Welcome to Saturday Snippets where I indulge my whimsy and my passions… maybe a tune or two…something which has caught my eye this last week…just anything out of the ordinary or extraordinary…I am enjoying just taking a prompt from one word it opens up a whole world and never ceases to surprise me as I hope it does you too…

Come with me and see what I discovered…my word today is…Darling!

The prompt was a suggestion on a post I wrote about varieties of Oranges…’ My Darling Clementine”…clever to make the connection, Clive...I was a tad slower…sigh

Let’s see what I found…

There are lots of films, shows and music tracks to pick from and I mean lots…but what else has a connection to the word “Darling”

Darlingtonia Califormica…is a carnivorous plant…named after botanist William Darlington(1782-1863)

More commonly known as the California pitcher plant, cobra lily, or cobra plant…it is also the sole member of the Darlingtonia genus. A striking plant the winged leaves are the reason this pitcher plant is sometimes referred to as the cobra pitcher plant…Insects are lured by the plants colour and nectar then trapped inside the tube they slide down and get dissolved and absorbed as nutrients by the plant…makes me shiver at the thought…

Let’s start with a few films…

Move Over Darling (1963) starring Doris Day and James Garner…Doris starred and sang the theme tune which was written by her son…The song was banned by  BBC Radio in England because Doris sang “make love to me” far too suggestively for “‘Auntie Beebs” delicate ears…

Darling(1965) starring Julie Christie, Laurence Harvey and Dirk Bogarde, is a British romantic drama…a commercial success at the box office the film won many awards whereas today it seems to have a mixed reputation..a film of its time.

Inevitably there had to be horror films…

Actress Tallulah Bankhead’s last film happened to be one of these horror films. Made in the UK under the title “Fanatic” and called “Die! Die! My Darling! (1965) in the United States, actress Stefanie Powers co-stars with Bankhead…Not only is “Die! Die! My Darling!” Bankhead’s last film, but also her first horror movie, according to the Life magazine article, “One Old Trouper Comes Back” by Conrad Knickerbocker.

Did you know?

President Clintons cat “socks” was a media “darling” during President Clinton’s administration “socks” was reported to have received more letters than the President himself.

Let’s have some music…Darling You – Julia Westlin, Dear Darlin’ – Olly Murs, Darling Nikki – Prince, Nobody’s Darling But Mine – Merle Haggard, Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy) – John Lennon, Happy Birthday Darlin’ – Conway Twitty…there is certainly no shortage of songs with Darling/Darlin in the title…my choice?

More to come later..so many songs…

After the light went on and I realised that Clive meant My Darling Clementine…a 1946 American Western film starring Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp leading up to the gunfight at the OK Corral.

My first thoughts were the popular British Comedy TV show “The Darling Buds of May”…starring David Jason, Pam Ferris and a young Catherine Zeta-Jones it followed the lively adventures of the Larkin family and the local tax inspector…

Peter Pan then popped into my mind…Wendy Darling mesmerizes her brothers every night with bedtime tales of swordplay, swashbuckling, and the fearsome Captain Hook. But the children become the heroes of an even greater story when Peter Pan flies into their nursery one night and leads them over moonlit rooftops through a galaxy of stars and to the lush jungles of Neverland. Wendy and her brothers join Peter and the Lost Boys in an exhilarating life–free of grown-up rules–while also facing the inevitable showdown with Hook and his bloodthirsty pirates…

Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up or Peter and Wendy, often known simply as Peter Pan, is a work by J. M. Barrie, in the form of a 1904 play and a 1911 novel.

From Peter Pan to the present day...as today is my birthday my 70th birthday to be exact…I will be partaking in a glass or two of wine…

The Darling Area in South Africa historically is a dairy area however over the last  10-15 years grape growing has come to the forefront and South Africa produces some great wines…The Best Shiraz 2019…Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Bordeaux-style red blends are also among the country’s top reds…I think mine will be a lovely Cabernet Sauvignon…

What goes better with a glass of red than a lovely slice of Darling Blue Cheese…a newly created blue cheese made on Doddington Farm which borders Scotland using milk fresh from their herd of cows. This looks and sounds like a wonderful piece of cheese…

There will be a few tunes today...Just saying…

Did you know?

Weird Math...Is anything truly random? Does infinity actually exist? Could we ever see into other dimensions?
In this delightful journey of discovery, science fiction writer, astronomer and teacher David Darling and extraordinary child prodigy Agnijo Banerjee draw connections between the cutting edge of modern maths and life as we understand it, delving into the strange – would we like alien music? – and venturing out on quests to consider the existence of free will and the fantastical future of quantum computers. Packed with puzzles and paradoxes, mind-bending concepts and surprising solutions, this is for anyone who wants life’s questions answered – even those you never thought to ask.

The Murray Darling Basin…is Australia’s largest and most iconic river system, and is one of the biggest systems in the world.

The Basin is home to over 2 million people and covers about 14% of Australia’s landmass. It includes a range of diverse landscapes and complex ecosystems, including over 77,000km of rivers and more than 25,000 wetlands. These landscapes are home to at least 35 endangered species of birds, 16 endangered species of mammals and 46 known species of native fish.

The Basin is Australia’s most important agricultural region, producing around one-third of the national food supply…in recent years though there has been a lot of controversy surrounding this beautiful important river system all man-made…however I am going to leave all the problems for another day…

Darling…Dancing in the Dark…

Did you know?

Grace Darling(1815-1842) was a lighthouse keepers daughter in Victorian England…How did she become a national treasure and get a 50-pound note from Queen Victoria? On a stormy windswept night in 1838, The SS Forfarshire floundered on rocks and broke in half as the weather was too bad for a lifeboat to be put out her father decided they would take their sailboat as her brothers were away Grace and her father took the boat…This boat, called a coble, was used by Grace and William Darling to rescue nine survivors from the wreck of the SS Forfarshire. A coble is a type of boat specially designed for working in the shallow waters of northeast England. Originally it would have had a mast as well as oars…for their bravery they received silver medals from the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck, later named the Royal National Lifeboat Institution…subscriptions and money including 50 pounds from Queen Victoria were raised for Grace Darling…

I had fun writing this post as it prompted a few memories…I hope you enjoyed the read…

See you tomorrow for my weekly roundup, thank you for popping in have a great evening xxx