Once a tree
grew ears (of wood)
and twisted knots for eyes
and two branch arms
with a leaf hairdo
and finger-sprouting twigs
put boots on roots
marched into town
to sell a crop of apples
‘Apples! Come and get them
Juicy, round and red’
it fed the town
then marched back home
to its apple orchard bed
Each morning, after I ponder what shirt to wear for the day (10 seconds) and what to eat for breakfast (0 seconds) my attention turns to a more pressing problem – how many productions of The Wizard of Oz are being staged at any given moment? I began to wonder recently after attending an impressive production by a grammar school that takes music and drama seriously. Our six-year-old reminded me she had already played a witch, last Christmas (tick that one off) and got to throw apples at the only little boy in the ballet performance (that’ll teach him). Yesterday, I asked a father what he was doing that evening, ‘Off to see the wizard … Xavier has a part as one of nine scarecrows’. I pondered how many munchkins this might equate to as I drove past yet another primary school with boards displaying a stage production of the famous yellow brick road for ‘Four Nights Only!’
A friend recently remarked, ‘I never could understand why Dorothy bothered going back to Kansas’. Well, if he had bothered to read book six in L. Frank Baum’s 26 book series just like I hadn’t he would know that Dorothy did return to Oz, along with Uncle Henry and Aunt Em, escaping the old dustbowl and Almira Gulch, the cranky windbag after the tornado left them mortgaged to the eyeballs. They were economic refugees, compassionately granted residency status in Oz by Princess Ozma and confronted new characters such as the paranoid Flutterbudgets and the anthropomorphic pastries of Bunbury. But I digress, the next time, like me, you wake up wondering exactly where the Land of Oz is geographically located, remember that’s it’s probably not somewhere over a rainbow – it’s somewhere around the corner.
Neighbours used to pop next door and deliver one another home baked goods and the like, not so much anymore. Who bakes these days? What with all the food allergies floating about it’s hardly worth it. We’re lucky. Our friendly neighbour runs across the road and gives us balloons twisted into the shape of a snowman, or twisted into an oversized bracelet sculpted as an illuminated alien. I’ll take these offerings over surplus yo yo cookies any day. It does leave me wondering what kooky idea she will twist out of thin air next. Can’t wait to see it, better find out. Watch this space.
1. Think of an adjective (rotten)
2. Pick an animal (a bear)
3. Choose an occupation (pirate)
Put them together and what do you get? – Rotten Bear the Pirate!!
Why is he ‘rotten’? Perhaps he is mangy. Bad at pillaging? Is he too jolly? He might be too cuddly to be truly scary?
Rotten Bear the Pirate was no use at all on the high seas, until the day he found an old map changed things forever. At the bottom of the map was a message GENUINE PIRATE SHIP WANTED FOR ADVENTURE …
bakersmith 