The World According To Mary Poppins

As it turns out, the kiddie movies I watched when I was little were useful, or would have been had I paid proper attention.

My imminent sister-in-law has been giving people these pots of four leaf clovers as new year presents. Each pot plant had a wee scarecrow type in it, made of a black pipecleaner and holding something I could never be bothered looking at. I thought this was extremely odd of her until the other day, when I noticed a florist hocking very similar items, and then I thought it was odd of the entire nation.

Today, after much discussion I discovered that the pipecleaner man is actually a chimney sweep, that the thing he is holding that I never bothered looking at is a ladder (which I suppose makes it easier to tell he is a chimney sweep) and that the other thing he is holding that I never even saw until it was pointed out by my imminent-mother-in-law, is a pig. And apparently all these things are lucky (not the ladder, but the rest of them).

I then harked back to last time I watched Mary Poppins (which was last night. Otherwise I doubt it would have entered my mind) and the previously loopy lyrics

Chim chiminey
Chim chiminey
Chim chim cher-ee!
A sweep is as lucky
As lucky can be

Chim chiminey
Chim chiminey
Chim chim cher-oo!
Good luck will rub off
when I shake 'ands with you

which now seem like a beam of shining good sense in the murk of confusion. If only there was also a song in there about pigs.