Sunday 30 September 2007

The Last Day of September

The big ship sails on the alley-alley-oh
The alley-alley-oh
The alley-alley-oh
The big ship sails on the alley-alley-oh
On the last day of September

We used to sing that in the playground at my primary school, in rural Hampshire in the late 1980s. We would stand in a line holding hands, with the first person in the line holding onto the wall and the last person free. As we sang the last person would lead the whole line through the gap between the first person and the wall, thereby crossing the first person's arms for them. Then the line would go through the gap between the second person and the first person, crossing the second person's arms, and so on, until the whole line had crossed arms. Then the first person would let go of the wall, join their free hand the last person's free hand to make a circle, and we would sing one final chorus jumping up and down. A little bit of folklore in action for you.

Spiders

Since spiders attract comments, an update. I haven't seen any inside for a couple of days now, and it's been blowing a gale and raining buckets, so I haven't felt particularly inclined to inspect the garden. Hello siblings, by the way.

Knitting

I am within 8 rows of starting the sleeve cap of the second sleeve. I fully intended to get there last night, but Chris came home from work with a bottle of wine. I will be picking it up again this morning, just as soon as I can find the aspirin.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's exactly how we played it in west Cornwall in the 1950's. But we had some extra verses (that I must write down sometime) - did you?

Vivienne said...

Not that I can remember - but that doesn't mean we didn't have them, just that it's 18 or 19 years ago and my memory is fallible.