💡🤡👂🎧🌟🎨📚💥🍫
Welcome back to fifteen minutes and hello Easter break!
We’re taking a look at some very inspirational people this month, the Dalai Lama who wants us to be happy and Prince, probably one of the greatest musicians to have walked this planet. With the arrival of April Fool’s Day we question where the word tomfoolery came from and this month’s artist makes us want to dive into a cool swimming pool and make A Bigger Splash. The book of the month is superb, a story written after the end of the world. Have you ever wondered what it would be like? I have. One of the best books I have recently read.
Have fun fifteeners and go easy on the chocolate!
💡 Words 🤡
Tomfoolery
also tom-fool, "buffoon, clown,"
Tomfoolery is silly behaviour, especially done by a joke.
In the Middle Ages, Thome Fole was a name given to those considered to have very little intelligence, this eventually became tomfool.
If someone took a long time to tell a story, he would be called "Tom Long." And if he was being very silly, he would be called "Tom Fool."
The word "foolery" was already part of the English language by the 16th century and by the 19th century, the two words were joined together giving us "tomfoolery."
Here are some other synonyms for tomfoolery that you might not have heard of
Dottiness, fatuousness, lark, oafishness, buffoonery and even fruit loopery. Honestly, I found it in the Cambridge dictionary,
👂 Poem
‘Tainant’
By anon
Fed up with winter’s chilly blast,
April means hopes of Spring at last;
But it, with joyous smirk so cool,
Made one and all an ‘April fool’,
For, while the sun shone brightly and nice,
The sky rain’d April showers - of ice.
Source: A Poet For Every Day of The Year edited by Allie Esiri
There are many poems around that cannot be attributed to any one writer. This poem is believed to have been written for a Welsh newspaper in 1917 by a local West Glamorgan resident who submitted it under his pen name ‘Tainanat’.
I wonder who it was.
🎧 Music
Prince (1958 - 2016)
Prince Rogers Nelson, later known as Prince, was born in 1958 in Minnesota, U.S and was probably the most talented musician of his generation. Not only was he a singer but also a songwriter, musician, producer, dancer and performer. He could play many instruments including the guitar, keyboards, drums, and bass and in fact, he plays all of the instruments on many of his recordings.
He was 7 when he began playing the piano and by the time he was 14 he had mastered the guitar and drums and started to play in his first band.
As he developed as a musician, he would mix different genres that he liked. He would blend his lyrics with funk rock using the latest technology.
His first hit came with Little Red Corvette in 1983 and he was one of the first black artists to appear on MTV with it.
In 1984, he released Purple Rain and overnight he became a global star. His album, also titled Purple Rain, remains his biggest selling album. The album was a soundtrack to a film also called Purple Rain and it won an Academy Award and a Grammy Award.
All together, he had ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. He sold over 400 million copies worldwide making him one of the best-selling artists of all time.
He won a total of seven Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award.
In 1993, Prince changed his name to a glyph. It was impossible to pronounce so people started to refer to him as "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince." If we take a look at the logo below we can see how Mitch Monson worked with Prince and his team to come up with Prince’s famous’ Love Symbol’.
In a statement at the time, Prince gave his reasons for this odd change,
“Prince is the name that my mother gave me at birth. Warner Brothers took the name, trademarked it, and used it as the main marketing tool to promote all of the music I wrote.”
“The company owns the name Prince and all related music marketed under Prince. I became merely a pawn used to produce more money for Warner Brothers.”
Prince wanted more freedom from his record company to decide what music to release and when. He would perform with the word ‘salve’ written on his cheek to protest against Warner Brothers.
Sadly, he took an accidental overdose in 2016 but his music lives on.
Rolling Stone has Prince ranked at number 27 on its 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
🌟 Inspirational people
Dalai Lama
The Dalai Lama describes himself as a simple Buddhist monk but he is actually the 14th Dalai Lama and the spiritual leader of Tibet.
Tibetan Buddhists believe that the Dalai Lama is the god of compassion who comes to Earth to help people.
When we refer to the Dalai Lama we call him His Holiness and he is considered by many to be the most important man. The most holy man on Earth.
He was two years old when he was recognised as the reincarnation of the previous 13th Dalai Lama. He had to pass many tests to prove he was the Dalai Lama.
When he was six years old, he began his monastic education, he studied five major and five minor subjects. The major subjects were logic, fine arts, Sanskrit grammar, medicine and Buddhist philosophy. The five minor subjects were poetry, drama, astrology, composition and synonyms.
