DRAWN FROM MEMORY

Isn't it strange how a single image can evoke a whole chapter of past memories?

July 1959 and the ten-year-old Sibley received, as a birthday present, a book that was to become a much-loved and highly-treasured possession...

Walt Disney's Lady and the Tramp, published by the British company Dean & Son of (if I'm not mistaken) Ludgate Hill, London.

The book was filled with what are now thought of as iconic images from the then newly-released Disney animated film...

 

 

Thus, long before I saw the movie, I knew the story  of the elegant Lady and her liaison with a mongrel from 'the wrong side of the tracks' and had all the key scenes by heart.

Then came that fatal day – I still shudder to recall it – when I came home from school to find that we had been visited by an aunt and uncle and their son and that my Mother had given my cousin my precious book to keep him amused and allowed him to carry it off...

Picture my shock! Imagine my despair! Visualise, if you will, the trauma: desperately trying to be 'grown up' and not show my inexpressible anger, my inconsolable grief at being parted from 'just a silly old children's book' that I had, apparently, 'outgrown years ago'!

It took me two decades (in those pre-eBay days) to find myself a replacement copy with which to assuage the gnawing canker of loss...

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I was browsing through an animation auction catalogue when I spotted an item that was, according to the cataloguer, the original art for the cover of a Disney storybook based on Walt Disney's The Lady and the Tramp...

'Cover?' I snorted contemptuously, 'Pah!'

I knew exactly what it was: not the cover, but the end-papers to that most dearly-loved book, showing the titular characters and their canine neighbours, Trusty the Bloodhound and Jock the Scottish Terrier – along with a series of mini-sketches of key-episodes from the story linked by a trail of doggy paw-prints!

I should like to tell you that I bid on the item and successfully secured the item for permanent display on the walls of Chez Sibley, but, alas, I was out-bid and the picture is, even now, en route to another Disney dog-fancier!

But, hey, at least I know that it's out there somewhere – like a stray dog without a collar – and, who knows, one day our paths may cross again...

Meanwhile, I have been reacquainted with half-forgotten memories – happy and sad – from my childhood, that (as David sagely observed) probably explain rather a lot about my obsessive attitude towards my book collection...

PICK OF THE PIX: PUPPY LOVE

An occasional series of posts featuring favourite photos from my flickr photostream.

Today, Pluto in Disneyland...

How can you not smile?

© Brian Sibley, 2005

A CANINE CHRISTMAS CAROL

Apologies, but I'm on about A Christmas Carol yet again...

Every year – pretty much without fail – somebody, somewhere comes up with a fresh take on Charles Dickens' seemingly immortal story: a newly illustrated edition, perhaps, or a stage, film or TV version that sets out to tell the oft-told tale anew.

Mr Magoo, Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, The Flintstones and The Jetsons have all – for better or worse – had a go!

This year it's the turn of the on-line kid's show character, Ruffus the Dog and his puppet chums to tackle the classic.


It's not quite The Muppet's Christmas Carol and All Dogs Go to Heaven were there first with a canine re-working of the Carol, but it's got great charm and – all one can ask really – an obvious desire to capture the spirit of the original: which it does, wonderfully...

And here's a little behind-the-scenes video showing how a handful of people with, clearly, very limited resources, spent four days putting together their engaging little film.

You can visit Ruffus the Dog's website here; and you can read an interview with Ruffus' creator, Rob Mills, here.

DOG DAYS

I'm, used to seeing weird things along the Thames Embankment these days, but a busking pooch...?

MY FIRST ABC

I was kind-of 'tagged' by Sibley-blog-regular, SCB (alias Where there are Meadowlarks), with a meme based on the Alphabet.

So, here's my ABC - which stands, in case you wondered, for Autobiographically Blogged Confessional...


A – Age: 59 --- for five more days only!

I will be, as the mathematicians amongst you will by now have deduced, 60 on 14 July.

In fact I've already received my application for my winter fuel allowance. Am I at all depressed? Well, what do you think?

B – Bed Size: Super King Size - and, even with all that room (as David will unhappily testify) I still take up more than my half!

C – Chore you hate: All chores! That's why they're called 'chores'! The clue's in the word!

D – Dog’s name: I've never owned a dog, probably because when I was a small boy, some friends of my parents had a poodle who mistook me for a tree (or, possibly, a lamppost) and peed up my leg!

Favourite fictional dogs (mostly - but not entirely - with Disney connections): Lady and the Tramp (and their canine companions), the One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Old Yeller, Greyfriars Bobby, Rin Tin Tin, Pluto, Toto and, obviously, Snoopy...

E – Essential start your day: Tea, toast and marmalade.

