EASTER DAWN

For I remember it is Easter morn,
And life and love and peace are all new born.

- Alice Freeman Palmer

[Image: © Brian Sibley, 2007]

THE CHAMELEON WHO WAS COLOUR-BLIND

The colour-blind Chameleon simply couldn’t change colour properly. If he was sitting on a bush of green privet, he went a bright, blistering red and when he was basking on the yellow sandstone rocks, he turned sky blue.

Everyone warned him to start doing things in the proper chameleon way so as to blend in with his surroundings rather than stand out.

"If you don’t conform, you’re done for!” said one old chameleon who had spent her life changing colour in the regulation fashion. "Don’t you realise that there are enemies of chameleonkind just waiting for you to show up?!”

But the colour-blind Chameleon just smiled and went on changing colour in his own highly individual way. Climbing up the rough black bark of a tree, he gleamed as yellow as the sun; silhouetted on a branch against the cobalt blue sky, he sported a vivid shade of green.

All the other chameleons waited for the day when a jackal or a buzzard would spot and make short work of their non-colour-coordinated friend.

But that day never came.

It wasn’t that he didn’t get noticed, because he did. However, it wasn’t a jackal or a buzzard that spotted him, but a famous TV naturalist who was so fascinated by the Chameleon’s radical determination to stand out from the crowd and to be seen that he took him off to the Big City and offered him an exclusive television contract which, in turn, led to personal appearances, a lucrative publishing deal and international celebrity.

Even in the unrelenting glare of media attention and public notoriety, he somehow managed to avoid the jaws of jackals and the claws of buzzards and became the wealthiest, longest-lived chameleon in the history of zoology.

© Brian Sibley 2007
Read more of my Likely Stories

SHADOWPLAY

Good Friday is as good a day as any - and better than most - for the BBC to begin broadcasting a reading of Shadowlands, my book about love, life, faith and death.

Written in 1985, Shadowlands tells the story of Professor C S Lewis, Christian apologist and writer of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the other ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ and his late flowering love for Joy Davidman, a Jewish American convert to Christianity who, after a lengthy struggle, died from cancer.

The story - with ever-widening departures from fact - became a TV drama, a stage play and a film written by William Nicholson. The book, which has happily remained in print, gives a rather more accurate account of these two fascinating people and of their beautiful, but painfully fated, love affair.


The challenge of abridging the book for radio was considerable because the book explores the lives of first C S Lewis and then Joy Davidman before charting the their all too brief time together. For a serialised reading that was simply not a workable structure, so I adapted and restructured the material to focus on their relationship with a few interpolated backward glances to their earlier lives and the experiences that made them the people that they were.

I was thrilled when I heard that Ian Richardson had agreed to read the book and, as I noted on this blog, was devastated by the news of his death just a few weeks after having completed the recording.

However, with the kind permission of Ian’s widow, Shadowlands begins its eight-week broadcast on Radio 2 tonight at 9.15 pm.

Following transmission, episodes can be heard on-line at the BBC2 website (go to the right-hand column, LISTEN, then click on ‘More Shows’).

The website also has a competition to win copies of my book and an opportunity to listen to a moving two-part interview which Ian Richardson gave the series’ producer, Malcolm Prince, and myself when we recorded the reading.

The Sunday Times wrote of Ian’s performance that he reads the book “with grace and quiet authority”, which pretty much sums it up and I am extremely proud that the last piece of work of this very fine actor should have been a reading of my book…

Aslan stooped his golden head and licked Lucy’s forehead.

The warmth of his breath and a rich sort of smell that seemed to hang about his hair came over her.

“Oh you’re real, you’re real! Oh Aslan!” cried Lucy, and both girls flung themselves upon him and covered him with kisses.

“But what does it all mean?” asked Susan.

“It means”, said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who has committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, Death itself would start working backwards . . .”

[Images: Aslan's head from film posters for Walt Disney Productions and Walden Films The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Aslan in Narnia by Pauline Baynes]

SURPRISING RESULT

I was, I must admit, a tad surprised that none of my readers - especially Gill and others who are good at word puzzles - made any attempt at solving the last puzzle posed on this blog...

In fact, I was actually wondering whether it was worth the bother of blogging the answer and then I thought: "Yes! I will! Because (a) history demands it, and (b) I haven't got anything else to blog about today!"

So, the puzzle was...

Find a nine-letter English word from which you can remove ONE LETTER at a time and always leave another NEW WORD.