The most important thing for His Holiness is our happiness and he is always encouraging everyone to be happy. He wants us all to be kind and to focus on his favourite human values - compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, contentment and self-discipline.
He says all major world religions have the same potential to create good human beings. So it is important that we respect one another and recognize the value of respective traditions.
The 14th Dalai Lama travels around the world to promote peace and to speak about the Tibetans’ desire for political independence. In 1989 he won the Nobel peace prize for his nonviolent work to end Chinese control of Tibet.
Source: Dalai Lama
🎨 Art
David Hockney
The first poster I bought to hang in my ‘digs’ when I was at college (I say hung but it was actually bluetacked alongside a photo of Richard Gere who we’ll come to another time) was A Bigger Splash by David Hockney, what do you think of it?
I liked the feel of summer and the idea of having my own swimming pool to dive into on a hot summer’s day. I still do! I also liked the bold colours and simple lines.
A Bigger Splash is probably David Hockney’s best known artwork which he painted back in 1967. However, look how it hasn’t aged at all and seems very modern, as if it could have been painted yesterday. If you take a good look , you’ll see there is nobody in the image. The only sign that someone was there is the splash and that could be anyone including me or you. In fact this image is made to make you want to jump in. It makes us think of holidays and getting away.
Source: Tate
This is an example of pop art, just like Roy Lichtenstein that we looked at in January.
Pop art is where an image of popular culture (television, comic books, magazines, films, and other forms of advertising) is taken and deconstructed.
In 2018, one of David Hockney’s paintings, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) was sold at Christie’s auction house for £70 million. At the time, it was the most expensive artwork by a living artist sold at auction.
Hockney was born in Bradford in Yorkshire. He is a painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. He is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century.
📚 Book Talk
The Blue Book of Nebo by Manon Steffan Ros ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Have you ever asked yourself what would it be like if the world as we know it ended? No internet, no cars, no shops.
This beautifully written story is set in north west Wales in a village called Nebo. The End came in 2018, when Dylan was six. There was no electricity and he and his mum had to learn to survive in their house at the top of a hill.
Now he’s 14 and the relationship with his mother is changing as he grows older and takes on adult responsibilities. Despite their close relationship, They both have secrets which slowly emerge as they take turns to write down their thoughts and feelings in a blue notebook found in an abandoned house, The Blue Book of Nebo.
Already a prize-winning novel and now shortlisted for the Yoto Carnegie awards for writing. Manon Steffan Ros explores what our world would be like and how humans would have to adapt to survive.
💥 Fun Fact of the Month
April Fools' Day
April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is an annual custom on 1st April when people delight in playing practical jokes and hoaxes on friends and family. Jokesters will shout in glee "April Fools!" to whoever is fooled by their prank and they have often spent days planning in advance.
The custom of playing jokes goes back years although the origins are unknown…
Geoffrey Chaucer said something in the "Nun's Priest's Tale" which is part of The Canterbury Tales (1392). He wrote, a vain cock Chauntecleer is tricked by a fox on "Since March began thirty days and two," i.e. 32 days since March began, which is 1 April. 🤷♀️
Eloy d’Amerval, in 1508, referred to a poisson d'avril (April fool, literally "April's fish") which is how it’s known on the continent.
Flemish poet Eduard de Dene wrote in a poem about a nobleman who sends his servants on silly errands on 1st April 1561.
Go to the shop and buy me some elbow grease
Huntigowk Day was how it was originally known as in Scotland, a version of “hunt the gowk”. A gowk is Scottish for cuckoo or silly person. Traditionally, the joke was to ask someone to deliver a sealed message requesting help, the message would read "Dinna laugh, dinna smile. Hunt the gowk another mile." The recipient would reply that they could only help once they had contacted another person first.They then send the recipient on to another person with an identical sealed message. The prank lasts until the ‘cuckoo’ realises what is happening.
Maybe one of the biggest pranks carried out in Britain was by the BBC in 1957 when Panorama (a current affairs program) were reporting on Swiss farmers harvesting freshly-grown spaghetti. Plenty of people fell for it and asked the BBC where they could buy a spaghetti plant. 🤣
That’s all folks for April. I hope you have a splendid month and I shall be back in May with the next Fifteen Minutes.
1922 words - 14.8 minutes
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