Listening
OK, I hear you
so, please speak
and tell me your story
What happened up the creek?
Saw a car in Mountain Creek, one day
with a number plate that read "UP THE"
took me 3 seconds to get that
the car was UP THE creek
Sorry, it was your turn
you were going to say
something about XXXX
and the barbed wire way
of building a canoe
that can also leak
and no paddle needed
what a crazy feat
I'm listening
do tell
I won't interrupt
it was a bit like hell
that proverbial creek
no place to be
without a paddle
and leaking free
It's up the hill now
without a creek
but it was up for a time
in Mountain Creek
A canoe, you say
that's quite a whopper
made of XXXX
and wired up with copper
So what's ya story
I'll stop to hear
promise to listen
would ya like a beer?
Jaqi
Bluh
Thursday
6
December
2018
Up the creek without a paddle ~ "This phrase may have come from England's Haslar Creek in Portsmouth harbour, a 'salt' creek. (It may also be the origin of the alternative 'up shit creek'.) Wounded sailors during the time of Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson (1771–1805), were taken there to be transported to the Royal Naval Hospital in Haslar to die or recover. The ships moored up in the Solent and the wounded soldiers were transported up Haslar creek by tramline hence 'Up the creek without a paddle'. They were held prisoner so that they would not desert while being treated, and some tried to escape by going through the sewers to the creek (another suggested origin of the alternative 'up shit creek'). Without a paddle this would be hopeless, hence the phrase 'up the creek (without a paddle)' to mean being trapped, stuck or in trouble. Some very obscure navy related jargon entered the popular culture of the seafaring peoples of the British Isles, and thus entered the English language as a whole.”
December
2018
NOTE ~ Have you ever met anyone who talks, and talks, and talks? They never seem to stop. They can be very nice people, but they are compulsive speakers, and they are not always very keen on listening. Or, have you been in a crowd and tried to catch on to a story being told, only to hear disjointed fragments, hear enough to know there is a story, but not hear or get the full story. This poem is a bit about both of those things. And the poem is twisted into a story about an old expression, called “up the creek”, or “up the creek without a paddle”, or “up shit creek without a paddle”. When I made a barbed wire canoe in Tasmania in 2005, I began investigated the origin of the saying. The Wiktionary description below sums up what I found at the time, except for the detail that I had built a barbed wire canoe, to fit the Australian version, “up shit creek in a barbed wire canoe without a paddle”. So, where did the "barbed wire" come from? An extensive search showed no evidence for the “barbed wire” addition, until an Australian movie called The Adventures of Barry McKenzie. I once wrote to the Producer of the movie, Phillip Adams, but he could shed no light on whether barbed wire was added to the saying for the movie. On the long running Late Night Live show on Radio Nation on the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission), hosted by Adams, he would often use the polite version of the earthy saying, with “inadvertently detained in the upper reaches of a proverbial creek in a well-known means of conveyance without any method of propulsion”. When moving to Brisbane in 2007, so did the barbed wire canoe, and then north to Caboolture, and then to Mountain Creek on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, further north of Brisbane. So, my barbed wire canoe has genuinely been “up the creek”. How many barbed wire canoes built by crazy artists can boast that? The canoe returned to Tasmania in 2015, and now sits up the hill above Ross, overlooking the town, but with no creek. Have barbed wire canoe, will travel, even up the creek.
My investigations revealed a separate origin for “up the creek without a paddle”, in the United States of America, referring to a paddle steamer getting stuck on a sand bar. I also looked into the origin of barbed wire, but could find no use of “barbed wire” in the US version of the term, before the Australian movie, The Adventures of Barry McKenzie.
XXXX ~ This is a Brisbane beer, and is also a slang term for barbed wire, and other expressions involving 4 letters.
Up the creek without a paddle ~ "This phrase may have come from England's Haslar Creek in Portsmouth harbour, a 'salt' creek. (It may also be the origin of the alternative 'up shit creek'.) Wounded sailors during the time of Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson (1771–1805), were taken there to be transported to the Royal Naval Hospital in Haslar to die or recover. The ships moored up in the Solent and the wounded soldiers were transported up Haslar creek by tramline hence 'Up the creek without a paddle'. They were held prisoner so that they would not desert while being treated, and some tried to escape by going through the sewers to the creek (another suggested origin of the alternative 'up shit creek'). Without a paddle this would be hopeless, hence the phrase 'up the creek (without a paddle)' to mean being trapped, stuck or in trouble. Some very obscure navy related jargon entered the popular culture of the seafaring peoples of the British Isles, and thus entered the English language as a whole.”
Haslar Royal Naval Navy Hospital
The Adventures of Barry McKenzie
Barbed wire canoe in Ross, Tasmania ~
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