This is another example of a rhyme that just ‘came out of nowhere’ that is typically how I find they arrive on paper… without seeming to be much involved personally, until it is a matter of crossing t’s and dotting i’s!
If I had any conscious goal it was to create something that had a retro feel, as it does seem that the quaint and homely rhymes of childhood have generally become a ‘thing of the past’ which always seems sad to me, yet I suppose is just another symptom of this inevitable slide into one’s dotage…
I wouldn’t suggest that the ‘old days’ were always ‘good’… but sometimes the ‘hardening of hearts’ that seems to have marked recent times and the tendency towards things that are either kitsch, over-cute, cartoonish or else blatantly, bloody and violent, seems to have squeezed out the cosy, homely, writings and images that were a more common feature of the materials for children during my own childhood and formative years…
Perhaps this rhyme is just an articulated yearning for things that actually never were?…
