It's Halloween. The lamp is lit.
Around the fire we children sit
And telling ghost-tales bit by bit,
'Til sister Jane says "HUSH!"
Who's that creeping on the kitchen floor?
Who's that sneaking round the bedroom door?
Who's that squeaking like his throat is sore?
IT'S A GOBLIN!!
Why I remember this tattered bit of song from my school days - maybe grade 3 or 4 (and I took 3 and 4 in one year, which was then called "skipping" but which meant the curriculum was combined so that I could go into a "special" Grade 5) is a mystery to me, but it's one of those things that flies out of the junkyard of all my past lives and hits me on the head like flying shrapnel.
I say grade 3 or 4, rather than 5 or 6, because I seem to remember, vaguely, the music teacher from McKeough School in Chatham vigorously leading the choir, which was made up of "canaries" and "bluebirds", or something like that (i. e, the kids who couldn't sing were literally in their own little stigmatized group, not allowed to mix with the better singers). McKeough School was an old horror of a building which was turned into a heritage site in the '80s, but which may well have been converted into retail space by now - like that OTHER horror, Park Street Untied Church (about which I still get an inquiry once in a while when somebody takes a bit of interest in Rev. Russell Horsburgh, whom I have written about in several posts, years and years ago. I don't recommend you read them.)
I can't and won't go into other Hallowe'en memories (and we DID spell it with the apostrophe, a contraction of "evening" - I guess - and when I saw it spelled in that archaic way recently, I was puzzled. Do they still do that in Britain? Do they even HAVE Hallowe'en in the UK?), because I don't have too many. One time, though - my mother actually sewed my outfit, a black velvet cat costume which caused one guy in a car to yell out, "What's new, pussycat?" to a startled eight-year-old, trick-or-treating me.
I have to get on with my day now. I made this goofy little video out of PicMix gifs, and post it here cuz I want my videos to have a second life somewhere. It surprises me how many views I get on YouTube for these little things, primitive as they are. But there is pushback now because, among other things, YT has become (as they used to say in the '60s) "plastic" - too slick, too manufactured, too uniform, too DULL like a loud TV commercial, all monetized and out to grab your cash. And why is it that so many YTers KEEP ON SAYING, "Like, subscribe, hit the notification bell. . ." at the end of every single video, when everyone who has ever watched even ONE YT video knows all about that stuff? Just as actors shouldn't insult their audience and authors should not insult their readers, YT should not be insulting people who have actually SEEN the little symbols for like, subscribe, and notification at the bottom of EACH AND EVERY video.
But I digress.
