I’m quite fond of my Mr Big-head (my triceratops). True, he looks a bit menacing, even with the pale blue coat he has been given. And his eyes are, shall we say, somewhat baleful. But he is herbivorous and he looks ready for a jaunt into Hexham or Wareham.
He came as a present or perhaps I should say a joke., maybe on a fathers’ day. And he has surveyed the scene ever since.
When G.K. Chesterton wrote his poem ‘The Donkey’, he couldn’t have been aware of the triceratops. The donkey has a big head, it is true (not to mention big ears) but the donkey is not to be compared with this ten-ton creature from the Cretaceous period. He became extinct along with the rest of the dinosaurs and turned up in north America in 1889.
Unlike the donkey with his cross on his back, he took no significant part in world events. But hr must be at least a candidate for the biggest head in prehistory. How he kept this gigantic bony structure aloft takes us beyond imagination. He was herbivorous, so might have had a placid temperament and we have had to manage without him.
A pity that G.K. Chesterton had something on at the time that prevented his writing a poem about this obliging fellow. A pity, too, that Blake did not take on the job of introducing him to the world at large. He deserves no less.
And while we’re about it, what made the Creator think of a cosmos as we know it? Did he choose the style we know out of a range of possibilities? But he is the author of that range in any case. My ten-ton charmer (cardboard and bead and blue décor) looks remarkably like a man’s best friend hoping for an outing. I mustn’t disappoint him.
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