A harvest of farmers

I watched Heston Blumental’s “Feasts” series recently and was surprised to learn that the lamprey fish is still being caught and eaten in fair sized quantities by Latvians. The lamprey was an ‘olde English’ delicacy though given it is an ugly sucker mouthed eel like fish it is hard to see why. Latvians seem to eat it washed down with fruit brandy in large quantities. Henry I of England died in 1135 from blood poisoning after eating too many lampreys. Henry I also had 20 acknowledged illegitimate children and was buried at Reading Abbey so perhaps he had it coming to him.

Pre Heston all I knew about lampreys that the collective noun for a group of lampreys was a ‘surfeit’ (because of poor Henry I) and the title of a detective novel by Kiwi Ngaio Marsh. Marsh wrote 32 detective novels between 1934 and 1982 and ‘A Surfeit of Lampreys’ was published in 1941. Sadly I have read none of them although I have the SofL somewhere at home in its original Penguin detective ‘green’.

Still it started me thinking about collective nouns and not the usual flock (sheep), herd (cows) or school (fish) nor even a pride (lions), murder (crows) or mob (kangaroos) but the really obscure, funny or made up collective nouns.

Here’s a small sample:

A pitying of doves

A band of jays

A plump of moorhen

A parliament of owls

A company of parrots

An unkindness of ravens

A host of sparrows

A cloud of bats

A coalition of cheetahs

A skulk of foxes

A leash of greyhounds

A bloat of hippopotami

A fall of lambs

A richesse of pine martens

A prickle of porcupines or echidnas

A sneak of weasels

A stuck of jellyfish

A glide of flying fish

An army of frogs

A shrivel of critics

A body of pathologists

A palette of artists

A box of cricketers

A break of winds

A jam of tarts

A shower of meteorologists

A harvest of farmers

The Big Things in Life

You would think that the “Big Thing” phenomenon would be American through and through but curiously it seems very Australian. Originally built as tourist attractions or as advertising for a regional product they have become anachronistic and, frankly, a little tawdry. Amazingly there are over 145 big items in Australia, that is, 7 big things for every 1 million Australians. Quite bizarre isn’t it?

Stranger still, I have seen quite a few and after researching the topic a little further discovered I had seen a few more that I had never realised were “big”!

So, here is a list of my sightings; Cheese (Bodalla), Apple (Yerrinbool), Pavlova (Marulan), Banana (Coffs Harbour), Merino (Goulburn, of course, and in its present and old locations), Trout (Adaminiby), Pineapple (Gympie), Barramundi (Cairns), Bottles (Mangrove Mountain), Boot (really?) (Rozelle), Dinosaur (Diplodocus?) (Somersby), Prawn (Ballina), Shell (Tewantin), Mushroom (Belconnen) and, my favourite, the big potato at Robertson in the Southern Highlands.

For years I had driven past this monument to local agricultural business and thought it was a bus shelter or scout hut that the local town planner had allowed to be built because he or she had been having a very bad day , had been drinking or had a very special and peculiar sense of humour.

I had thought maybe it was a ‘big’ something but I was leaning toward the ‘big turd’ rather than potato. I wonder whether there is a ‘big turd’ somewhere in Australia? Perhaps on Pooh Corner at Dunedoo? The town exists. I made Pooh Corner up though it would be nice if the council did rename a street corner after Winnie, whose middle name is “the”….

The problem with the big ‘potato’ is that brown, stippled and moulded concrete creates a visual ambiguity and I am sure that I was not alone in my view. One thing I will say though is that I have never seen one speck of graffiti on this monument to carbohydrate goodness. At least Robertsonians have civic pride if dubious taste in public sculpture.