pumpkinstrokemarrow

I thought it appropriate that I should compose an ode to mark the occasion and that it should be set up in the font called 'trendy'.

Turning to a different sort of heritage, I had occasion to notice a few days ago - 13th January to be precise - the efforts our cousins over the water are making to preserve the literary heritage of the western world.

A few days later I chanced upon an LP containing a selection of French childrens' songs sung by Catherine Clouzot and Jacques Rousseau. Very good they are too; the French managing to be gay (in the old sense of the word) about these things. We tend to be sentimental, mawkish or solemn. Very taken with one called 'C'est le Chevalier du Guet' which I thought was all about a knight in shining armour romancing a lady leaning out of the window of her husband's castle. On closer inspection, it turns out that it is all about some town's night watchman, or at best the chap in charge of the night watch. A duty usually given to a well to do butcher or baker. Not something a knight in shining armour would be doing at all. Just to show that there are no hard feelings, they have also included 'Malbrouck s'en va t'en Guerre'. And just to show how old it is, there is a song about how my excellent tobacco is not for you, more precisely not for your rotten nose. Clearly this one would have to be taken out of any second issue. Most corrupting.

Then, on closer inspection again, it turns out that the LP does not come from France at all, but from the Spoken Arts Corporation of New Rochelle in New York State. A city with ancient French antecedents but now virtually part of New York City.

Inside the record sleeve was a large piece of yellowing paper, folded into six and about three feet by two feet altogether. Perhaps a multiple of the old quarto and certainly not a multiple of the presently omniscient A4. The point of interest being that at the time that the LP was produced it was convenient to reproduce the words of the song direct from typescript onto this large piece of paper. I imagine that the words were typed onto some sort of stencil and the resultant stencils were then used to produce what I have in my record sleeve. Some process like the duplication which used to exist at about the time I entered the world of work. In those far off days when carbon paper was big business. And Gestetner ran one of the largest factories in north east London.