might be if they knew what they were.
6 We all can get it on, sang Drag-on, evidently not talking about me and my girlfriend's underwear (not that I would ever try to of course, ahem, you understand).

 
BACK OF BEYOND

Most languages and cultures have sayings for the back of beyond. In Australia, they say someone lives way out Woop Woop, or beyond the black stump (referring to a burnt tree trunk in deepest Queensland once used as a marker by surveyors and mappers); they also refer to beyond the back blocks and beyond the wallaby.

Even the bible indulged in this suspicion of the faraway, with Cain being banished to the scary sounding East of Eden. In Scotland, sometimes Inversneck is used (a nickname for Inverness or any supposedly rural town of the north). Boondocks, used by Americans, was a term US soldiers picked up in the Philippines, from the local word for mountains.

In the fine book Your Mother's Tongue, which is all about swearing and slang in European languages, Stephen Burgen collects some more of these, some of which were new to me: the French say en plein bled (in the open desert), or Tripatouille-les-Oies, a mock town name which means 'the place where they tamper with geese'. Germans say 'where the fox and hare say goodnight to each other' or just 'where the foxes bid one another good night'. The Hispanics tend to be as religious and surreal on this as on everything. In Spain, they talk of 'where Christ dropped his lighter'. In Portugal, it is 'where Judas lost his boots' while in Cuba, curiously, they talk of the back of beyond as 'where God painted St Peter and didn't get round to the bicycle'.

 
CHAIN OF THOUGHT

Mamihlapinatapei is a word from the native language of Tierra del Fuego which means 'a shared glance of longing where both know the meaning but neither is quite willing to make the move', which leads me to...

... the Philippines, where, I'm told, a word exists which means 'yes' but connotes the idea of 'no' - the word is used in awkward situations where offence needs to be avoided. So if a boy asks an unwilling girl to the cinema, she can say 'yes', safe in the knowledge that he knows it means 'no', which leads me to...

...the supposed shortest ever review which was of the album Yes by the English prog rock band of the same name. The review simply said No (anyone know if this is true or just apocryphal?*), which leads me to...

...the shortest ever Teletext letter which appears on ITV today - it's from a man in York, who simply suggests 'Tax cyclists', which leads me to...

...my favourite ever Teletext letter from a few years back, sent in by an elderly lady who was saying how wonderful it was that the cold, dark nights of winter had returned and she no longer had to listen to the sounds of children playing outside. Don't you just love old people who are unashamedly misanthropic - we can learn a lot from them, ie how NOT to behave when we get wrinkles.

*Andy Jackson adds some more info on one-word music reviews. Apparently, the review of GTR (a band containing former Yes members) in Musician Magazine contained a one-word assessment: "SHT". In the Rolling Stone Complete Guide to Albums, the epynomously named album Chase has a one-word review - "Flee". The Gazette reviewed Purpendicular by Deep Purple with a one word review: "square".

Source: RcL

 
HEADS YOU WIN

A bunch (oops) of punning hairdressers in Bristol:

A Head of Style / Beyond the Fringe / Choppers / Clearly Ahead / Clips / Cutting Edge / Hairazors / Hairobics / Hairs & Graces / Hairways / Headcases / Headlines / Headmasters / Hotheads / Let's Blow Your Top / Look-A-Head / Loose Enz / Making Waves / Permutation / Shampers / Snippitz / Streaks Ahead / Talkin' Heads / Top Notch / Upper Cuts

Source: Yellow Pages (coming soon - the tag lines and boasts of mobile discos). Thanks to Khan Wong for reminding me too of Curl Up and Dye, a common hairdressing pun name, which somehow hasn't made it here in the West Country. From Tameside, David (thanks) adds The Hairport and Deb on Hair (run by a snipper named Deborah).

 
COMING SOON...

A sneak preview of some of what is coming in April on Vitamin Q...

