The very scary scarecrow
Dec. 24th, 2009 04:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyYesterday my mother and John came in to run various pre-Christmas errands. My mother and I braved the supermarket: 39C out and 'Walking in a Winter Wonderland' playing in. (Fortunately the change arrived late in the afternoon; it's been 20C and drizzling ever since, and is apparently going to stay so for the rest of the week. I can live with that.)
After that, we returned to my house, where Mum and John made a list of things they would need to build a scarecrow. This seemed unusual, as I couldn't imagine John making anything as prosaic as a scarecrow when he already has an elaborate mechanical Bird Scaring Machine of his own devising, but it turned out not to be for them. There is a youth theatre group here that puts on a musical every January, and John does their set designs. Well... he used to do their set designs. These days, he cherry picks the jobs he thinks sound interesting and lets other people get on with the rest. Anyway, this year they are doing Oklahoma! and they want a scarecrow in the corn field. So John is assembling the scarecrow's body, while Mum is making his head and hat.
'It's a floppy felt hat,' said Mum, who then claimed never to have heard the song I learnt in kinder about the dingle-dangle scarecrow with a flippy-floppy hat*. 'With a felt mouse on it. And for his head, I'm going to get some hessian and make a sort of pillow slip. I'll stitch the face, so when it's stuffed the features will come out.' She took a piece of cardboard and cut out a face shape and drew some features on it. John looked at it and said it wasn't quite what he imagined, so he drew more features over it. Then I looked at it and said that they've either come up with a new horror film villain or a children's book character called the Very Scary Scarecrow.
The very scary scarecrow
Has four beady eyes,
A pointy nose and big, square teeth
To bite a child who lies.
Or 'at passing flies' or 'steaming hot pies' or something. It's a work in progress, obviously.
This morning when I went out to get the mail, I saw a huntsman spider on one of the verandah posts. Then it flapped in the breeze and I realised it was dead, just an empty husk.
Nothing says Christmas like a dead spider.
* He shakes his hands like this, and he shakes his knees like that.
After that, we returned to my house, where Mum and John made a list of things they would need to build a scarecrow. This seemed unusual, as I couldn't imagine John making anything as prosaic as a scarecrow when he already has an elaborate mechanical Bird Scaring Machine of his own devising, but it turned out not to be for them. There is a youth theatre group here that puts on a musical every January, and John does their set designs. Well... he used to do their set designs. These days, he cherry picks the jobs he thinks sound interesting and lets other people get on with the rest. Anyway, this year they are doing Oklahoma! and they want a scarecrow in the corn field. So John is assembling the scarecrow's body, while Mum is making his head and hat.
'It's a floppy felt hat,' said Mum, who then claimed never to have heard the song I learnt in kinder about the dingle-dangle scarecrow with a flippy-floppy hat*. 'With a felt mouse on it. And for his head, I'm going to get some hessian and make a sort of pillow slip. I'll stitch the face, so when it's stuffed the features will come out.' She took a piece of cardboard and cut out a face shape and drew some features on it. John looked at it and said it wasn't quite what he imagined, so he drew more features over it. Then I looked at it and said that they've either come up with a new horror film villain or a children's book character called the Very Scary Scarecrow.
The very scary scarecrow
Has four beady eyes,
A pointy nose and big, square teeth
To bite a child who lies.
Or 'at passing flies' or 'steaming hot pies' or something. It's a work in progress, obviously.
This morning when I went out to get the mail, I saw a huntsman spider on one of the verandah posts. Then it flapped in the breeze and I realised it was dead, just an empty husk.
Nothing says Christmas like a dead spider.
* He shakes his hands like this, and he shakes his knees like that.