- Burnt Hummer
- Institutional Magnolia
- Sambo
- Warm Placenta
- Haliborange
- Coldplay Yellow
- Kilroy
- Autumn Phlegm
- Coelacanth Brown
- Conrad Black
[Despite / because of my being born into a country in the midst of the Biafran War, a conflict in which one weapon was starvation, it was normal in the house I grew up in for us to respond to uneaten food on a plate at tea time (“dinner time” to soft Southerners) with the Counsell family catchphrase “And what about the Little Black Babies?” We still use it, in fact.
Now that my sister has called her new baby “Samuel” I’m embarrassingly excited by the thought that he might grow up to have the same complexion as his sister. If he combines this with a similarly huge afro then I will enjoy referring to him as “Little Black Sambo“—until he is old enough to punch me.
You have to make your own entertainment when you don’t have a television.
Thanks to Auriol for the original idea for this post.]
11 Comments
Are they still doing Allegro Beige, Mystery Meat and Cardiac?
“You have to make your own entertainment when you don’t have a television.”
Too right, Damien.
I grew up in the 70s and we used to have to mek wor own entertainments all the time, like. I used to live for the Norman Wisdom fiilums they used to show after Nationwide most nights, only we used to have a telly that kept blowing up right in the middle of them. So I know the script of The Square Peg backwards until it gets to the bit where he’s bayonetting the straw dummies - and from there on, I’m clueless. Fortunately, there have been no serious side effects…wwwwhhhhhhhhhoooooaaaaaaarrrgghhhh Mistah GGGGGGrrrrrriiiiiiiimmssssdddaaaalllleeee…
Sorrry, I’m delerious with fever. Full medical updates here:
http://rswipe.blogspot.com/2005/11/personal-message-from-mardin-antlers.html
And Happy 58th birthday A. Radiographer. It’s all down hill from there, believe me…
xxx
Roberta
Little black Sambo? That’s a new one on me. After my Grandfather died, my grandmother gave me one of his favourite childhood books. Called Epaminandos or something like that. Don’t have the sense he was born with, never will have the sense he was born with etc etc.
Look that one up, its very funny!
There’s a great celebration of the roots of the samba by jazz singer Kevin Mahogany called “Little Black Samba”
I found Epaminandus is that what you mean? Somewere on the web they said it was offensive, but from the link I found I can’t see why.
My mum read ‘Little Black Sambo’ to my niece on a regular basis (the inescapably unfortunate title aside, it’s not remotely racist - if anything, he’s an overwhelmingly positive black role model, seeing as how he runs rings round four fearsome tigers using nothing but cunning and ingenuity), but for many months she refused to let her go past the middle section, where for reasons known only to the publisher they included two facing pages of text - i.e. no colourful pictures.
As a result, she must have got the impression that the entire story was about a group of tigers mugging this poor child and getting away with it…
There are no tigers in Africa.
Outside of zoos, anyway.
I believe it’s set in India.
You forgot Little Black Quibba by the mango tree…
epimandonos is the real original little black sambo
I read little black sambo as a kid and it was acutally the book that you are calling epimanconos.
I looked ‘forever’ but finally found it hidden as the little bl.sambo book, and couldnt understand why they were bringing tigers into my little black sambo world of puppies - unfortunately drowned and butter dripping etc.
One Trackback
[…] The Ablutionist published an excellent post yesterday describing exactly the sort of casual wanging around of the word “racist” that I referred to on Friday. I wonder what advocate-but-not-adopter of the Stone Age lifestyle Jenny Tonge would have thought if she had overheard my mother on a bus telling me as a child whenever my afro got too straggly: “Comb your hair when we get home, Damian. You look like a bushman!” my colonialist mum with my nephew, Little Black Sambo […]