A-Z Challenge – ‘N’
Do you have an unrealistic dream about the future?
The ‘never-never land’ is a term often used dismissively when some one dreams unrealistically about a utopian future. I just might win the lottery today.
However the Never Never Land actually exists. The remote outback regions of Australia’s Northern Territory and Queensland are known by that name.
The Australian Henry Lawson wrote a poem called the Never-Never Country the second verse of which reads:
My home lies wide a thousand miles
In Never-Never Land.
It lies beyond the farming belt,
Wide wastes of scrub and plain,
A blazing desert in the drought,
A lake-land after rain;
To the skyline sweeps the waving grass,
Or whirls the scorching sand-
A phantom land, a mystic realm!
The Never-Never Land.
But it was Barrie’s Peter Pan that brought the term into every day language. When Wendy asked Peter where he lived, he replied, ‘With the lost boys. They are the children who fall out of their prams when the nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven days they are sent far away to the Never Land.’
Peter Pan Statue in Kensington Gardens, London (Photo by Sebjarod)
Millions of children live in a dream world, their Never-Never Land. They probably won’t have heard of the ‘never-never.’ Buying something on instalments was once described as, ‘you pay $80 down and more than you can afford for the rest of your life.’ Students’ tuition fees may fall into this category.
Never say die, never say never, never again, never been kissed are phrases that trip off the tongue.
Just don’t ask young girls today have they heard of ‘Never Say Never’ and you will deafened by screams for Justin Bieber.
Me? I’ll settle down with the book ‘Never Let You Go’ by Kazuo Ishiguro.
