March 08, 2004
Can You Tell What it is Yet?
Those famous words from Rolf Harris. Painter, singer and buzzy little stylus/keyboard player (the stylophone - fab!). He also plays the diggery doo. Malcolm, pictured here, has one too and I think every home should have one. You generate the sound by blowing rasperberries down it which really does work. I wonder if the Two Ronnies' Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town had one.
The sound was quite funny...
Apparently diggery doos are made by termites chewing out the inside of eucalyptus tree branches. If you look down the tube you can see the fibres still criss-crossing where they haven't all been eaten. Termites are destructiuve buggers. As you can imgaine, this eating the innards of branches business cause them to weaken and they are liable to drop off without notice. Hence the nickname for the eucalyptus tree is the widow-maker - don't stand underneath!
You sound as though you have a bad case of wind...
Posted by: Mladen at March 16, 2004 01:17 PM