F – Favourite color: The fact that I can't instantly name a favourite colour means I probably don't have one - other than black, of course, which is what I wear most of the time under the misbegotten belief that it makes me look slimmer.

G – Gold or Silver: I don't have much of either and rarely wear what I have. I occasionally wear the gold signet ring with a blood stone that my parents gave me when I was 21, a gold bracelet that I bought with birthday money when I was forty and a silver cross given to me, a few years ago, by our friends on Kalymnos.

Every now and again I wear my mother's wedding ring on a gold chain which was a birthday present from my friend Dave, twenty years ago.

And, of course, I constantly wear my white and yellow gold partnership ring - which matches David's and came from Athens...

H – Height: 5′10.5″ I fervently believe I used to be taller but have, in keeping with my advancing years, now started to shrink - except, needless to say, around the waist!

I – Instruments you play(ed): The recorder, tambourine and triangle - at school and badly!

If the human voice counts, I sang as a Policeman (in a papier mache helmet and with a rubber truncheon) in a school production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance ("Tarantara, tarantara!") and almost sang the role of Captain Corcoran in G&S's H M S Pinafore - until the music mistress had a breakdown and never came back!

Many years later - I sang and (sort-of) danced in To Sea in a Sieve, a musical play based on the life and verses of Edward Lear (right) written with my composer friend, Dave Hewson, and performed with Polly March (playing everyone except Edward Lear, including Queen Victoria and a parrot!) at the Edinburgh Festival and then at the Westminster Theatre, London.

I also sang a bit - in a Rex Harrisonesque fashion - in a show entitled, England, Our England, compiled and presented with my friends Ms March and Tony Miall which opened the St James's Arts Centre in Malta. The description 'international singer', would, therefore, not be entirely unjustified!

J – Job title: 'Writer'. It used to 'Writer and Broadcaster', but since I hardly ever get to do the latter nowadays, it seems a bit presumptuous.

K – Kid(s): None. Though, happily, quite a few of my grown-up friends fall into this category!

L – Living arrangements: Flat but the word 'arrangement' really does not apply to the constant muddle in which we live!

M – Mom’s name: Doris. As a young woman she was very handsome and my first memories are of her looking very much like this...

She died 10 years ago, but I still wish I could pick up the phone and talk with her...

N – Nicknames: At school I was 'Sibbers' (which I never liked but had to get used to) and, to a few people, 'Bri' (which I've always hated). More cruelly, I was 'Frog's-eyes' (because of their prominence) and, when I started wearing specs, inevitably, 'Four-eyes'.

Occasionally, people have jokingly called me 'Brain'! In fact, when I was born, my Mum misspelled my name thus in announcing my arrival to my paternal grandparents. Nowadays, it's only my magician friend, Fay Presto, who uses that moniker.

My mate, Dave (collaborator on the aforementioned Lear musical) used to call me 'Brisy' which was a bit camp - even for me - and, thankfully, never really caught on!

O – Overnight hospital stay other than birth: Major internal operation, aged 3 or 4, performed in the early hours of morning. Being in the days before parents were allowed to stay with their children in hospital, I was alone except for my white polar (teddy) bear, Brumas (see later under 'Z' for 'Zoo'), and was utterly terrified! I carry the physical and psychological scars to this day.

I had a duodenal ulcer, aged 21 (cured with several weeks of bed rest and a liquid diet - yuck!); and, rather more recently, a few heart-scares. Undoubtedly (and unfortunately) there's more to come...

P – Pet Peeve: Waiters (and other people in the so-called 'service industries') who tell me that something I've requested is "No problem!" Also most other debasements of the English Language!

Q – Quote from a movie: "Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?"

Said by Clarence Oddbody the Angel (Henry Travers) to George Bailey (James Stewart) in Frank Capra's 1946 film, It's a Wonderful Life.

Or...

"If you can't say nuffin' nice, don't say nuffin' at all!"

Spoken by Thumper (quoting his father's advice) in Disney's 1941 animated feature, Bambi.

R – Right or left handed: Right. Always thought it would be cool (and occasionally useful) to be ambidextrous but have never seriously tried and am terrified of breaking my right arm!

S – Sports: Er... No!!

T – Time you wake up: Depends how bad a night I've had. Usually around 7:00-7:30 am, but I'm frequently having a cuppa and doing correspondence, writing blogs and playing Bejewelled at 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning.

U – Underwear: Have you read my blog?!

One thing I know: underwear advertising has certainly changed during my lifetime...

Er... Just a little...

V – Vegetable you dislike: Aubergine, which is a pity, because, uncooked, they look so beautiful.

That said, Irene Glinatsi at Artistico (in Emporios) serves them thinly sliced, battered and drizzled in Kalymnian honey. Sensational!