And that word was---

STARTLING

And these are the words within the word---

STARTLING - STARTING
STARTING - STARING
STARING - STRING
STRING - STING
STING - SING
SING - SIN
SIN - IN
IN - I

Maybe I should set an easier puzzle, such as one of Lewis Carroll's Doublets, a game which the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-glass devised at Christmas 1877 in order to entertain two young ladies - Julia and Ethel - with "nothing to do"!

Originally Lewis Carroll - or, as doubtless Julia and Ethel knew him, the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson - called his game Word Links and players were required to connect two "doublets" (words with the same number of letters, usually 3, 4 or 5) using linking-words each of which would differ from the preceding word by a single letter only and without any of the letters within the words being rearranged.

The winner of the game is the first player to achieve the transformation using the fewest number of links.

For example, as Lewis Carroll - himself the great panjandrum of topsyturveydom - showed, it was possible to turn HEAD to TAIL thus...

H E A D
H E A L
T E A L
T E L L
T A L L
T A I L

Carroll's game was taken up by the magazine Vanity Fair in 1879 under the name Doublets and, for a while, became something of a parlour sensation - the Victorian equivalent of Sudoku - with regular competitions and the inevitable arguments about whether or not words were permissible as links!

Lewis Carroll published a couple of pamphlets about the game and even compiled a glossary of 1,400 three- to six-letter admissable words. Later permutations on the game (usually without any acknowledgement to Lewis Carroll) have been known bu such names as Word Chains, Word Ladders and Stepwords.

If you care to try your hand at Doublets, you could have a go at...

Putting MILK into PAIL

Turning WHEAT into BREAD

Making FIRE produce HEAT

Using BREAD to make TOAST

In all cases, players should follow Lewis Carroll's original instruction: "It is, perhaps, needless to state that it is de rigueur that the links should be English words, such as might be used in good society."

Of course you won't need them (or won't want them) but I'll blog the answers after Easter...

ON THE THRONE

So, does She take one with her wherever She goes? And, if so, why don't we ever see them? And while we're asking awkward questions: does the Duke of Edinburgh have His own, or does He share Hers?

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Who exactly is in charge of pronunciations, these days? I’m on a drug called Methotraxate, but no one seems to pronounce it in the same way twice. I say Metho-trax-ate and the registrar at the hospital corrects me by calling it Me-tho-traxate…

It’s not just the drugs either… I mean, when I was a kid, I called a certain plant-eating dinosaur a dip-lo-doe-cuss but it now transpires that this creature was, in fact, a dip-lodicus. Maybe it always was, of course, and I just invented my own way of saying it…


Anyway, it’s meaningless because these creatures were alive millions of years before anybody was talking Latin, so dinosaurs weren’t called anything - other than maybe ‘big-grey-thing-with-a-long-neck’ or ‘nasty-bugger-with-damn-great teeth’!

Even so, there's plenty of other examples such as the question mark over how to pronounce the name of the feisty Queen Boudicea... I distinctly remember her being Bo-der-seer and then, one day, she suddenly transmogrified into Boodicker just as Ancient Egypt's Man of Gold, Tutankhamun changed his name from Too-ten-car-men to Tooten-carmooooon…

Now, it just so happens King Tut is due back in London later this year with the exhibition Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs. So, what's the betting he’ll turn up with yet another new name…?

SWEET TALK

Our friends were giving a dinner party for first-time guests.

The hostess had gone off to the kitchen to fetch the desert: her speciality - sticky toffee pudding.

In her absence, her young son confided to the guests that they were about to enjoy the family's favourite afters.

"How nice," smiled one of the guests indulgently.

"Yes," said the boy innocently, "it's called stiffy cocky pudding..."

Out of the mouths of babes and, as they say, sucklings...

SPORTS RESULTS

What better way to kick off on All Fool’s Day than with the results of the last CAPTION COMPETITION, as chosen by our independent judge blogging under the name of Polkadots & Moonbeams...

Here is the photograph for which I asked you to provide a caption…


…and now for the captions!

The EDITOR'S HIGHLY COMMENDED ENTRY came from SUZANNE...

"Wow! That's some footprint - let's get forensics in!"

And the JUDGE'S TOP FINALISTS were as follows:

In THIRD PLACE was GOOD DOG with…

One of the players on the right saying: "You're looking in the wrong direction if you want to play spot the ball."

In SECOND PLACE was DAVID WEEKS with…

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're mine. Look there's my name tag"

But…

The WINNER was SCROOGE with…

"Then when I do this, it spells WOW!"


