Saturday Rave: Right Said Fred by Bernard Cribbins

I've been helping a daughter move house, and it reminded me of this brilliant song.

Bernard Cribbins is best known as a comic actor (you may have seen him in the film of The Railway Children) but he's a wonderful writer, too, and this is an utterly wonderful song about - well, in the way of masterpieces, it's about several things all bound up together: workmen, problem-solving, leadership, a central mystery (just what is it the men are trying to shift? I'm almost sure)...

...oh, and it's very funny, too.

Then there are the rhyming and scansion, which are themselves things of shining beauty:

Charlie had a think and he said look Fred, I've got a sort of feeling
If we remove the ceiling, with a rope or two we can drop the                                                                           blighter through

See? Genius.

And here is the genius himself performing his brilliant song.

(We did quite well with moving my daughter, thank you: the only real problem was not being able to find the headlight switch on the hired van in the dark...still, we managed to find somewhere to buy a torch without too much trouble... 

...luckily, my daughter left the piano at home.)

Word To Use Today: rubble. This word arrived in English in the 1300s. Then it was rubel or robil. It might be something to do with the Old French robe, which means spoils.