Our school teacher, Mr Royton, was crazy about those inchworm toys. Every Thursday afternoon he'd have us all practising riding - with the best rider winning a trip to the 'toy room'. We were all SO jealous of whoever got into the toy room - always seemed to be one of three girls. While they were in there, we all got to play board games which was brilliant, but he told us never to tell our parents because if they found out we were playing games at school we'd all be expelled and the school would have to shut down. The 'toy room' was quite mysterious, always locked, but this one time, one of the boys called Alistair said he saw the door half open and inside he saw a strange man with a video camera, so after that we started calling it the 'cameraman room' but Mr Royton got really cross about this and insisted there were only toys in there and Alistair was telling "a very stupid lie". The next day he took us all in the room and there was very little in there except a few toys in the corner next to some bean bags. After this the inchworm competitions stopped, and alistair got a caning for telling fibs. Mr Royton used to say "careless chatter causes caning!" To be honest, I still feel terrified even now saying the words "cameraman room" because Mr Royton really drilled it into us to never ever say those words because they were "stupid lies". Oh and another girl got expelled for telling a "stupid lie", but no one ever found out what the lie was, only that it had something to do with the PE teacher who did the swimming classes. Thankfully, we now live in the safety and security of the 21st century, where we are protected from all such lies. Modern technology has now made it impossible to spread harmful disinformation, thanks to online speech being rigorously controlled so that no one is able to raise alarms about imaginary goings-on. These days, boys like Alistair, with his imaginary cameramen, would be recognized as suffering from a mental delusion and sympathetically be regarded as a lunatic, and scorned by the media.
Have you heard the Tindersticks curated Songs for the Young at Heart? It has Kurt Wagner of Lambchop singing Inchworm. The best is Jarvis Cocker reading The Lion and Albert and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy covering Puff the Magic Dragon. Some terrifying earworms from the distant childhood memories of the 1970s.
Invigorates the soul to see a bit of inchworm action now and then, and you have my gratitude. But I'm missing the wind instruments. Any chance of Quentin on sackbut and Comfrey on rebec, with some tragic dancing dollies chanting "Shut up, shut up, shut up!"? Or something similar of course, I'm content to leave it to your professional judgment.
Gandalf: I think you should leave the Inchworm behind, Bilbo. Is that so hard? Bilbo: Well, no. Bilbo: ... and yes. Now it comes to it, I don't feel like parting with it. It's mine. I found it. It came to me. Gandalf: There's no need to get angry. Bilbo: Well, if I'm angry, it's your fault. Bilbo: ... it's mine... my own... my precious... Gandalf: Precious? It's been called that before, but not by you. Bilbo: Oh, what business is it of yours what I do with my things? Gandalf: I think you've had that Inchworm quite long enough. Bilbo: You... you want it for yourself. Gandalf: BILBO BAGGINS!!! Do not take me for some conjuror of cheap tricks. I am not trying to rob you, I'm trying to help you.
Nice! 😁 For some reason I thought of "hippity hop" / "hopper balls" and if you haven't done one of those yet (I can easily picture you on one so maybe you have?) you should consider? And woah 😲 I was just looking them up and there are many interesting and bizarre variations these days like dinosaurs, unicorns, chickens, other animals and the weirdest one IMHO is the bouncing hotdog with its very suspect looking individual handles! 😱🤣 (Google "WALIKI Toys Jumping Hot Dog")
