Practise Your Bouncing

My Dear Princess and Dear Fellows,

My sister Tups sent me this picture today. It's a single page from a home-made book of poetry I made years ago for my Lovely Nieces. They must have been only five or six at the time, so we are going back at least ten years.

I illustrated it with cartoons and sent it to them one Christmas and then completely forgot about it. I don't remember this poem at all. Tups couldn't find any more but recalls one called "The Owl And The Pussycat Continued" and one about a nudist tortoise.

Yep. That sounds like me, all right.

I just wanted to make the nieces laugh. Even as little girls they had a pretty out-there sense of humour. They get it from their mum. Who is bonkers. The only poem I can remember started like this:

The cat said, "Run!
There's a mouse with a gun!
And he says that he knows how to use it!"
The cat said, "Please!
Hand over your cheese!
Or I think that he's going to lose it!"

I forget how it ended. But when we were packing up our shipping crate in September, I think I saw my old notebook of drawings and writing in amongst all the stuff. The crate has now arrived in Wellington and we are just waiting on New Zealand customs to release it. I hope my book IS in there. I should like to find out how the tense stand-off with the mouse worked out.

As for Tups, she said that her and Lovely Niece #2 had a good laugh when they found the poem. It makes me happy that they still find it funny. No matter how old you get, you are always going to be a little bit of a 5 year old inside, right?

That explains my sense of humour anyway.

S.