THE MAGNOLIAS ARE COMING HURRAH! HURRAH!

When I was at school in colonial Rhodesia in the forties and fifties, our education was 110% English. We wrote Cambridge examinations, were taught the history of the British commonwealth, sang Rule Brittania 'with all our hearts and voices' , clapped till our hands were sore when the Royal Family visited in 1947 and wept when the King died.

And what might all this have to do with magnolias? Well, it's something that came to me with the title. One of the songs they taught us in community singing was The Campbells are comin' Hurrah! Hurrah! - a particular favourite of the music mistress. We sang it on and off for years without ever being shown the words or music, and I don't think there was a girl among us that didn't think we were singing about camels.