Thinking About Squid Hats

A squid hat! What would that be like?

In fact there are many different types.

There is the white felt squid hat which looks a paper bag, that fits over your head. It has two round black plastic eyes, one for each side of the head. The arms are a little too short to look convincing, and the tentacles hang down in front of your shoulders like two thick white plaits. It's not a very good squid hat.

There is the horrid scary grey squid hat, with fake red blood marks and one detachable bloodshot eye. Not for the faint hearted.

There is the comical yellow squid hat, a high stuffed yellow felt cone with fins, yellow and black eyes, eight long furry yellow arms with suckers attached, and two longer tentacles that hang down at the front. A good all-purpose squid hat.

There is an attractive purple and pink velvet squid hat, suitable for ladies. This hat is in the form of a purple hood representing the squid's mantle, with fins well to the back, eight long purple velvet arms lined with pink, and two longer tentacles that may be used as gloves when the wearer's hands are inserted from behind. This enables the lady to wave them about and frighten her children.

I was thinking about these squid hats as I was walking in to town. Then I stopped thinking about them, because I had arrived.

I was thinking about the squid hats again when sitting in the Elder Hall listening to " Kegelstatt" by Mozart. Then I became distracted by an interesting question, that had nothing to do with squid hats, but something to do with "Kegelstatt".

Glimps

This is a poem about yesterday. A dashing-about-being-useful sort of day. Never quite seeing anything properly....

Has it started yet? No, not yet.

GLIMPS

Has it started now? Yes. That was the title. It's called GLIMPS

Weird title!

It's supposed to be about glimpses, so I called it GLIMPS.

Ah! Clever.

Right then, this is it...

GLIMPS.

Part one - The Sea

At the end of Wattle Street
Between tall yellow houses
A glimpse of the sea
One inch wide.
White sea horses
Rolling north
On bluegreen rollers.

Part two - The Eye

How does it look, my eye?
Alright, your eye,
But there is blood
On your face.

Part three - The Knife

Behind a screen door
At the end of a path
Through a garden
My daughter,
In need of a knife.

Part four - The Rainbow

On Greenhill Road
A man with a camera
Trying to capture
A rainbow
In a white sky.

Embroi-der-y

A burglar, while burgling a house, takes meat out of the freezer and leaves it to defrost. He is looking for money in the freezer hidden behind the meat. People do sometimes hide money in the fridge. Burglars look for it there. It isn't surprising that a burglar would take the meat out of the freezer and not put it back. Put yourself in the place of the burglar. It's not what you would do.

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An art exhibition on Wednesday. One of the artists has embroidered four steak knives and four defrosting cuts of meat. The blades of the knives glitter sharply and blood oozes out of the meat in tiny beaded blobs, frosted fractals melt into icy pools of water under the meat, executed in tiny even stitches that the artist has learned in classes at Hampton Court.

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A moth has eaten six holes in a pale blue woollen blanket edged with slippery satin. It was looking for something to eat, that is all. Moths do sometimes eat holes in blankets when they are hungry. It isn't surprising. Put yourself in the place of the moth. It's what you would do.

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Tuesday, at the wooden table out the back. On the table, a yellow cloth embroidered with daisies. On the cloth, the pale blue woollen blanket, with six holes in the middle. An artist is darning the holes with fine strands of blue baby wool which she has previously unravelled. She weaves the strands in and out across the holes from left to right and then from top to bottom, one by one. The sun is bright. A fly sits on the blanket, she waves it away. She feels strangely happy.

The Pelicans

It was last Saturday. Pliny and Nostradamus were walking along the Linear Park trail beside the River Torrens. They sat down on a gritty slope under a gum tree overlooking a wooden landing on which two pelicans were preening. Both pelicans had large yellow tags on their backs half hidden under their white and black feathers. The pelicans were talking.

First Pelican: How did we get the name pelican, I wonder? Is it from billycan?

Second Pelican: No! Pelican comes from the Sanskrit word for axe.

First Pelican: Axe! Strike me down! Why?

Second Pelican: Because of the shape of our bills.

First Pelican: But our bills don't look anything like an axe!

Second Pelican: No, they don't. But humans are pretty unobservant. Did you know they used to believe we fed our young by piercing our own breasts with our bills and nourishing them with our blood? They probably just saw us feeding them regurgitated food from our bill pouches. They thought if our babies died we could revive them by bleeding on them as well. Yerk! Humans will swallow anything.

First Pelican: How do you know all this?

Second Pelican: It's in a book called Pelicanthology for Pelicans. Want to borrow it?

First Pelican: ( looking towards the weir ) Look! Our friends are coming!

Second Pelican: Yes, let's go!

And they hitched up their tail feathers and plopped ungracefully into the water. Splash ! Splash!