Back in the dim and distant past of my own primary school days, there was a certain amount of learning poems by heart. Not as much as in my parents’ generation, or before that, I’m sure, but certainly some. A certain category of poetry learning found in Scottish primary schools, learning Scots poems in order …
Continue reading “Friday phrases: don’t take your wife to arctic tundra”
Back to food again. I’ve written more about poetry recently, but there are plenty of children’s books written in verse that turn a pretty poetic phrase of their own. The Giant Jam Sandwich is one of my childhood favourites. I’m sure it deserves its own proper Lit Kid post one day. By way of rapid …
Continue reading “Friday phrases: a feast for a thousand weeks”
This week’s spring cleaning activity: carpet cleaning. Hire a machine that swooshes foamy stuff on your carpet and hoovers at the same time. Having never done this before, I was a bit unsure about how it would go. Having done one and a bit rooms yesterday, and the same today, my arms are reminding me …
I may have previously alluded to my family’s liking for a good catch phrase. Ones that could be repeated infinitely, it seemed. After a while of using favourite phrases, they come to have their own conversational uses. Ones that fitted a particular type of new circumstance, depending on the saying. In my family, growing up, …
Fairly recently, Junior Reader and I were working through the week’s reading book sent home from school. Now we’ve moved on a bit, it tends to be a collection of things in the book: sometimes non-fiction, sometimes longer stories. Sometimes, a poem or two. So I was very happy to see one I knew, and …
Continue reading “Friday phrases: Today I saw a little worm”