Congratulations to them AND to the rest of you who entered and submitted an ingenious - and sometimes delightfully risqué - selection of captions, which are listed here for your amusement in alphabetical order of captioneers!

ANNE…

"I don't think that's a regulation bottom."

CHRIS…

"Well it felt like a bee sting to me!"

"BEE it ever so BUMble..."

DAVID WEEKS…

"I suppose that was a harder smack than usual."

"Hang on, don't pull the shorts up yet I want a closer look - the game can wait a bit longer."

"I'm sorry but this elastic has just gone home; you had better just take them off entirely. It's a Health & Safety issue if you try playing with them like that"

"Yep, the lining has completely separated."

"Wow! The jock strap has completely vanished!"

"Good God! How did that get in there?"

DIVA of DECEPTION…

“I'm not kissing it - you tell them!”

JEN…

“See, I told you my thong matched my strip!”

QENNY…

"Well, it's a little bit hairier than most girl's bums, but it still looks very girly."

SCROOGE…

"Hmm not bad... OK, you can have the lousy goal if it means that much to you."

"And I had this one done in a little bar in Sao Paulo."

"What do you mean, he never touched me. The boot's still in there."

"Look, I don't mind meeting up for a drink after the match but this is ridiculous...."

"And then I had to sit in a small bath for several hours by a freezing lake at the plug end - If you look you can still see the chain! And THAT'S why I became a footballer?" *

"No I can't recommend you as Brian's wallpaper of the week with that one I'm afraid." *

SILLY BILLY…

"Look, I told you he scored!"

SUZANNE…

"I still don't understand why you left it there..."

* To be understood, these entries need to be read in conjunction with those submitted for the LAST caption competition.

And, finally, here’s what could well be a photograph taken later on in the very same football match!

WORDS WITHIN WORDS

It's the weekend and for those who fancy keeping in mental trim need while on their 'down time', here's a mean little brain-teaser for you...

Find a nine-letter English word from which you can remove ONE LETTER at a time and always leave another NEW WORD.


NOTE: The letters can be removed from anywhere within the word, but the order of the remaining letters cannot be rearranged.

GOOD LUCK!

In between puzzling over that (or if it just gets too painful to think about) you can amuse yourself with this teaser. Then, when you've mastered it, cut it out, stick it onto a piece of cardboard (an old corn flakes box is particularly good) and carry it with you to impress your friends in the pub, office canteen, supermarket checkout queue, pre-school creche or STD clinic...


Meanwhile, two latecommers have, finally, joined in the Like & Dislikes Game - there are 10 of each from David Weeks beginning with the Letter 'M' ("Why with an M?" said Alice. "Why not?" said the March hare) and 5 of each (it was so long ago, she forgot the rules!) beginning with 'C' from the The Diva of Deception.

[Illustration (top left): Words are Sweet Sounds for Objects Unreal, a portrait of Jack Kerouac by Justin Simoni composed of the first page of text of Kerouac's On The Road.]

THE SNAIL WHO WOULDN’T COME OUT OF HER SHELL

There was a Snail who was painfully shy and timid.

“You know what your trouble is,” said the Blackbird, “you’re far too insular and self-possessed, too reticent and retiring. You need to come out of your shell more.”

“More?” said the Snail. “I’ve never come out of my shell!”

“You haven’t?” asked the Blackbird in mock-amazement. “My dear! What have you been doing?”

“No a lot,” replied the Snail feeling awkward and embarrassed.

“Well then,” the Blackbird enthused, “You really mustn’t delay any longer! You need to come out and enjoy a bit of freedom!”

“I’m not sure,” hesitated the Snail. “I certainly couldn’t do it with you watching… I'm far too shy and bashful…”

“I understand, of course,” replied the Blackbird, “but supposing I were to look away?”

“Then," said the Snail after some deliberation, "I guess I might be able to manage it.”

“Good!” said the Blackbird, turning around and savouring the prospect of the effort-free lunch that he would soon be enjoying. “Just let me know when you’re out...”

The moment the Blackbird’s back was turned, the Snail silently slithered away and hid herself amongst a pile of several dozen large stones.

“Are you ready yet?” asked the Blackbird but there was silence and when, at last, he turned around there was no sign of the Snail anywhere.

The next few minutes proved two things: that snails are much better off not coming out of their shells and that a blackbird’s beak bashed against several dozen large stones will eventually break.

© Brian Sibley 2007
Read more of my Likely Stories