ode to pollcocker
the domestic minx
14 Comments
I love my Mum.
Mother's Day affords me the delicious pleasure of thanking her for all she has given me.
And oh, how my Mum has spoiled me.
She has showered me with her love and bestowed on me the pride and dignity gleaned from a life with humble beginnings, yet lived richly and with integrity.
She has stood stoicly and unwaveringly beside me despite all the silly mistakes I've made, defended me against those who would cause me pain and lifted me up high for all the world to see.
She has given much more than she has taken and then passed it all onto me.
She has given without expecting and loved without measure.
Deliciously funny, infinitely kind, amusingly child-like and blindingly beautiful, she is my muse and my friend.
It is with admiration that I smile at her elegance and charm, her deliciously blowsy blondeness, her blissful and endearing naivety and her enduring belief in the power of Love. She is a beacon of beauty and light. A tower of strength.
She is also impossibly manic in her mutilation of the English language.
Despite living in Australia for more than half her life my Mum still sports a refreshingly sweet Enid Blyton accent. Her language is sing-song nonsensical, child-like and musical. Words are sung, trilled and tripped out. A variety of hybrid Englishisms are hidden in everything she says, along with good a number that have been made up. You see, my Mum is creative, uncannily proficient at Making Things Up; telephone conversations, excuses, alibis and Words.
Oh, there is no word that is safe. Words swishle and scroatle about my mum's feet, eluding a swift snatch and grab, for there is always the danger of being manipulated and twisted til they bear no resemblance to the original.
But what my mum has been most clever at, is the use, or misuse, of Names.
It is without doubt that I can attribute the rich, yet mortifying, history of Name-Calling in our family to my mother.
Not the humiliating "Fat Bum", "Pig Face" kind of name, but the joyous, playful and outrageously inappropriate epithets of love best reserved for family times behind closed doors.
My Mum's skill is profound and was ultimately responsible for inflicting on my developing psyche a rash of uncomfortable titles. Not only were these sad appointments used at the expense of my given name, they were often employed with gaiety and abandon in front of bemused, subsequently ridiculing peers.
Impossibly, the following list of names I have been called is by no means comprehensive.
More curious is that the majority of these dubious monikers are still used today...
(please be gentle with me, after this...)
Madame X
Flossie Flannelfoot
Bomcocker
Bomkins
Cockerel Bomkins
Blinkin' Bleeder
Cockola Bomola
Bomcocker Charlie Carter Bombom
Bink'ole
Stink'ole
Eedandoodanwod
Smellkins
Cocksmeller - this one was an accident, believe me...
Binks
Stinks
and Buff Peakin
But perhaps the name of greatest significance, the name I am most proud to be have been given, is the one that represents my Inheritance.
It is the name handed down to my mother from hers.
It is a name that not only has to be earned, it must be handed from One to Another.
(Please try not to laugh, dear reader..for I am sensitive..)
It is the bold, the beautiful, the outrageous, "Pollcocker".
When you have finished laughing, let me assure you that Pollcocker is a name not given lightly.
It is of singular importance.
The Mark of the true Minx,
reserved only for a particular kind of girl; most notably:
n. a female having the characteristics of impudence, audacity and brazen cheek in equal amounts.
a right little Madame X.
a proper little minx.
Oh yes, I am a Pollcocker. And proud of it.
Like my Mother before me.
Thank you, Mumkins.
Your Pollcocker loves you.
(and she eed and she dood and she wod)
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Reader Comments (14)
Charming, darling!
The pic of you and your Mum is absolutely adorable!
And Pollcocker!?! LOVE IT!
Its so nice to see a Mum's Day entry that isn't negative or complaining. I knew I could count on my Minx.
What beautiful women you are :) Wishing you a very delicious Mothers Day Minx and thank you so much for your kind words...
Wow! Minx squared! Pollcocker...LOVE IT!
Not only are you both simply gorgeous women, you shine, sparkle and glimmer with mischief, magic and joy.
