I’ve had a web site since the early days of the world wide web, and most of the content hasn’t changed for about five years or more.

Time to sweep it all away and begin a new online career as an irregular (and most likely un-read) blogger!

Megatheriums?

Why choose the blog title I have done?

Well, though I’m now in my late 50s, I still remember with great fondness the children’s books I read as a boy.  And in particular, the works of Edith Nesbit.  In her classic ‘Five Children and It’, four English children discover a strange ugly creature called a Psammead.  In the course of discussion with this ’sand-fairy’ it interrogates them:

“How very sunny it is–quite like old times! Where do you get your Megatheriums from now?”

“What?” said the children all at once. It is very difficult always to remember that “what” is not polite, especially in moments of surprise or agitation.

“Are Pterodactyls plentiful now?” the Sand-fairy went on.

The children were unable to reply.

“What do you have for breakfast?” the Fairy said impatiently, “and who gives it to you?”

“Eggs and bacon, and bread and milk, and porridge and things. Mother gives it to us. What are Mega-what’s-its-names and Ptero-what-do-you-call-thems? And does anyone have them for breakfast?”

“Why, almost everyone had Pterodactyl for breakfast in my time! Pterodactyls were something like crocodiles and something like birds — I believe they were very good grilled…”

Later, the children offend the creature and it starts to hide:

“Oh, don’t go!” they all cried; “tell us more about when it was
Megatheriums for breakfast! Was the world like this then?

So there you go.  And I just think that ‘Megatheriums for Breakfast’ is a fun title, one I used for quite a while for a bi-monthly contribution to ANZAPA (about which more another time).