Hello Again, Sydney

One Sydney-sider's experiences moving back to Sydney after a long absence overseas.

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

It's a jungle in here

The soundtrack of our lives for the last month or so has been The Lion Sleeps Tonight, aka Wimoweh. During this time the immediate family have been going by animal names. I am Gorilla, my wife is Elephant (which she's thrilled about, obviously), my brother and his wife are Giraffe and Zebra respectively and so on. Santi (who is Barbary Sheep) calls us collectively, "my dangerous animals".

Parents will have already guessed that this has something to do with that darned Lion King movie, and you'd be half right. We've given the DVD a fair old hammering over the last month. But a lot inspiration came from our visit to Taronga Zoo a few weeks ago too. Here's the view from the picnic area, looking across the harbour to the Opera House and bridge. It could not be dangerous to be living in a town like this, could it?



There have also been a couple of family singalongs, and with all of this animal hijinx afoot, Meerkat (that's Uncle John) decided to scour the iTunes music store for different recordings of the Lion Sleeps Tonight. We now have a CD with no less than 24. I can recommend the versions by:

- The Tokens (this is the one everyone knows, but avoid the 1991 remix - total cack!)
- Mory Kante
- Karl Denver (Scottish bloke yodelling with surf-style guitars - go figure, but it works)

But the standout is definitely the original. Forget all that "in the jungle" business, and get down with this, Solomon Linda's Mbube.

3 Comments:

At 10:52 pm, Blogger Becky Willis Motew said...

Love that song!!!

My thoughts are with you, Mark.

b

 
At 8:36 pm, Blogger Mark said...

Thanks becky. Dad, btw, was the lion - which is a whole different story, at least as far as this blog is concerned!

 
At 11:24 pm, Blogger Kristina said...

Isn't parenting a thrill a minute? I really enjoyed this post... Sam is all about Spider-Man right now, and I don't know where he picked it up because we've never watched the movies or cartoons... Must be he got it from school. Anyway, he runs around "webbing" everyone now...

I'm thinking of you, too. Hoping you're all hanging in there.

 

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