I never knew that

A Theatre Dictionary was posted by a friend a few days ago, via Prosound. It's a poem that cleverly relates the contrasting terms and their meanings that the language of theatre incorporates.  Fortunately Mike and I spent some time working in the theatre, so it's been a laugh reading it.  But for anyone who's not used to working in that environment, it's probably totally confusing. However it served to remind me of a moment back in the late 60s.

I was living down in East Sussex and had been sent to a local drama school, in part to encourage me to speak 'proper'. I so enjoyed myself that it became my main interest as a teenager, and it was here that I met a poem called  The Sleeping Bag. I had to learn it for a voice exam - a fun poem to recite but quite tricky. The first few lines go like this:

On the outside grows the furside; on the inside grows the skinside.
So the furside is the outside and the skinside is the inside.
One side likes the skinside inside, and the furside on the outside.
Others like the skinside outside, and the furside on the inside. If you turn the skinside outside, thinking you will side with that side, then the soft side, furside's inside, which, some argue, is the wrong side. . .

There's more, but I've put a link to the poem below.

What no one ever explained and I clearly couldn't be bothered at the time to find out, is that this humorous poem was written by Herbert Ponting F.R.P.S. a professional photographer, who was expedition photographer and cinematographer for  Scott's Terra Nova Expedition to the Ross Sea and the South Pole (1910-1913). I literally only found this out a couple of days ago. Ponting captured some of the most enduring images of antartic exploration and is generally regarded as a pioneer of modern polar photography. Given his working environment the words become very powerful and poignant. The poem was included in the 1948 film  Scott of the Antartic, but perhaps was inspired by the sight of Scott's team wriggling laboriously into their sleeping bags, as depicted in Ponting's classic documentary The Great White Silence. Restored and shown by the British Film Institute in 2011, I've attached a review of the showing. It's clearly a masterpiece, which I'm now hoping my nearest and dearest might be encouraged to buy me for my birthday!!HINT!!! HINT!!!HINT!!!