Fabulous! I do hope your Mother's Day was pure unadulterated bliss.
Best of luck today with the dreadful extractions!
Love,
Mistress M
Kitty,
Thank you, my precious puss.
It would be quite impossible to be negative and complaining about my darling mum(kins) on Mother's Day!
She truly is as adorable as she looks xx
Oh Lady Terri x
You are too kind, darling xx
I hope your Mother's Day was minxalicious!!
(We need pampering more often don't we!!)
x
Oh Margot, my mum is full of mischief!!
She is brimming with it, her magical allure a mixture of charming inner child at play and a beautifully blissful blowsy blondeness.
She is the eternal ingenue.
Often confounding, always adorable!
She is very precious and I love her.
She is a Pollcocker, but not, she continually reminds me, as much as her daughter!!
A charming moniker, don't you think?
While I love it and am filled with pride at earning such a title, it is the sort of name that cannot always be mentioned in company without a few raised eyebrows!!
I hope you enjoyed a deliciously blissful Mother's Day, Margot xx
[Ah, that damned dental blip on my horizon...
I am on the countdown now and cannot eat for the next 4 hours.
(Insert mewling and whimpering here with whiskers down...) :( ]
Thank you for your kind thoughts xox
You certainly got me worried just now, until I realised that we've already had mothers day over here. Thank goodness for that, I thought I was going to have to do some serious grovelling to my mum.
Lovely picture of you and your mum, and even lovelier post. Mums are great, I often think about setting up a website for half of the things my mum comes out with, heh.
Aw....Minx that was so sweet.
I miss my mum. Enid Blyton she ain't....or wasn't.
More like Annie Proulx or Dorothy Porter. Growing up in the bush in the fifties does that to a girl.
I miss her. Funny, Mothers Day passed this year (being 'deliberatly barren' I have none of my own) without the usual ache
that is until your post
thank you :)
ps. talk about a chip off the old block - those smiles are identical
Lola x,
There is always some sort of grovelling performance enacted for our mothers' benefit, isn't there. But I love it.
My little Mum really is a sweetheart and, like yours, deserves a website dedicated to her various witticisms.
Bless 'er xx
Darling Thinista x
I'm sorry to hear your Mum is not with you any more xx
My Mum lost her mum last October and she said it felt so odd being the Big Girl of the Family now, not someone's child anymore. I could imagine how she felt. Sometimes there is infinite comfort in the knowledge that you are someone's baby and that maybe there is someone else to defer to at times. We all missed Nan on Mother's Day.
I hope my story filled you with a happy ache xx
My smile is not quite as broad as I write this...it is being seriously hindered by two bulbous hamster cheeks :{
xox
Oh aren't you gorgeous!!
Both of you.
A real pair of Pollcockers, I'm sure!
xx
my lovely ms minx,
When I look at the picture of you two radiant gorgeous women it is plain to see that you both have been blessed with a beauty inside and outside, gracious warm hearted sense of humor and a love of light and life. They say that when you look at your mother, that is what you will look like when you are older and you my dear minx are a very lucky lady. Your mother is beautiful and glamorous. She was clearly the original domestic minx and taught you very well. I hope you had a wonderful mothers day and thank you so much for sharing your beautiful tribute to you own mother with all of us -the most faithful and supportive of of your readers...well done my minx, well done!
xxx kk
Oh thank you Eddie!
We certainly are a pair of Pollcockers!!
And Madame X's too!!
xx
Kimmykat, thank you xx
My Mum is so beautiful, both inside and out. She is such a little kitten but has been the archetypal lioness (she is a Leo, too) when it comes to me. She has been protective and nurturing, loyal and loving.
There is no one that doesn't love her. She is so very kind. Talk about being the original Domestic Minx. Well, you have it there! She is in her element! And she has taught her daughter well.
I thank her for that!
I hope your Mother's Day was beautiful too xox