Weekend Chatterbox

Or, a golden Shenguin , lemon meringuin*


*Sounds like the blazon** for Sheng's Chatterbox coat of arms

**For the ignorant: "In heraldry and heraldic vexillology, a blazon is a formal description of a coat of arms, flag or similar emblem, from which the reader can reconstruct the appropriate image." To be fair, this old codger as a wide-eyed, naïve nipper of 14 read every heraldic text I could find, including Boutell's Heraldry. I wanted to become a Herald at Arms, but as I needed to get both Latin and French (and, I now realize, had to have high muckamuck connections), no chance. I cried myself to sleep for weeks, staining the cover of my borrowed copy of the School Library's edition*** with bitter, salty tears.

***Of course we had a copy! When the teacher in charge of the library left, as the schoolboy who had effectively administered the cataloguing and circulation I was in a position to offer my services as school librarian until the next master i/c was appointed. Mysteriously, no-one told the new guy this and for 2 years I ordered every available SF and fantasy book, and anything else I liked. This also involved, to my later professional shame, borrowing**** on unofficial long-term loan a subcollection of a couple of hundred books, including the Boutell.

****When I decamped to the grammar school, my mother was horrified to find out the subfusc nature of my adopted material and decided that as this was not on, joined an 8 week long dressmaking evening class with her mate from next door and they would carry their 'materials' in a suitcase, stashing my borrowings under the cloth. The new librarians must have thought that their luck had changed when these pristine books were discovered mis-shelved all over the place. I was very lucky that my mum and her mate were into the spy and secret agent genres.