Are people with two 'first name' names (eg Paul Simon, Dylan Thomas) not to be trusted?
Don't potato types have funny names?
The Waltons versus The Broons
Punning hairdressers of Bristol
How the states got their names
'City of____ ' cities
Traditional sweets and boilings
Famous people I have met and if they were nice
'Queen of _____', the revenge list
How cops are described physically in books
Why in US pronunciation 'tomato' is cute, but' leisure' is not
Appropriately named people
Songs guaranteed to fill a dancefloor
More disgusting foods
World's worst smells
Songs about 'grease'
Words I always mistype

 

 
SELF PUBLICITY

Here are a few places where, if you want to, you can read some of my poetry:

1 www.ninblak.demon.co.uk/vit-p/html/roddy is Vitamin P whcih has quite a few of my poems on a site beautifully designed by Nina Blackett
2 www.nerve.com/poetry/lumsden/mysexlife - The Nerve, the tasteful NYC erotic site has some naughty ones, but you will have to join
3 this site for Scottish and Northern writers has some stuff by me on Van Morrison, contraception and Cromwell's two skulls
4 magmapoetry.com/Magma24/R.Lumsden2.html - Magma, a London magazine which supports my work (thanks) has a sonnet online
5 www.poems.com/book2lum.htm - Poetry Daily have published a few of my pieces, including this poem on bodily fluids called 'Piquant'
6 http://www.poem-uk.org/poems/Roddy_Lumsden/roddy_lumsden.htm has quite a few poems from my second book The Book of Love
7 homepages.nildram.co.uk/~simmers/snake69.htm - online poetry magazine Snakeskin has some poems by me and will have some brand new ones about hotels and food in early May

I have three books available - Yeah Yeah Yeah and The Book of Love (Bloodaxe) both available from Amazon etc, Roddy Lumsden is Dead (Wrecking Ball) - harder to get. A New & Selected Poems is coming out next year from Bloodaxe.

 
WHERE THE STREETS HAVE NAMES

Some interesting street name trivia:

In Manila, there is a subdivision (housing project) where all the streets are named after beauty queens. Montreal is called the City of Saints, as all the early streets were named after saints. The streets of SoHo in NYC are named after Washington's generals. In Maputo, Mozambique many streets are named after leading communists and revolutionaries. The city of Tartu in Estonia has an area called Suppilinn, where all the streets are named after soup ingredients!

Stratford, NZ has, not surprisingly, streets named after Shakespearean characters. Hanoi old town has streets named after produce available at the local market. The Dutch new town of Almere has divisions where streets are named after film stars, novelists, seasons, colours, famous parks and dances. Paris has a small district nicknamed Europe, since streets there were named for European cities. Davis, California has a Tolkein street-name themed subdivision.

On the outskirts of Nashville, there is a development named Stonehenge, where all the street names have tangential links to the ancient stone edifice - these include streets named after Abingdon, Salisbury and, erm, Portsmouth and, believe it or not, streets named after the band members from Spinal Tap, who famously had a miniature Stonehenge on stage. In Banff, Alberta, where I spent last winter, most of the streets are named after local wildlife eg Muskrat Street, Hawk Avenue, Beaver Street (make up your own smutty joke here).

A few strange but true American street names:

Road to Happiness
None Such Place
Shades of Death Road
Pinchgut Hollow Road

Apparently, in Washington DC, there is a set of streets which run alphabetically A Street, B Street etc, but J is strangely missing.*

Toronto has both Memory Lane and Milky Way!

In the British Isles, we have:

Barroon Biggin (Castle Donington)
Granny Clark's Wynd (the road which goes on to cross the 1st and 18th fairways of the famous Old Course at St Andrews)
Jawbones (Bempton, Yorks)
The Land of Green Ginger, Rotten Herring Street (both Hull)
Poultry (London)
Cockstoolpit Hill (Macclesfield)
Mardol, Dogpole, Shoplatch, Wyle Cop and Murivance (all Shrewsbury)
Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma Gate, Bad Bargain Lane (both York)
Holy Bones (Leicester)
Split Crow Road (Newcastle-u-T)
Gibble Gabble (near Manchester)
Cutlog Vennel, Needless Road (both Perth)
Cow Parlour, Roper's Rest, Misery Hill, Artichoke Road (all Dublin)
Air Balloon Road, Snail Creep Lane, There and Back Again Lane, Beggar's Bush Lane (all Bristol, the last is actually a long road out of the city, which I can see from our window)

