One of my sea-shanty buddies suggested that we could have a go at ‘Stuck-in-the-middle-with-you’. However, in our midst lurks a proper sailor who gets the raging ‘ump’ if we sing anything that doesn’t have sea and/or boat in the subject matter, therefore it didn’t get sung. Nevertheless, an earworm got planted.
Sometime later I was involved in woodland activity and was swinging a socially distanced axe between a couple of blokes doing likewise. The earworm must still have been alive because I spontaneously broke into “fools to the left of me, jokers to the right…” My colleagues were unimpressed but a couple of weeks later when our foreman’s birthday cropped up, somewhat predictably, the words morphed into something a bit different…
Graham generally sees the funny side of life, which is just as well as he spent 35 years working for the telephone company. He started scuba diving with the British Subaqua Club at the age of 16, rode horses through his 20's, became an obsessive windsurfer in his 30's and had a go at free-diving in his 40's. While all of this was going on he rode a bike to keep fit and get to the pub. In later life, in an effort to stave off dementia he has taken up singing and dancing. You may see short stories about these pursuits, but don't expect to read about any degree of prowess as the experiences he can still remember generally relate to (in order) getting bent, crashing a horse (yes, crashing, not just falling off), Windsurfing stupidly in a storm 10, wreck diving without an aqualung, time-trialling with a hangover, singing out of tune and falling on his arse (dancing).
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2 thoughts on “On the subject of earworms…”
I love this story! It’s so creative how you were able to turn a sea-shanty song into something else. Makes me wonder what the new song was about?
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I love this story! It’s so creative how you were able to turn a sea-shanty song into something else. Makes me wonder what the new song was about?
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It’s about the work associated with living where we live. This mangling of another ‘classic’ may give some insight… https://youtu.be/7r0g4F9cOv0
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