mind dump

(if you'll excuse me for a moment)

I recall being totally enamoured with Stig of the Dump when I was young, almost as much as I was with Swallows and Amazons; I was one of those children who lived in their mind (funny that, some things don't change, eh) and my mind was full to the brim of the stories I read and the characters who lived them

a couple of weeks ago I went to the local library with Smallest Person and it made me feel so nostalgic! the opportunity, the discovery, the element of satisfaction experienced when you found a new author and devoured all the books on the shelf one by one. . .

I worked in a library for six months in my gap year after having been chucked out of Manhattan for being an illegal alien - and then for the following three summers and some Easters as well

the reference library was my favourite I learnt so much from the things other people wanted to know! the lending library second fave (and children's third, but after my NYC experience I was kind of over children. . .)

anyhow, I digress

Stig of the Dump

maybe my first real association with cavemen (and you know I have a bit of a thing about cavemen)

I was reading about cave art the other day (but I did a piece on that ages ago and don't want to bore you by repeating myself) and it made me want to go see some, perhaps I will. . . and I then wondered whether cavewomen had little stashes of their favourite things in nooks and crannies about the place, you know - to make it seem like home

if I was a cavewoman I'd have twigs with lichen on them, not for kindling but for display; shells with holes in them, for jewelery; leather thongs (there are all sorts of things you can do with a leather thong) (and no, I don't mean the underwear type - I mean the thin strips of type); needles made out of bone; fur skins all over the place, for comfort. . .

I wonder if they had candle type things? you can make an oil burner out of olive oil and a satsuma skin (if you peel the skin off a satsuma really carefully, and use the bit that sticks up from the middle on the inside as the wick) but I guess your Northern European caveperson might not have had a supply of citrus fruit or olive oil, altho possibly they might have traded skins and the like for such goods

do you think they had romance? I bet they did. . . mind you I would imagine life expectancy was a little shorter in those days (apart from for the tribal elders, the wisemen), and (unless their diets were really excellent) they probably matured later than your C21st teen - so maybe they just crammed it all in to a shorter duration of time, in amongst all that hunting and gathering

of course all this rambling is just a distraction from being quite sad today, cos of the clearing out

ho hum

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Would the cave-candles be used to illuminate the pages of their cave-books? Or perhaps to aid in the late night darning of cave-socks?

Remember..."You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you. ~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Chapter 5"

P.S. http://www.perturb.org/display/entry/149/

I, Like The View said...

(am too my grande latte)

I, Like The View said...

(don't think they had books, as I imagine they didn't have paper - but they drew on the walls, so maybe they needed light for that; as for the socks, don't think they'd invented knitting quite then, but I'm sure they wore skins sewn into shape)(I'd have invented something like that if I were a cavegirl, as I have very cold feet)

mig bardsley said...

Inside out furry sock/shoe things. Lovely and warm :)

A boyfriend took me sailing when I was in my early twenties and I was horrified to realise that doing it was quite different from knowing exactly how the Swallows and Amazons did it :)
(there were several encounters of the close and scratchy kind, with bushes and trees along the banks.)

Your cave sounds lovely, I think you'd have to invent the candles if they didn't have them and then you'd be a wise woman of great power.

Mel said...

<---embarassed to admit that she has no clue who this Stig and Swallows is/are.

I'd ask himself but he's a bit punchy from dealing with his 'puter problems.

Mel said...

Right.

That got me exactly what I thought it would get me. LOL

*grumble, mutter*

Mel said...

Oh wait! He's just become civil and asked if you read "How to be Topp". Apparently he sees your caveman and raises ya some public schoolboys! LOL

I, Like The View said...

K, mel, there's one thing you need to point out to The Brit - I'm a girl! nope, can't match that - altho my father did make me read Jennings and Biggles when I was younger (before I got to choose my own books from the library)

;-)

Mel said...

:-O


I'll break it to him gently.
;-)


(let the whinin' begin! LOL)

Gordie said...

In the pub today, we were talking about how humanity nearly got wiped out at different points in history, when the population dwindled, and we invented the concept of Ice Age Emo - cavemen wearing eyeliner and being sad and overwrought, like Panic At The Disco.