In The Hope Café in January (PCs 368 and 369) Sami, Mo and I were ruminating (Note 1) about trashy novels and how different writers can produce such contrasting prose. Of course it’s like any creative aspect of life, of composing music, writing plays or songs, painting in oils or in acrylics, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Every human endeavour has those who do it well and those who do it adequately, some perfectionists, some producers who create for the popular market and some who simply get by. I tend to believe I am in the latter category although often the judge is oneself! I was described as ‘autodidactic’ last month; I had to look up its meaning!

At its most basic, a sentence can simply be a subject, a verb and an object. For instance:

“The cow jumped over the moon.”

Nice and clear: an animal we identify as a cow jumped, that is lifted itself off the ground, over the moon, a lump of rock that orbits the earth once every twenty-four hours and immediately we think this is impossible! This is fairytale stuff, a nursery rhyme if nothing else! So we smile and move on. Those of you with good memories will be able to chant the complete nursery rhyme:

“Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon. The little dog laughed to see such fun, and the dish ran away with the spoon.”  

This particular rhyme goes back a long way and its origin is complicated; Dutch priests in the C16th get a mention but it’s more likely to have originated in the wonder of the constellations in ancient Egypt and the worship of Hathor. Hathor was the mother of the sky god Horus and Ra, the sun god. She’s often depicted wearing a headdress of cow horns with a sun disk between them. In the constellations Lyra is the fiddle, Taurus the cow and Canis minor the dog, (See PS).

The Egyptian god Hathor

How Hathor worship, which I imagine was quite a serious business, transforms down the centuries into a mostly cartoon characterisation of a cow jumping over the moon is bewildering! It’s possible of course that someone actually saw a cow skip and that lined up with the reflection of a full moon in a pond; it caught their imagination.  

Take that initial sentence and embellish it. “The two-year-old British Holstein cow, quite a popular black & white breed here in the United Kingdom and renowned for its milk, leather and beef, was called Mathilda. Showing off to others in the herd, she jumped into the sky, with a little skip and a flourish, and lifted herself up and up. So she thought; in reality her udders were full of milk and she barely made it off the ground. “But it’s good to dream,” she thought “and I like showing off. You know I’m the comedian in the cow shed? Well, I think I could jump over the moon. Don’t you?”

Or ….

“My name is Angus and I am a professional photographer. I have worked on a number of leading nature programmes and the other day was asked to produce a photograph of a cow jumping over a full moon. Everyone is aware of the nursery rhyme and my photograph was needed for a poster for a new museum of fables and nursery rhymes in Manchester. I think this is a great idea as these historical tales have so much to teach us, at many levels. But in the back of my mind was a warning from my agent; “Angus! Never accept work involving animals.”

“I knew better, didn’t I. Apart from family pets I had been out on a horse a few times …… and they’re the same sort of size as a cow, aren’t they?

Fortunately, I know a dairy farmer down in Devon, so I called him and asked if I could come and take some pictures of a cow. Clearly it would need to be during the next full moon, which wasn’t due for a few days. I booked into a local B&B for a couple of nights, knowing that I needed to plan for the unexpected. The weather forecast was quite good for what I wanted, a relatively cloudless sky and out in the countryside there would be little light pollution. I planned to get into a hollow in one of the fields and have the cow up on top of a hillock, not far from its barn.

Brian chose Mathilda, a two-year-old British Holstein, brought her out and led her up to the hillock. We had discussed how we were going to get Mathilda to jump and reckoned the crack of a Thunderflash, a training pyrotechic, would do – although Brian worried that Mathilda might not produce milk for a few days afterwards!

Picture me then, in the hollow, my camera on a tripod, in the dark, looking at the full moon as it appeared above the horizon. Brian’s still had hold of Mathilda’s harness when, by mistake, he let off the Thunderflash. Two things happened simultaneously. I was startled, tumbled backwards and fell into something warm and smelly, but not before I saw Brian being dragged off the hillock by a very upset Mathilda.

“Could always Photoshop it, Angus?” said Brian when things were more under control. “Take a f**king photo of the full moon and one of Mathilda, superimpose one over the other …..”

“….. and ‘Bob’s my uncle?’ I thought but Brian’s challenge to my professionalism was not without merit …… and I think the result’s OK. What do you think?”

You know what, Angus? I’m over the moon! Perfect – tickled pink even.

Richard 19^th April 2024

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS A French astronomer Jerome Lalande called one constellation Felix. As a cat lover he was sorry there was none named after a cat, although there are two lion constellations and one lynx. It was 1799.

Note 1 Ruminating seems an appropriate word here