Source: various (thanks to Meagan, Karen, Michael, Jon and Jessica for additions to the list)

*This reminds me of a 'strangely missing' fact: in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, at the end, when Snow White kisses all the dwarves goodbye, she only kisses six, one is misisng - I think it's Sleepy or Sneezy. What can it mean?

 
NEWS FROM VITAMIN Q HQ

Hurray - the counter has gone into four figures, meaning 1000 hits since the counter went up six weeks ago! Sorry there have been fewer updates in recent weeks - I was very busy finishing off my poet-in-residence project at The St Andrews Bay Hotel and completing the resulting new poetry publication The Bubble Bride which comes out next month. I have a backlog of ideas for this site - so check in every few days and hopefully there will be lots of new stuff (and nonsense). Please send ideas and comments... Roddy Lumsden

Have you noticed, those clever people at Blogger have themed adverts at the top of my blog? So, the day after I put up the horse disease list, an ad appeared for horse medicine. Today, they are offering a film starring Spike Milligan (mentioned in a recent list).

And hey - homework kids of America - the presidential nicknames list is in the January archive - click on the left and I hope you get a star!

 
PLANET AMERICA AND THE WASTELAND BEYOND

5 (of many) examples of US broadcasting's ignorance of the rest of the world:

1 US Masters Golf 2002 - commentator appears surprised that first round leaderboard contains some guy called Angel Cabrera. 'He was also one of the shocks of last year coming joint tenth', we are told. Multi-millionaire Cabrera has, of course, been one of the world's leading golfers for years, but he's not American, so he must be a shock, jock.

2 World's Wildest Police Videos - on a recent edition of this trashy cops'n'cons clip show, after some footage of a pretty unspectacular student protest in South Korea, we are treated to a moral lesson on how these things will happen in a regime where the people are refused democracy and freedom (and, no doubt, the American way). South Korea is, of course, a wealthy democracy with high standards of living (unlike its neighbour North Korea) and a good human rights record (unlike, um, America), but hey, what's the difference?

3 Likewise, in another recent edition, clips of a religious protest in Kiev, Ukraine are followed by an anti-Ruski diatribe about a gangster-run land where people have no liberty and rights. Ukraine is one of more stable and wealthy countries in Eastern Europe, but hell, who cares about the truth on American TV.

4 December 2001 - CNN reports a very quiet day in the Afghan conflict. Nothing much happened in the 'war' today, we are told. Not according to British news websites which report a massive successful operation by British troops and, oops, the deaths of hundreds of Afghan civilians in a US strafing incident which wiped out a village.

5 April 2003 - Thanks to Fox News for updating us on the whereabouts of 'Saddam Hussein and the rest of the Al Qaeda government'.

Source: TV

 
TOPSY-TURVY

21 swapwords:

1 takeover / overtake
2 offset / set-off
3 night-watch / watch-night
4 gunshot / shotgun
5 long-life / lifelong
6 boathouse / houseboat
7 outlook / lookout
8 payback / backpay
9 fall-back / backfall
10 takeout / outtake
11 phonecard / cardphone
12 line-out / outline
13 schoolday / day-school
14 turnover / overturn
15 layout / outlay
16 setback / backset
17 uptake / take-up
18 sleepover / oversleep
19 punch-card / cardpunch
20 break-out / outbreak
21 upset / set-up

A Swapword is a compound word where the first and last parts can be swapped to make a new word. Both words must be whole or hyphenated, not phrases. I have gone along with Chambers' definitions on whether swapword candidates are one word, two or have a hyphen. There are surprisingly few. If you know any others let me know - check a dictionary first.

Source: RcL