Quickstep: No. 15 in an Occasional Series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'

The song and dance just keeps on coming in the all-new revitalised Common Shrew.

Here's my kind of woman. She's not going to sit down and shut up.

Good On You, Mathilda, way to go!

Girly Fun : No. 14 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'.

Bathing belles, including The Shrew's mother, aunts and grandmother, in the 1920s.

Since it is the New Year, The Common Shrew brings you this resolution-worthy 'Harmless Hobby'.

Apparently a traditional value in the Shrew family, having girly fun is in line with such admirable resolves as 'Not Letting Life pass one by', 'Sharing a Smile' and 'Committing Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Beauty'.

So, to carry us all bravely into 2011, 'Girly Fun' it is.

Oh, and as the photo shows, brave boys can join in too.

Declaiming: No. 13 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'.

Tempted to give it a try?  Here's a suitable specimen - but it's up to you to find the appropriate wind-swept battlement or tragic riverbank ...

Oooh to be McGonagall's Lovechild

for William Topaz McGonagall

Oooch! To be the lovechild of William McGonagall and Julia A. Moore,

Those idiosyncratic and misunderstood souls who lived in times they would doubtless have referred to as yore:

Yes! The Sweet Singer of Michigan and the bard of the beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay

Whose reputations are regrettably tinged with derision to this very day.

As to scansion, it is true that their grasp could be said to equal that of a wet cat on a slate rooftop

As if, in building a head of poetic steam, they found it too painful to stop.

With no small cost to euphony and a regrettable tendency, most of the time

To abandon cadence for the sake of a half-broken rhyme,

But never let it be said in this fair land that the passion that flowed in their pages

Failed to engorge the imagination and mesmerise the mind, even of hitherto unswayable sages.

And so I proclaim to the world that, on this basis alone,

These two remarkable literary nightingales should be shown

To thrones of glory flanking the enrobed marbly thighs of sacred Euterpe the muse,

While the rest of us, fettered and unworthy, can only shake our heads and kneel at their shoes.

© Ynes Sanz Brisbane 2010

Flashmobbing: No. 12 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'.

Forget all those people suddenly gathering, unheralded, to walk invisible dogs, manifest like zombies or pay tribute to some unsavoury dead pop star... forget those people in undies on that commuter train somewhere in deepest America, who thankfully disappear as quickly as they came ...  the real Flash Mob originated with wicked women convicts at the 'Female factory' in Tasmania, Australia :-  

'The Flash Mob was a sub-culture of the female convicts, most noticeably in the female factories.  
Bethell referred to the Flash Mob in his writings about the LAUNCESTON FEMALE FACTORY  in The Story of Port Dalrymple.

There was, however, a hard core of those who were irreclaimable.  They were known as the "Flash Mob" and, if rumour spoke true, owing to the negligence of turnkeys they often slipped out of the factory at night to roam the town.  However badly these women behaved, little could be done to punish them.  Arthur had abolished the spiked iron collar, common in Sorell's day, and had substituted a yellow garb and the shearing of the hair.  This punishment, though unpopular, had little effect.

James Bonwick, in his Curious Facts of Old Colonial Days, gives us a Hogarthian word-picture of these women, of the horrors of the sea-voyage and of their moral abandonment.  In the factories, he says, the atmosphere was polluted by the fumes of tobacco-smoke and the walls echoed with the shrieks of passion, peals of foolish laughter and oaths of common converse.  

 

OK all you Mad Old Bags out there (that's MOBs right?) - no need to act as if we're still prisoners, maybe it's time to get out there and galvanise the gals into a bit of whatever takes your fancy ... mass yellow garb wearing?  foolish laughing? Perhaps reclaiming the spiked collar and shearing of the hair might be taking things a leetle bit too far ...better steer clear of the oaths too, we don't want to get arrested. 

Just remember the Shrew says 'if you can't keep it nice, keep it legal .' (These ARE Harmless Hobbies, after all.) 

The wonderful illustration (above) gives you a bit of an idea. It's from the MyWord Tasmania site. Why not go there and purchase your own print and get your official yellow convict garb too!

Badger-fondling: No. 11 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'.

So?   You had a better suggestion?

Juggling: No. 10 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'.

Juggling is Good For You.

Don't just take my word for it, though - have a look here.
Now that brain training by on-line problem solving has been trashed, it's apparently back to the asbestos mitts for those of us who want to keep the synapses supple ... but I think those bad grey socks should definitely go.

Thespianism: No. 9 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'.

Some of us were in Alice in Wonderland before Johnny Depp was born.....

Seen here, the Chislehurst Road Infants' School, Orpington, Kent, England
performance, c. 1954.

CAST LIST:
Gail Foster - Alice
Marian Wiseman - The March Hare
Leslie Adams - The Dormouse
and David Something-or-other that I have forgotten (the teachers only shouted his first name) as The Mad Hatter

No green screen for us, it was one night only and if you froze you were finished.

Don't make 'em like that any more.

The Euphonious Ukulele : No. 8 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'.

Well thank goodness the end-of-year kerfuffle and dust has settled.

It's time to get down to the serious pursuit of idleness again.
Not mere half-assed insouciant idleness, but idleness enhanced
by a rich tapestry of hobbies, that is.

And so for your delectation I bring you the ukulele, an instrument
named for 'a jumping flea'.

You have not heard the last of this, dear reader.

Meanwhile, to get you used to the idea, you may like to
contemplate this 1916 postcard, sourced from http://www.janesoceania.com

Gladrags from Bags : No. 7 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'.

Ladies, ever wondered how to clean up those bags AND look chic on a budget?

Well here's your answer.

Cathy Kasdan knitted these amazing garments out of discarded plastic bags!

These and other examples of one woman's plastic fantastic at the artist's website. http://www.cathykasdan.com/

Ecological Crochet: No. 6 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'.

Photos © The IFF by Alyssa Gorelick.

This and other similar mathematical and ecological humdingers of handcraft at the wonderfully-named Institute for Figuring .

Go there! Prepare to be amazed!

The Musical Saw: No. 5 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'.

Ladies, want to while away the time in mellifluous bliss? Look no further!

Rub that resin! 'Amaze your friends'! If it was Good Enough for Dietrich,
(and we all know how versatile she was ....) it's good enough for us

Tatting: No. 4 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'.

The position of the little finger marks this pursuit as suitable for Ladies.
You don't have to be born in the USA for this one, but apparently it helps
as the source of the instruction sheet:-
http://www.morninggloryantiques.com/collectTatting.html
and this:-
http://www.victoriana.com/Embroidery/tatting.htm
(from which the following illustration is taken),
demonstrate ...

























Y'all have a fine time now!

Eurythmics: No.3 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'

That this wondrously expressive hobby
exists at all is thanks to Monsieur Dalcroze
whose works and thoughts can be found at
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21653/21653-h/21653-h.htm

Topiary: No. 2 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'

This topiary woman found at the unpredictable Nothing to do with Arbroath

Yarnbombing: No. 1 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'

This Knitting-covered bus is from a story in the UK Telegraph newspaper at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4305406/Knitters-turn-to-%20graffiti-artists-with-yarnbombing.html

















While these knitted beanies on a Banksy are from a post at
http://www.oberholtzer-creative.com/visualculture/2009/01/yarn-bombing/