flights of fancy

I'm having noisy fun with my latest Pratchgan square for Sourcery.

Using so many colours at once means that the yarn tags clicks together madly as I knit and I feel like I should be starting to click my heels in time ! The central motif is a flying carpet which Rincewind uses to fly back to Ankh-Morpork aided by the lovely Conina.

Flying carpets seem to be so much more comfortable than the witches' broomsticks, much less draughty and more space for carrying other people and a flask & sandwiches (save the world, but not on an empty stomach!).

I've been listening to Dickens' Hard Times while doing this which is quite ironic as one of the main characters (Gradgrind) sees it as his duty to stamp out all fancy and imagination from children and that people should act only in a rational, logical manner. No flying carpets for him, only the statistics of how many carpets are produced by which mill and exported to which country.

I laughed out loud when I heard another character Josiah Bounderby describe himself as "a self made man, ...born in a ditch, ....beaten by a drunken grandmother, ...having no shoes and not knowing what stockings were..." and wondered if this was the inspiration for the Four Yorkshiremen sketch where the men compete to see who had the hardest upbringing :

"Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!"

The Pythons have always been the masters of flights of fancy! I would doff my cap to them- if I were lucky enough to 'ave one....