Killing a Fly with a Ukulele: November 2013

I am the Mum.
If life was a circus, I would be the plate-juggling lady with monkeys on her shoulders who stands on one leg on a horse's back as it canters around the ring.

I am the Writer.
I use too many commas, dashes and dot-dot-dots, and I often start sentences with conjunctions because I like my blog to look the way it sounds in my mind.

I am the Hero.
Life is a bit like a superhero action comic, except that the superheroes are tiny children dressed in super-suits who possess no actual powers, while I just get them food, break up fights and clean their super-suits.

01 November 2013

Contacting Clancy

I've been on a bit of an Australian Bush Poetry binge recently. (I haven't been on a similar blog-writing binge, but you knew that already.) It started with a poem I wrote as a competition entry but there was more in the tank after I'd finished, so I kept on writing.

Do you remember Banjo Paterson's poem Clancy of the Overflow? It starts with the writer sending a letter to Clancy's last known address but receiving a return letter that Clancy has gone droving in Queensland and couldn't be contacted. That inspired me to write this parody about trying to contact Clancy in a digital age and coming up dry.

Contacting Clancy

I had written him an email which I’d filled with gripping detail,

Then I took my list of Contacts and I searched it through and through.

The address I had looked decent, but it wasn’t awful recent:

I had clancy-o@lachlan, then dot-com then dot-au.

As soon as I had sent it and had settled back, contented,

My inbox notified me of immediate reply.

‘Twas an automated message that confirmed my dismal presage:

“Clancy’s taken leave of absence, gone to Queensland, FYI.”

So I check his Linked-In profile, and in classic Clancy O-style

He has many email contacts but I dunno where they’re from.

So which one of these addresses is his current? My best guess is

I should try the first one: clancy-o@overflow.com.

And although it’s quite a long shot that he’d find a wireless hotspot

I could try his Hotmail, Bigpond or his DrovingLife-dot-co.

Any case, with bush as backdrop, I can’t see him on his laptop

‘Cause he’s jolly hard to contact, Clancy, of ‘The Overflow’.

- Ukulele Jutsum © 2013.

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This is the story of me, Givinya de Elba, and my adventures with Mr de Elba, my children Buzz, Jessie, and Woody and our dog, Bullseye. We have plenty of good times, some weird times and a huge dose of drama.

Some of my posts are sad, lots are funny and sometimes I subject you to my pondering. We have our celebrations, when I write a decent poem I share it with you and when I'm held hostage, I do the occasional meme.

Other people who are special to me feature here too, some of them being my Dad, my Mum, my Crazy Sister (her blog), my Wee Brother and my good friend Hippomanic Jen (her blog).

I am a part-time speech pathologist, and try to cook, keep a garden alive and take photos that don’t make us look like we are pharmaceutically affected or dangerously homicidal.

I often suffer from Mumfail but I keep hanging on to the One who picks me up when I fall. If you email me, I’ll answer.

And if all that is too much, just read my “Best Of."

No, they didn't.

They called me Katherine.

I go by Kate.

I came up with the pseudonym Givinya de Elba in highschool and it was based on a joke from an episode of Dad's Army called 'A Soldier's Farewell.'

In the episode, after eating too much toasted cheese, Captain Mainwaring dreams he is Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. I don't remember much about the episode other than Mainwaring telling his loyal men (Jones, Pike and Godfrey) that he has been exiled to the island of Elba.

Jones quips, "Hence the expression - Givin' ya the Elber!" (giving you the elbow, i.e., pushing you around.) I thought that Givinya de Elba was a half-decent pseudonym for someone who likes to joke and push people around, and I stuck with that.