No SMB last Sunday because it was mother’s day and we all had our various parts to play. Br Eel even travelled to Melbourne to be with his Mum.
If you’re going to start a secret society you really need to have secret names, because you don’t want the authorities being able to track you down too easily. While lolling in the surf, as we were wont to do, worshipping Neptune/Poseidon and Martina Navratilova someone intelligent (probably me) came up with the idea that for several reasons the best way to pay homage to our deities was to name ourselves after fish.
We would be bretheren, but how would we adopt these names? In the end the rules committee decided that the name of the fish would have to start with the first letter of your last name – maybe to make it easier for the CIA to track us down.
Early names allocated were:
Br Eel
Br Elver (son of eel)
Br Flounder
Br Mackerel
Br Garfish
Br Bass
Br Whale
Br Bucket-of-Prawns (son of whale, but don’t ask – it’s too complicated)
Br Tailor (eponymous)
Br Hake
Br Dart
Br Kipper
I’m not at all happy about the Kipper name as technically it is not the name of a fish species. From wikipedia:
A kipper is a whole fish that has been split from tail to head, eviscerated, salted, and smoked. Typically, the species is a herring or salmon, but traditionally it is any fish found in great numbers and caught during its spawning period. Spawning fish are not good to eat fresh and usually arrive in great abundance, thus they are salted and smoked to improve flavor and preservation.
The Old English origin of the word has various parallels, such as Icelandic kippa which means “to pull, snatch” and the Danish word kippen which means “to seize, to snatch”. Similarly, the English kipe denotes a basket used to catch fish.
I might have to apply to the register of names sub-committee and ask for a change to Br Kingfish, much more regal, less smelly and without the Danish snatch seizing connotations.
I think we chose fish because there were not enough varieties of carpet to sustain a long list of club names – I guess I could have been Br Kilim but that would have really drawn the secret service crabs.
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Filed under: Starting A Secret Society
