Where have all the vegetables gone?

[nineveh_uk]

My middle school had long assembly three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I quite enjoyed assembly, which wasn't that long even in its long format, and one got to sing. I did not, however, like all the hymns. Top of my "most hated" list was Where Have All the Flowers Gone. To this day I get irritated when hearing pre-pubescent female humans blamed for the first World War.

Nonetheless, when I opened the fridge tonight and discovered that the only green veg I possessed was a couple of leeks, I had to accept that the answer was that I had eaten them. I'm not sure how this happened, as there was a fair amount there on Saturday and I am not the sort of person who considers raw broccoli a delicious snack. But apparently it has. I don't mind leeks. Leeks are OK, particularly baked, but even raw. But I was looking for the courgette that was supposed to be in there.

Comments

[azdak.livejournal.com]

hearing pre-pubescent female humans blamed for the first World War.

Is this a radical interpretation of the text, or do you know a different version from me?

[white_hart]

I've always thought that the song suggests a correlation between the girls picking the flowers and the husbands going off to be soldiers, but not that it implies causation.

I'm slightly boggled that nineveh_uk's school considered Pete Seeger songs to be hymns, too!

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I felt the correlation implied an equivalence that I really don't see between a child who ignorantly or thoughtlessly picks too many flowers (and in any case, flowers are wiped out my industrial agriculture, building, and occasionally over-zealous collectors, not a few eight-year olds, or even fifteen-year olds) and the political and other issues behind WWI that really aren't there. If it had been "Where have all the tigers gone, big game hunters have shot them, every one" it might have been different.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

My own - deeply conventional reading - is that the men going off to war and dying was the cause and the girls picking flowers to put on their graves was the effect. Although I suppose the causality might run in reverse and the whole thing is being orchestrated by the flowers, who seem in the final verse to be doing rather well out of the war.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

We also had "The Family of Man" and "Streets of London", though also a good helping of regular wedding hymns (in fact, much more of the latter than my sisters who went to the CofE school and had assembly every day. Mind you, they both left at 11 because it was so boring, so possibly they slept through them).

[tree_and_leaf]

So did mine, though we didn't sing that one. "Last night I dreamed the strangest dream" was a regular "favourite" though.

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

Have just googled Where Have All The Flowers Gone. Am totally boggled (a) by the lyrics and (b) that anyone thought it was appropriate for a school assembly.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

It was the mid-80s? And it does have a reasonable tune. But if my interpretation of the lyrics was wrong (and it does seem, from the responses, to have been idiosyncratic!) I'm inclined to think it is fine for assembly as a generic "peace good, war bad" sort of thing. Ironically, though my sisters went to the CofE middle, to which my middle school was sort of the ideological opposite (though still +98% white), as well as the oddities I got a lot more of the hymns one sings at weddings.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

I have a vague memory of singing it at school at about that time too. And 'Streets of London'.

Mostly what I remember about school assemblies at middle school was our deputy head and his endless war stories, which all began 'when I was in the navy', and having been toned down enough to be suitable for an audience of 9-13 year olds, were very dull indeed.

[joyeuce]

We still have this at church. I think coping with being married to the minister should give me the right to demand that certain hymns (this one, I Want to Walk with Jesus Christ and anything by Graham Kendrick spring to mind) should be banned, but I haven't yet managed to persuade him of this.

[tree_and_leaf]

Oh, that one regularly made me borderline suicidal.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

I think I'm relieved I only know the first two lines.

I went to a very traditional and fairly incompetent CofE primary school that had proper hymns every morning and extra long Hymn Practice every Thursday. The approach of Advent is forever associated with being forced to stand there for hours until the whole school had got the breaks right in "Lo he-ee co-o-omes with clou-ou-ouds de-e-sce-en-ding"

Courgettes are revolting. You are better off without them.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Hurrah! I am now earwormed with 'Lo He Comes' instead of all of the other awful things mentioned in the comments. Thank you!

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

The primary school headmistress was the wife of the CofE middle headmaster, but there's a limit to how complicated you can get with only 4 - 9 year olds. Listening to Radio 3 in a traffic jam on the M1 on the way north for Christmas last year I finally realised that the Czech carol that in English has the "We will rock you" chorus, is in fact musically rather nice when not sung in a wincing translation by a load of children.

[dbassassin.livejournal.com]

I thought we were ill used for having to sing Oh Canada and God Save the Queen in assembly. I can't imagine having to sing Pete Seeger songs; even as a pre-teen I had an all-abiding hatred of folk music.

The real issue is the mysterious disappearance of the courgette, IMO. Vegi-snatchers?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

No, Oh Canada and GStQ are much, much worse.

I admit to surprise about the lack of concern for the courgette. I did find myself thinking "have I got a mysterious courgette thief" for a moment.

Odd. I assumed, actually ...

[wemyss.livejournal.com]

... that WHATFG was simply what happened when a Yank hippie tried and failed to cover 'The Floo'ers o' the Forest'; but then, I avoided the entire mess by being (a) rather older than you and (b) having gone to a different school.

Apropos des leeks, you are aware that the Hairy Bikers are back, of course?

Re: Odd. I assumed, actually ...

[wren-chan.livejournal.com]

Completely tangential Oh hai glad to see you! glomp goes here. XD

Because I haven't done anything in this thread but lurk and be amused...

ETA: *to switch to the icon wemyss was once so fond of*

Re: Odd. I assumed, actually ...

[tree_and_leaf]

I don't think we ever had to sing WHATFG (though we did get "Last night I dreamed the strangest dream", where I lost my Liberal Pacifist credentials for ever by thinking it sounded like a shame to burn all the pretty uniforms), but I have an abiding memory of an earnest teacher explaining that "To a Daisy" told us how it was Evil to pick flowers because it killed them and, by extension, the planet.

Even at the age of seven, I could see that (a) this was an interpretation of the poem that didn't have much to do with what the poet actually sang, and that (b) picking the odd daisy doesn't kill the plant, unless you actually rip it out by the roots and (c) the environment had bigger problems than my daisy chains.

[alexandralynch.livejournal.com]

COurgettes? (does mental translation) Oh.Those. I like them in bread. Otherwise they don't sit well with me.

At least traditional C. of E hymns have musical sense to recommend them. I have seriously offended people by explaining that my great bar against converting to evangelical Christianity is the godawfulness that is the genre called Christian Contemporary music. It's supposed to be bad so you focus on the lyrics.

(Well, that and the complete understanding that my ass is wholly and entirely owned by a rather older Goddess, who has no interest in letting me off leash.)

[tree_and_leaf]

But the lyrics are bad, too!

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Courgettes are nice fried. I believe they also make a good chocolate cake, but I prefer my cake without vegetables.

ALl Things Bright and Beautiful does not have musical sense to recommend it. I sang both tunes in my school career, and they're both awful!

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

On Remembrance Sunday the organist totally butchered the hymns, including I Vow to Thee my Country for which I have a soft spot, it being my old school's hymn and all. I was so irritated that I completely lost track of which god I usually substitute where under my breath (I take the Young Persons because a lot of them have military families, and I also take them to Christingle because I like the candles, but that doesn't mean I have to agree over the meaning of $deity).