GUEST BLOGGER OLIVIA McCARTHY: Mammoth body art

When I was a boy in Hong Kong, the local TV Channel used to show the Bing Crosby Christmas show at various completely inapproproate times of the year, and I always remember how the Crosby clan used to sit around the open fire, roasting chestnuts and looking highly embarrassed as Bing would introduce each of them in turn to do some sort of party peice. I have become posessed by the spirit of Bing.

Because each time that one of my family comes to visit I inveigle them into doing a guest bloggo. Last week it was my darling eldest step-daughter Shoshannah, and this week it is the bloggo debut of my darling younger step-daughter Olivia, who has become fascinated by yesterday's mammoth tusk story, and - not entirely to my surprise - has her own inimitable take on it. Aren't you all agog to see what happens when my brother the vicar comes to stay?

So apparently, some time last year (brilliant accuracy, that) a guy named Johnny found a 14ft mammoth tusk after it was washed out of a permafrost (I had to Google what that was, I don’t know these things.. if anyone else is as clueless as I am, ‘permafrost’ is soil at or below the freezing point of water for two or more years) during a flood.
A lot of you will have seen the picture already, but, because I’m a really generous person, I’ll show you again:

Now, that’s an effing big tusk.

Anyway, it’s always nice to know that certain things remind certain people of you.. perhaps a song or a location. For example, my delightfully insane stepdad, Jon Downes (some of you may have heard of him!) saw this picture of a fossilised mammoth tusk and thought of me.

Why, you say? Short answer: because I have piercings. Long answer: Some of them are stretched (I currently have 7.1cm worth of metal/air through my flesh) and sometimes I wear jewellery made of water buffalo horn/bone. Before I get the animal rights debate thrown at me – the jewellery comes from water buffalo that are already dead. Jewellery (ie hand-carved necklaces, earrings and jewellery for stretches) is made so as not to waste any part of the animal. Good jewellery companies will source their materials legally and ethically.

Anyway, back to the whopping great tusk that that bloke up there is holding. Those of you with stretched piercings (Google images gives some brilliant examples: hurrah and woo and cartilage!) might well own some plugs/tunnels made from buffalo horn or bones. However, how many of you own jewellery made from fossilised mammoth ivory? If you do, I’m jealous. Some of this fossilised ivory jewellery can sell for around 500 US dollars per pair. Worth every penny/cent, in my opinion.

Jewellery makers take regular trips to Indonesia, and other countries, to source the fossilised tusks from antique shops, where it was (in most cases) previously used by tribal peoples for ice picks and other tools. The work that goes into making this jewellery is astounding – they are all hand carved and they are beautiful. Check out the ‘Mammoth Stock Designs’ from this company http://www.diabloorganics.com/.

My general aim in life is to own jewellery made from fossilised mammoth ivory. Yes, I aim low.. but then I’m more likely to succeed than those of you that wish to be astronauts or Santa.

And thus this rather poorly written blog entry was born.. all because when my stepdad sees pictures of fossilised mammoth tusks, he thinks of me wearing such a thing through a hole in my ear. Huzzah!