My cyber pal Jane Freeman, a painter, miniaturist, author ofSmall Worlds and How to Make Them, a New Yorker who loves walking and language, sends me a limerick about walking
There was a young lady of Twickenham
Whose shoes were too tight to walk quick in ’em.
She came back from a walk
Looking whiter than chalk
And took ’em both off and was sick in ’em.
You might argue that this is in fact a limerick about shoe fetishism, which is OK with me, and in fact there’s another version of the limerick extant that substitutes boots for shoes.
The limerick is credited to Oliver Herford who I’d never heard of, but I looked him up and he’s an Anglo-American writer, artist, and illustrator who also did a nice stock in one liners: ‘Many are called but few get up.’ ‘Only the young die good,’ and many more. This is one of his illustrations:
I also discover he was born, in 1860, in Sheffield, my home town, though he isn’t one of Sheffield’s more famous sons; that would be Sean Bean and Jarvis Cocker.
In other news, fellow walker Travis Elborough sends me the image below, to be found on the back of buses in Dublin apparently.
‘Just because I’m a pedestrian doesn’t mean I’m a nobody.’
Did I ever say you were a nobody?
