Page 401, Sleighrides and red and white mushrooms

Oh my, how doth the mind move in so much mysterious ways, all of itself. Forsooth, 'tis a wonderment to me!

I never understood what the 'sleighride' was. Why would a song about ships, whales and love be a 'sleighride' and a Nantucket one at that? But then I read Melville's account of the Pequod's first encounter with a whale. The little open boats flashing through the scud, across the snow-white foam as the whale begins to sound, the harpoon embedded in its body and the harpoon's rope attached to the boat.

Now I understand! After all this time, I understand! Thank you Herman! If nothing else, I am truly grateful to you for this! The long slow plod, plod of this old nag has been worth it. Of little consequence, 'Nantucket Sleighride', but these things have a tendency to irritate in inverse proportion to their importance after a while, don't they?

Now, I have been accused in the past of failing to stay on topic with these blog posts. ;) It is, however difficult, when you have a brain the size of a small planet (and an ego to match). It's often not possible to stop the neurons firing in all their infinite, myriad ways. But sometimes discipline is good. Especially if there are nice, furry handcuffs and satin straps as well, maybe even a little paddle? :) Sometimes rigour needs to be maintained. Sometimes whimsy and fancy must be restrained for the greater benefit. Whether in or of a penguin or a human. So I shall now stay on topic........ sort of........... well perhaps...... it's all a little tenuous........ but nonetheless sleighrides will make another appearance, albeit fleetingly, and only at the end. When all that was, and is, mysterious is revealed and the veil is withdrawn with a flourish!

Ok, it's not quite up to St John but this is a family blog and we don't want to start mentioning the W***e of Babylon, now, do we? Lots of difficult questions from the chicks when you do that, I've found. Besides, the four horsemen are just so depressing! Not at all like Roy Rogers and Trigger or the Lone Ranger and Tonto. The Cartright family! Champion, the wonder horse!

Now I was going to talk about'Lieutenant Kije' by Prokoviev but the sleighride music in that has so been done to death for Christmas TV advertising by the Woolworths and Walmarts (same thing?) of this world that I can scarcely bear to listen to it any more. Does have lovely jangly bells though .

So instead, I'll talk about a mushroom, 'fly agaric'.

It's interesting, I can quite distinctly hear the sound of heads banging against keyboards, even all the way down here! :)

Patience!

Fly agaric is a poisonous mushroom, although seldom fatal. It does, however, in small quantities, have hallucinogenic properties. I wouldn't recommend it as a substitute for LSD or mescalin but I guess if you're in the middle of nowhere, and fancy pretending to be Aldous Huxley for a couple of hours in the hope of writing 'Brave New World', anything is better than nothing. Now it's nice and common in Europe and very easy to spot. It has a white cap with red spots on it! Incidentally, the human connotation of red with 'stop', 'danger' etc is not your 'invention', nature was doing it way before you came along. You just hijacked it!

So where was I? Ah yes, fly agaric. Now sometimes animals eat them. They're probably the colour blind ones in the population (or they want to be Aldous Huxley) and if they don't eat too much, so that they become ill, they must surely start 'tripping', hallucinating, no? Now I don't know what a four legged ungulate would hallucinate about, but would flying spring to mind? It does for humans and it's so much easier than walking, ay? Especially if there's cold snow on the ground. After all our four legged friend 'knows' what flying is, it has seen birds, bats, insects. Not beyond the bounds of imagining, is it?

So, a bit later along comes a human, eats some fly agaric too. The human's hallucinations might be very pleasant but, as anyone who has ever had a bad one will tell you, bad trips are definitely high on the list of things you never, ever want to repeat. Just like having a few beers with Prince Charles, eating tofu or getting stuck for a few hours in a lift with a human after they've just eaten a chicken jalfreezi from the local 'Indian'*. So the human invents a little myth. A little cautionary tale. There is a man who tends the mushrooms and, moreover, the mushroom-eating ungulates. He wears a red coat and a red hat. He is warning you with his red apparel to stay away from the mushrooms. They are not good for you......at all!

It's odd then, don't you think, that when the early Victorians were casting around for some way of spiriting presents into people's houses at Christmas to surprise the children, they should choose the myth of the acid-head mushroom keeper from Lapland and his herd of hallucinating reindeer?

You see, I said there would be sleighrides! And sleighrides don't come any better than that one!

"So, lead on Rudolf! Light the way with your nose! Fly Donner! Fly Blitzen! Prancer, Dancer, Dasher, Vixen, all will follow. Comet and Cupid will act as rear! Fly, reindeer fly! 'Twill be a long tonight, 'ere we return home!"

It is, of course, at this point that Santa tries to contact Klaatu and Gort on the intergalactic mobile, without realising that 'The day the earth stood still' was only a sci-fi film, not a documentary and stopping time, dead in its tracks, is actually not possible. At all!

It's why only the children of affluent parents get presents. There's not enough time to deliver one to every child and Santa is not above being on the receiving end of a little palm greasing, if the occasion warrants it.

* Footnote:
'Indian' as in Indian Restaurant, not native of Indian sub-continent nor a member of the Lakhota