Today is my "C" post for The Alphabet Club. What is the Alphabet Club, I hear you ask? Well, it is the brainchild of Chiara from The Grey Tail and Jo from Serendipitous Stitching and is loosely based on the premise of the movie "The Breakfast Club" - you can see the button for The Alphabet Club on my right sidebar.On the first Saturday of each month, members of the club have "detention" and have to post about something that will enlighten others about their culture (as blogland is so diverse). Of course, there should be something stitchy in there, if possible. Each month will be a different letter of the alphabet - hence the club's name - and, of course, we started with "A" and now we are up to "C"
So, "C" is for ....
.... .... "Carn", no, not cairn (as in a pile of stones to mark a significant spot) but "Carn" as in "Come on" when you are cheering on a sporting team.
For example, TraderVic, will call out "Carn the Tigers" when he is at a Richmond Football match (in the AFL, every team has a mascot name as well, Richmond are the Richmond Tigers).
I know, I know, we Aussies love to mangle the Queen's English!
One of our great 20th century Aussie poets,
Bruce Dawe, even wrote a poem that epitomises our Aussie love of Australian Rules Footy and the word "Carn"
"Life Cycle"
When children are born in Victoria*
they are wrapped in club-colours, laid in beribboned cots,
having already begun a lifetime’s barracking.
Carn, they cry, Carn … feebly at first
while parents playfully tussle with them
for possession of a rusk: Ah, he’s a little Tiger! **(And they are …)
Hoisted shoulder-high at their first League game
they are like innocent monsters who have been years swimming
towards the daylight’s roaring empyrean
Until, now, hearts shrapnelled with rapture,
they break surface and are forever lost,
their minds rippling out like streamers
In the pure flood of sound, they are scarfed with light, a voice
like the voice of God booms from the stands
Ooohh you bludger*** and the covenant is sealed.
Hot pies and potato-crisps they will eat,
they will forswear the Demons****, cling to the Saints*****
and behold their team going up the ladder into Heaven,
And the tides of life will be the tides of the home-team’s fortunes
– the reckless proposal after the one-point win,
the wedding and honeymoon after the grand final …
They will not grow old as those from the more northern states grow old,
for them it will always be three-quarter time
with the scores level and the wind advantage in the final term,
That passion persisting, like a race-memory, through the welter of seasons,
enabling old-timers by boundary fences to dream of resurgent lions
and centaur-figures from the past to replenish continually the present,
So that mythology may be perpetually renewed
and Chicken Smallhorn return like the maize-god
in a thousand shapes, the dancers changing
But the dance forever the same – the elderly still
loyally crying Carn … Carn … (if feebly) unto the very end,
having seen in the six-foot recruit from Eaglehawk******* their hope of salvation.
* A state in south east Australia
** Richmond Tigers Football Club
*** a derogatory term
**** Melbourne Demons Football Club
*****St Kilda Saints Football Club
******a small goldrush town in country Victoria
So, there you go, a new slang word for your vocabulary! Did you know that Aussie slang is called Strine? Check out this
fun website if you want to know more.
To finish off, here is my "C for Crochet" from Brooks Books A stitcher's alphabet....
Don't forget to check out what the other detainees have done as their penance this month at Chiara's blog,
The Greytail.
Off to earn some moula so that I can buy more stash!
Have a great day everyone,
hugs,
