Horrible Histories. They sing, they dance, they are hilarious.

I am doing a different post today, I am confessing a guilty pleasure. I have young kids so there are times I have to watch kids TV shows. Some of them I hate but there are other ones I love. The one I love the most is Horrible Histories.

Horrible Histories are a series of books that have been developed into a television series by the BBC. The show teaches history to kids using singing, dancing and funny skits. Yes, it is taught very simplistically, but what better way to foster their interest than with sillyness?

The skits are done in a few different styles. They might be computer games, done in on-the-spot news reporter style or even as take-offs of television shows. It is a clever concept and it really works. We all know kids (and adults) are far more likely to retain information when they have been amused, but history is not something usually taught in a comic way, mores the pity. The songs are the favourites in our house, always catchy and completely silly.

Since it is school holidays we have been overloaded with 6 episode marathons of the most popular shows from ABC3. Today it is Horrible Histories so we will have it running in the background all afternoon, which means we will be humming the songs all day. No matter how many times we have seen them we still get a laugh out of them.

A quick  poll of the attendant children tells me their favourite songs are…. all of them. Hmmm, no help.

Well, the ones that are my favourite are;

Boudicca (whacked ’em smacked ’em, boy how we attacked ’em) http://youtu.be/1LhT7rCC6O8 ,

Dick Turpin (done in the style of Adam Ant) http://youtu.be/6KbXyALq7uA ,

Charles II: King of Bling (the king who bought back par-ty-ing) http://youtu.be/P2kyNbZc7oc

And the rapping Celtic Boast Battle (look at me I’m tough, I fight in the buff)

….hmmmm… OK, I love all of them too.

There are heaps on YouTube, go and have a look.

   

A House Hive and a Smelly Beard. 1935.

The Horsham Times 28 June 1935 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article72622353

Imagine moving into a new house (hmmm, what is that noise? We must be closer to the airport than I thought), unpacking your last box of the day, and lighting a fire ready to put your feet up for the evening. Suddenly honey starts dripping down onto your carefully placed furniture, aarrrrgggghhhh! I love honey but the only place it would be welcome dripping is onto my toast.

I wonder how hard it would be to shift that amount of bees without completely destroying the house? It would perhaps be easier to just leave them to it and find a new abode! Maybe you could just turn the house into a honey shop with lit fires and carefully placed buckets.

I can imagine bees colonizing an empty house but setting up home in a snoozing beard? The man of the house has a beard and I am sure bees would find little of interest in there. It makes me wonder when the last time the owner of the beard had bothered washing it!

Speaking of beards, the man of the house heads back to work today after a week off and is most unimpressed. I secretly burnt him a cd and hid it in his laptop bag so he could  find it and have a laugh at work. Some of the songs on it; ‘If Your Dad Doesn’t Have a Beard You’ve Got Two Mums’, ‘My Baby Left Me For a Man Without a Beard’ and other beard related songs by, you guessed it, The Beards.

The Great Australian Sickie.

My Australia Day post yesterday suggested that there may well be a large amount of people chucking a sickie from work today after the celebrations of Wednesday. It was no surprise to see that at Bunnings today the crowds were just like a normal Saturday. Pity it’s a Friday.

Although Australians have raised chucking a sickie to an art form, I am sure it is something that happens around the world.

There are a few reasons for taking frivolous days off, hangovers feature highly, good surf is another. Probably the other major reason for unnecessary days off is sport, and we can mainly blame you guys in Europe for it. Why, you ask? When the Tour de France is on can we watch it at work? No. The World Cup? No, we have to stay up all night to see them. The tennis? Same. When the Aussies play cricket in India do they do it on a Saturday at lunchtime? No. Grand Prix around the world are never at a decent time either, again, we have to stay up all night. They even started running the Melbourne Formula One Grand Prix later in the evening to accomodate you northerners, instead of in the afternoon when it is traditionally best to have a barbeque and watch cars crash on telly with your mates!

Most Australians like sport better than they like work. Who can blame us, really?

The Horsham Times 19 Apr 1921 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article72756380

This article from 1921 shows that a sport induced sickie is hardly a new thing. Thirty wheelers from the coal mine at Wonthaggi all took the day off to go and watch the boxing, so parts of the mine were unable to operate.

In 1934 the Wonthaggi coal miners went on strike over conditions and wages. They stayed out for five months even though there was little money and times were hard. I wonder if they would have gone back to work any more quickly if Wonthaggi wasn’t so close to the beach?

Happy Australia Day!

Sickie. n  [ˈsɪkɪ]

(‘To chuck a sickie’) To take a day off work even though there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. Often used when there is a public holiday in the same week. Also appropriate when hungover, tired, a major sporting event is on TV, or you just don’t feel like going to work.

Today is Australia Day, the day where people show their love for our wonderful country in many and varied ways.

Many people have done that Aussiest of things, making plans for celebrating Australia Day knowing full well they will be in no position to go to work on Friday (ie; they will be chucking a sickie).

The roads are busy with people heading to the beach and cars loaded with camping gear heading up the bush. Those so inclined proudly sport their Southern Cross tattoos and drape themselves in the Australian flag.

Barbeques across the country are being fired up, the smell of snags and chops drifts through the neighbourhood. Eskies are being loaded with ice and beer sales have gone through the roof. Khe Sanh is legally required to be played loudly at every large gathering at least once today. Ok, I might have made that last bit up.

No Australia Day post is complete without the most repeated and well known part of my favourite poem. My Country, by Dorothea Mackellar.

I love a sunburnt country……

 

Go and read the whole thing, it is wonderful.

www.dorotheamackellar.com.au/archive/mycountry.htm

The Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate 11 Sep 1901 http://trove.nla.gov.au/nla.news-article72497004

Paddy the Wanderer. 1939.

Townsville Daily Bulletin-18 Jul 1939 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article62446951

What a nice story, I love that Paddy occasionally got to go off on boating adventures before being returned to his home on the docks. Unfortunately this story is not one we are ever likely to see in this day and age.

These days, if Paddy the Wanderer started hanging around the waterfront he would quickly be deemed a risk to health and safety. The poor little bugger would be whisked off to the pound by the ranger before he had a chance to make any friends at all!

French-Polished Hives and Police Court Bees. 1894.

Mornington Standard 1 Nov 1894 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article65812224

Bees seem to have quite varied taste as to where they will settle, sometimes defying logic. The start of this article is a great example of that. I wonder how the posties horse felt about going back to that shop for the next delivery? I expect that it was a little nervous about it!

I would have loved to see the seven french polished hives owned by the man in Melbourne. He is wonderfully described, not as eccentric, but as a ‘person having no wife to bother his life, but paddled his own canoe’.

He would never have felt as though he was sleeping alone with the resident hives in his bedroom. Do hives hum at night? Maybe he was scared of the dark…

Obviously this man was ahead of his times as these days keeping hives in the city is becoming more popular. Organizations like Melbourne City Rooftop Honey encourage the establishment of hives in the city and suburbs but I don’t expect there are any such polished and pampered indoor hives around today!

The rest of the article clearly shows that the author of this piece was not very sympathetic to the courts, he was pretty happy to see them inconvenienced by the arrival of the bees. I am sure he wasn’t the only one cheering on the bees in the police-court that day!