True to form, April Showers are here,
but rather than bringing May flowers, I have stumbled across a new variation of
the adage. Living in my wellies and permanently sheltered under my brolly, my
line of vision has seldom wavered from the slippery red bricks that line the
0.7mile walk to the tube from my flat. It was with this focused gaze today that I saw not
one, not two, but THREE Big Bumba snails
on my way to and from work.
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| Tough picture, will search for a non-nocturnal one to replace this |
For those who may be missing the
reference here – Big Bumba (buhm-bah) is a longstanding family word,
originating on, what else, the good old softball diamond. Primarily used to aid in teaching the receiving position of the first baseman, with applications to
participation in run-downs as well as the act of catching stealing runners, Big
Bumba was The Skip’s go-to term for describing why you needed to get out of the
way of the runner. Modestly using himself as a Big Bumba example, The Skip
would “barrel” down the line (by barrel I mean shuffle his feet, move his head
from side to side, and wave his arms around) to mock run into/knock down whoever was
standing in his way. It has since become the standard term used for any being
that is extremely larger than the norm. (and in softball, they were more likely
to be Bumbas than non)
It should also be noted that this was
very much contradictory to everything he taught me about soccer, preaching to
his little munchkin daughter “the bigger they are the harder they fall,” but
that’s neither here nor there for this story.
Back to the snails. Growing up in Long
Island you never would have blinked twice if you saw a monster slug crawling
across your driveway, but THIS was something I couldn’t ignore. These were the English, more proper, slightly
better dressed slugs from my childhood! Seems that over here even the mollusks
are stuffy and pretentious enough to always cover up with extravagant, vintage
shells.
Until
this wet weather subsides I would imagine I will be seeing more of my single muscular
footed, mucous layering, hard-backed friends, and I will keep a running tally, so far Snooty Snails - 3, Slum-of-the-earth Slugs - 0. I guess no one told the snails that London was in a drought right now, with the
Environment Agency last week extending the drought zone up to Derbyshire
(wherever that is?)?? I think Big Bumba begs to differ with that decision.
English word of the day: Put paid to = an
expression which means to put an end to
something. For example you could say that sun put paid to the snail
invasion, meaning they stopped venturing out once it stopped raining.