W – Ways you run late: Believing that David is really ready to go when he says he's ready to go! Believing I'm ready to go, when I've yet to locate my keys, watch, phone, credit card or brain...

X – X-rays you’ve had: Chest, hips, feet, knees and (using a long tube with a camera on the end) boomp-sa-daisy.

Y – Yummy food you make: Never cook these days, but I used to make a mean cottage pie and a rather good strawberry fool-type desert with semi-frozen Muller Light.

Z – Zoo favorite: I vividly remember my first visit to the London Zoo as a child (age 2 or 3) having a ride on an elephant and seeing the polar bear, Ivy and her cub, Brumas, who had been born four months after me in November 1949.

I was re-introduced to the zoo by a zoology-mad school chum and, a few years later, became a member of the Zoological Society of London going there at least two or three times a month.

I still love all zoos (if they're well run) and most of their inhabitants - except reptiles and insects. Particular favourites: bears and elephants (of which - quite rightly - there are now fewer or none in zoos), giraffes, hippos (the one below lives in Amsterdam zoo), red pandas, otters, penguins and pelicans.

So, that's it: ME from A to Zee!

Now, let's see...

I'll tag... Sharon M, Bitter Animator, Good Dog, Susan D-L, Diva of Deception, the blog-less Roger and/or Sheila (send your entry as a comment) and anyone else who fancies a challenge!

Quite a few of the images were uploaded via flickr.

S.W.A.L.K.

Today is NATIONAL KISSING DAY - a bit inconvenient, being a Monday, but maybe it will bring a bit of unexpected enjoyment to your journeys to and from work or, indeed, at work...

Of course, there are kisses and kisses...

And, as I'm sure you know, they're not all Romeo-and-Julietesque...

Nevertheless, here are a few interesting facts about kissing...

The 'science' of kissing is called philematology

A one-minute kiss burns 26 calories!

The average person spends 20,160 minutes of their lifetime kissing,
which amounts to two whole weeks!

Some people say that when you smooch a person with
the same hair colour, it results in a more passionate kiss

Of course, our imaginings (and, perhaps, our expectations) of kissing have been heavily influenced by the movies, and film stars have been puckering-up pretty much from the start of the industry. In fact, the first-ever on-screen kiss was in one of the earliest films to be commercially shown.

The Kiss (also known as The May Irwin Kiss, The Rice-Irwin Kiss and The Widow Jones) is a 47-second-long piece of 1896 actuality, recreating a scene from the New York stage comedy, The Widow Jones, starring May Irwin and John Rice.

According to Edison film historian, C Musser, the actors staged their kiss for the camera at the request of the New York World newspaper. The resulting film (directed by William Heise for Thomas Edison) was the most popular Edison Vitascope film in 1896, whose catalogue advertised it thus:

"They get ready to kiss, begin to kiss, and kiss and kiss and kiss in a way that brings down the house every time."

However, the film scandalized kinetoscope-goers in some places where it was screened and in some cities it was greeted with outraged newspaper editorials and calls for police action from high-minded moralists. One appalled critic spluttered: "The spectacle of the prolonged pasturing on each other's lips was beastly enough in life size on the stage but magnified to gargantuan proportions and repeated three times over it is absolutely disgusting."

In 1999, this shocking piece of footage was deemed so "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress that it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

And, after all that, here's what's left of the original footage that caused all that fuss...

After that, the cinema got down to the serious business of snogging and here's a rather good montage of some (but, by no means, all) of the best of the screen kissers at work...

Since there wasn't so much as a single same-sex kiss in that reel, here's Jake and Heath (aka Jack and Ennis) getting to grips with a few manly kisses on (and off) Brokeback Mountain...

And two more, strangely overlooked, kisses that are among my favourite silver screen smackers, the first of which is one of the hottest (and wettest) clinches ever filmed: Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in the 1953 drama, From Here to Eternity...

"How did you plan the famous kiss scene?" I once asked the film's director, Fred Zinnemann. "Oh," he replied casually, "I asked Deborah and Burt to lie on the beach and we just waited for the tide to come in..."

And, finally, one of cutest cinema kisses: though it's scarcely more than a nuzzle of the muzzle, it's part of one of the most romantic - and, OK, kitchiest - love scenes in the movies. Yes, it's that dinner-date from Disney's 1955 animated feature, Lady and the Tramp...

Incidentally, that night of discreetly depicted canine bliss in the park is the reason why, in the film's final scene Lady and Tramp are seen as having been blessed with puppies!

Anyway, I hope you get a least one kiss today - even if it's from the dog!

Images: arty kisses by Auguste Rodin, Gustav Klimt and Frank Dicksee.