Viva Brighton Issue #50 April 2017

COLUMN
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Lizzie Enfield
Notes from North Village
“The man in the moon came tumbling down and
asked the way to Norwich… Da da da. No. That’s
porridge.”
I’m having tea and cake with a couple of friends
and am trying to remember which nursery rhyme
features groats.
I’m just back from Poland, where we were served
groats for dinner. They were new on me. A kind of
puy-lentil-coloured quinoa, if you want to be really
North Village about it. A grain of some description,
if not.
But I think they feature in a rhyme, so I’m going
through all the ones I know.
“Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye…
Nope.”
“This is the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house
that Jack built. Malt!”
My companions are surprised by my knowledge of
nursery rhymes.
“Didn’t your parents test you on them over
dinner?” I ask, casually, expecting the answer to be a
murmured “oh yes,” not a bemused “no, did yours?”
Yes.
I now realise nursery-rhyme tests were not part
of everybody’s mealtime rituals and that not
everybody’s father sat at the head of the table asking,
“Who worried the cat that chased the rat that ate the
malt? Quick. First to answer can have another roast
potato!”
“The Dog.” The potato went to my brother.
“And who popped its head into the shop and said
‘What! No soap?’”
“I know! I know! The great she-bear.”
A potato would be mine if there were any left.
Instead, a lifetime of thinking and sometimes saying
“What! No Soap? So he died…” out loud, whenever
someone in a public toilet remarks that the soap in
the dispenser has run out, was what I ended up with.
Cue strange looks. Were the people around this
washbasin not tested on the words of The Grand
Panjandrum over dinner? Clearly not.
Nor the friends of my children who question my
pronunciation of forehead to rhyme with florid or
torrid or, definitively, horrid because that’s how the
nursery rhyme goes.
“It’s fore to rhyme with score - head,” the kids insist.
“There was a little girl, who had a little curl, Right in
the middle of her forehead…” I counter.
“And when she was good, she was very, very good,
but when she was bad, she was horrid!”
This proves that my pronunciation is right.
Otherwise the little girl is not “horrid” but “whore
head,” and it’s a children’s nursery rhyme after all.
Not that they’re all suitable for children.
The groat one comes to me.
“There was an old man in a velvet coat,
He kissed a maid, And gave her a groat” I begin
reciting.
“The groat it was cracked and would not go. Ah, old
man, do you serve me so?”
“Wow, I’m strangely impressed,” says one of my
friends. “More cake?”
So, years down the line, ritualistic mealtime rhyme
testing at dinner has finally come into its own. I’ve
strangely impressed someone and earned more cake.
Illustration by Joda, jonydaga.weebly.com
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