“There’s a sad sort of clanging
From the clock in the hall
And the bells in the steeple, too
And up in the nursery
An absurd little bird
Is popping out to say ca-coo
(ca-coo ca-coo)”
The opening gambit to a refrain from The Sound of Music movie. An aria performed as a fond adieu by the Von Trapp family to fellow Austrians, prior to surreptitiously scarpering across the border into Switzerland. Escaping the occupying Nazis.
This movie an everyday tale of nun meets Austrian naval officer with seven kids. Postulant and widowed captain fall in love. Nun teaches kids the beauty of song and dressing in curtains. The pair fall in love, marry and naval officer refuses to join German navy under Anschluss. Family elopes but can’t afford Swiss house prices so move to Britain where they live happily ever after on a Bridlington caravan site.
I often think of the lyrics… Actually, that is a fib of the highest order. I barely (if ever) think of the refrain’s words. The sole reason they made an appearance in my neurological corridors was my need to write prose for a writing workshop; the pieces topic incorporating the prompt clock.
The cuckoo clock in those lyrics evoking memories of a timepiece which adorned my late mum’s dining room wall. This chamber one of my writing dens back in the day. I am unsure why I chose the venue, though, as my focus was frequently tested by the chronometer’s intermittent cuckooing sounds.
The culprit of this interjection being the wooden resident of said cuckoo clock, which I purchased on mater’s behalf in exchange for a handful of magic beans… She apparently didn’t fancy a beanstalk growing in her back garden… My argument that she could do with a goose laying golden eggs falling on deaf ears.
Anyhow, the chronometers ‘endearing’ balsa wood bird made his (or her) presence known every 15 minutes… I hesitate to speculate on the sex of the wooden cuckoo as I wasn’t curious, or insane, enough to check. I’d also suspect the guy or woman (I’m not checking that either!) who carved the wooden nest thieving avian would not have included genitals.
I have no idea, neither do I want to know, what a bird’s penis looks like. However, I would venture they would be so tiny even the cuckoo world’s Ron Jeremy would still require carving with a neurosurgeon’s forensic accuracy.
Right, as I’ve written for far too long about cuckoo’s wedding tackle for my liking (if they indeed marry), I’ll swiftly move on…
While penning the previous paragraph I was interrupted by my partner Sarah, who felt the need to disturb my quilling to convey my car looked nice and clean. As she left my office, she mystically looked back in my direction, proffering “I hope you’re not writing about cuckoo’s willy’s again, Gary!”
I haven’t washed my car for a while so I’m assuming the heavy overnight rain fooled my partner into thinking I recently given my motor some TLC. Knowing my car care laxness would lead to accusations of being an idle so and so, yours truly decided to let her continue thinking I did indeed wash it.
Whatever happened to the cuckoo clock following your mother’s passing I hear you cry… Well, those of you who are still awake, or the more enlightened who no doubt stopped listening to this hooey after the first paragraph.
The clock in question now sits proudly on the wall of my office. However, the cuckoo no longer resides in the wooden structure; the bird long since gone.
I have no idea how it disappeared; all I know was it mysteriously went AWOL several months ago during a barbers visit… That was for me, not the cuckoo… Taking the wooden bird for a trim would have been ludicrous… After all, it didn’t have any hair.
Anyhow on returning from having my barnet shorn, when the clock struck the hour, the perch shot out as usual. However, the little wooden tenant was conspicuous by its absence.
Although unsure of its fate, I have narrowed it down to it either flying off, or Sarah throwing it out of the window because it’s cuckooing did her bloody head in!… It’s the latter, isn’t it.
The only distraction now from the timepiece is the clicking of its pendulum. Well, I’m assuming it is the pendulum swinging back and forth and I’ve not got it completely wrong about the size of cuckoo’s willy’s!
