British Bands - Backwards Broomsticks - Alicia Spinnet - Spotted Dick

[Rita Winston]

Ebony, you can hear most of those bands recommended by Brits on this
lists by listening to KCRW radio -- one of the audio feeds on their
website. kcrw.com, is 24 hour music, and their latest music director is
a Brit, Nick Harcourt. 

Crys Meaker wrote:
> I'm sorry, but if memore serves me, broomsticks
> aren't for riding to begin with, unless British 
> Witches know something those of us practicing older
> religions don't???????

John Walton wrote:
> ...broomsticks are not (in any form of Wicca, Paganism 
> or Old Religion I've studied, anyway) used for flying.
> They are a ritual cleansing device, not even *really* 
> meant for sweeping in a literal sense; rather, they
> symbolically and spiritually cleanse the altar and 
> the witch before ritual.

I must respectfully partially disagree, Crys John. The oral tradition
reports two more uses of broomsticks that are RELATED to flying or
riding. One is putting a broomstick charmed to resemble a sleeping human
in bed beside the husband so he won't know that the wife has arisen to
rub herself with flying ointment (containing lovely things like
strychnine and atropine -- a friend of mine had a friend who died from
it) to fly away and frolic at the Sabbat. I've read at least one
feminist author commenting on the delicious irony of using a tool of
household drudgery for assistance in escape from household drudgery. 

The other is 'riding' the broomstick like a stick-horse ('ride a
cock-horse to Banbury Cross to see a fine lady upon a white horse' --
I've always believed that that fine lady is Lady Godiva) as part of a
ritual/frolic in the grain fields to encourage the grain to grow tall.
When a broom-stick is being a cock-horse, it makes sense for the brush
to be in front, pretending to be the horse-head. Extra meaning is given
to the words 'riding' and 'cock-horse' by suggestion that the broomstick
is actually a phallic staff -- that is, it was a ritual tool all along,
merely disguised as a household tool, a staff with the top end carved
into the shape of a phallus, but the brush serves to conceal the carved
phallus... 

Kelley wrote:

> is it stated definitively in canon 
> that Alicia and Katie are sixth years by GoF?

In *Chamber of Secrets*, at the first Quidditch team meeting, it says:
"Fred and George Weasley were sitting, puffy-eyed and touslehaired, next
to fourth year Alicia Spinnet, who seemed to be nodding off against the
wall behind her. Her fellow Chasers, Katie Bell and Angelina Johnson,
were yawning side by side opposite them." 

FOURTH YEAR Alicia Spinnet. That's the same year that Fred and George
are in at that point. **I** think all five of them are in the same year.
That's how I have it in my fic that just came back from one of the
beta-readers.

Amy Z wrote:
> Alicia was a reserve the year before Harry got there,
> so she was probably a 2nd-year then--if you can't be 
> on the team your first year, you probably can't be a 
> reserve either.

Since commentating Lee bothered to mention that Alicia was up from the
reserves, that suggests that the rest of the team (except Harry, of
course) had already been on the first string the previous year, and
therefore had not been first-years. Alicia was second year in book minus
1 from my CoS quote. Angelina was second year in book minus 1 because
(as Amy said) she just turned 17 in GoF. Our lack of certainty about
Katie Bell includes the possibility that she could be a seventh-year
already in GoF.

Jenny from Ravenclaw wrote:

> I just can't imagine a group of 14 year olds 
> knowing that a dessert in front of them is called 
>'Spotted Dick' and not giggling incessantly, not to 
> mention avoiding the dessert like the plague!  

Maybe Brits don't say 'dick' as slang for 'the male organ' as much as
Americans do. Americans don't say 'willie' as slang for that particular
meaning, but Brits do, and even grown-ups laughed until their bellies
hurt at the movie title FREE WILLIE. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------
Pepperwood, thunderbird down, seven inches 
Ravenclaw class of 1976
character I most resemble: Mrs. Figg
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