Gang of Us
“True love will find you in the end
This is a promise with a catch
Only if you’re looking can it find you
‘Cause true love is searching too”
Daniel Johnston
Well….
Since we last met I have completed half a book of stories, I have welcomed Travelling Liddys to our home, set up and run in Monaghan’s Parkrun, mowed a lawn, had a brilliant dinner with the aforementioned Travelling Liddys, our Elliott and my Soulmate, went to Holywood Lake for a dip and a sauna, had brunch, toured all of the Drumlin Giants with the Travelling Liddys, had dinner in The Pig with the aforementioned Travelling Liddys, our Elliott, my Soulmate, Gareth and Angie, came home watched Pirates of The Caribbean in front of a roaring fire, with the Liddys all sprawled on the floor, went to work, did very little work, ran 5k with the Gazelles, bought a suitcase, wrote another story, welcomed Jake and Sarah home, cooked tea, had a bath, got up early to drive to Dublin for an appointment with my new consultant ( Dilly Little retired at Christmas ) , dodging slow moving trucks and tractors, went to Trinity , met some wonderful people, drove home , following the same slow moving tractors and trucks, bought drainage rods, cleared a drain, filled the car with diesel, packed my suitcase, had dinner with Jake , Sarah, Elliott and my Soulmate, and was settling down to get a good night’s sleep as we are up at an ungodly hour in the morning in order to get to the airport….and remembered that I still had to do this.
Strictly speaking I do not have to do this, and there are lots of people who would be happier if I didn’t, but I like doing it and a very, very, niche audience like to read it.
Anyone of the gangs I was in this past week deserve, and will ultimately get , a blog of their own.
The Travelling Liddys, comprising Barra, his luverly wife Holly, and my evil Goddottir , Eimear, brought memories of childhood visits with them, and created many new ones. Elliott said he can’t remember laughing as much as he did during our Saturday night dinner together. And , yes, I was on the receiving end of most of the jokes and childhood mayhem. We recalled nights spent in our dark warehouse having Nerf Wars, and falling asleep on the floor in my office as we watched movies projected on the wall. Cycling off the ramp we made into Holywood lake. Adventures and actual football matches featuring MonkeyHead United, and the resulting bedtime stories which had to feature all six of the Bond/Liddy kids individually by name, and our annual Family Olympics which featured sports such as water balloon throwing, both at opponents, and as high as you could and catching them intact ( balloons that is, not children…although there was this one time…), and culminating in the Nudie Run, which involved running to the end of our garden and back in only wellies and undercrackers…both sets of kids and parents took part.
My Schrodingers Cancer gang membership has been suspended for another year. As many of you know, I went through chemo and eye watering surgery 4 years ago and am high end Stage 4. This is a common enough thing, and not as dramatic as US medical dramas would have you believe. The nature of my cancer is that it will come back. I generally live a quite contented life and don’t think about that at all, until I have my now annual CT scan and it’s in the 3 or 4 weeks between having the scan and meeting my consultant to find out if I’m still OK , or not, that causes anxiety and erratic sleep. I call it Schrodingers Cancer, which makes sense if you know about his cat, and doesn’t if you don’t. It just means that in those 3 or 4 weeks I both have and don’t have cancer until someone tells me for definite.
My Soulmate and I are carrying a lot more pressure in that annual 3 or 4 weeks than we realise.
Yesterday morning at 8.15 I met a new guy, Conor , who smiled as he greeted us and we sat in his office, with my file on his desk.
“Everything seems grand here. Scans show nothing changing, and your bloods are more or less the same as last time. This will be a short visit. How are you generally.”
“Great !” I replied.
“Any questions ?”
“Nope.” I eagerly replied.
“I have !” My Soulmate interjected. “Are his bloods indicating anything at all ?”
Conor now nervously double checks the bloods. “No…same as last time.”
“See ?” I say triumphantly looking at Eileen, and then turning back to Conor say “So you’re saying I should really drink more Rioja on a regular basis ?”
Conor ignores me, and Eileen asks “ Are you sure there’s nothing he should change ? He has a shocking lifestyle…”
Anyway , that’s how I remember it.
Toodles,
Paul
P.S. This is Trampled By Turtles, for you ,,
P.P.S This is an audio , not a podcast, which is NOT about a Film Club.
P.P.P.S And this is this week’s worky blog
We Don’t Do Duvets !
Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s when Saturday morning children’s TV was a thing, the show on BBC 1 was Going Live and then Live & Kicking and one of the regular sketches was Trev and Simon’s ‘Dry Cleaners Sketch’ where they would do corny jokes, mild innuendos and then that week’s celebrity guest would come in and they would fawn over him or her until they would ask if they would clean their duvet , and which point Trev and Simon would scream “WE DON’T DO DUVETS !!!”.
Part of the joke was that a launderette should do duvets.
Wouldn’t happen here……
.We always have work trousers, jackets, hoodies, sweatshirts, kneepads, vests, tool vests, kneepads, overalls, polo shirts, tee shirts, work shorts, body warmers, gilets, baselayers, jackets, coats, hats, beanies, socks, shirts, coveralls, fleeces, waterproof trousers, rain sets, gloves, safety boots, work boots, forestry boots, chainsaw boots, fire boots, paramedic boots, walking boots, hiking boots, dealer boots, laces, polish, and insoles in stock at all times.
What you may have noticed is that we don’t stock wellingtons.
There is a very simple reason for this.
We hate wellingtons !
Our hatred goes back a long, long way.
In the 1980’s there was no such thing as a single common market in Europe, China had yet to become the exporting juggernaut that it is now, and half of Europe was still behind the Iron Curtain under Soviet control. Each country had quotas in place to protect domestic industries and everything was very complicated and confusing. Rubber wellingtons were hard to get and very expensive. The wellington everyone wanted was the Polish wellington, because it was cheaper , but better made than Indian ones. The problem was that Poland was a communist country and Ireland had very restrictive quotas against importing anything from there. You also had to apply annually for a quota and bizarrely this quota was based on what you’d bought in the three years before. This was not based on how many wellingtons you’d bought from Poland, or any particular individual product, but simply on the total value of goods you’d imported from Poland.
If you hadn’t bought from them before the imposition of quotas , you were simply refused any quota. This led to an odd scenario where the only person in Ireland that could import Polish wellingtons into Ireland was a chap in Dublin who had been importing Polish coal since before WWII.
The situation was complicated further still in that he knew nothing about footwear in general, and sizes, so would just order 10,000 pairs of wellingtons each year, and all of the footwear wholesalers in Ireland had to scramble and order as many as they could from him before all the good sizes sold out.
The other thing he wasted no time on was shoe boxes or sturdy cartons, or bags. The wellingtons arrived , 20 pairs per size, in a carton, and my job was to find a place for them in the warehouse. They were brutally heavy and if you dared stack one carton on another the bottom carton would bust and unmatched wellies would spill out over the floor.
Once out of their cartons they were even worse to handle. They weren’t paired and you had to peer inside the wellie in a dimly lit warehouse, to determine if the faint red marking inside was a 9 or an 8.
It scarred me for life.
Yes, wellingtons have improved a lot since then. They are much lighter now, and usually come boxed. And yes, there are lots of workplaces and jobs that you couldn’t use anything except wellies for.
But still….we hate wellingtons !
Graham’s Boots
I remember reading an interview a few years ago with a sports journalist talking about how that the move to the online world and the need for immediate reactions to everything had led to more and more articles which were based on nothing more than rumours, and sometimes were not based on anything other than the journalist’s own imagination.
As a football journalist , the summer months , outside of a year like this year with the World Cup to comment on, were very quiet and , as his contract and wages were determined by the clicks or views his articles received he hit upon an idea for a piece simply titled :
“Ten Reasons Why Manchester United Need Ronaldo.”
This would spark a debate by people who loved Ronaldo and loved United, and people who loved Ronaldo but hated United, and people who hated Ronaldo but loved United, and people who hated Ronald and hated United. This would lead to a surge in the journalists views and clicks as all of these opinionated and passionate fans left comments and shared the article.
A week or two later when that fizzled out, the same journalist would write a post for the same newspaper titled :
“Ten Reasons Why Manchester United Need To Sell Ronaldo.”
And you guessed it , this would spark a debate by people who loved Ronaldo, and people who loved Ronaldo but hated United, and people who hated Ronaldo but loved United, and people who hated Ronald and hated United.
Last year I wrote a piece about why I hate welligtons. So this year I thought I’d write an article about….why I was right !
My hatred of wellingtons goes back a long, long way, in fact it goes all the way back to Wellington himself. The boots are named after him, but he neither thought of the idea, not was the first to wear them, and the boots he copied were leather boots and don’t remotely resemble what we call wellingtons today in anyway except that you put them on your feet !
The boots he asked a cobbler in London to COPY were half calf length leather boots with a low heel, and no trims. They were made from good quality leather , which was treated with lots of dubbin wax to give them a degree of waterproofness, and they were tight fitting , which stopped water getting in at the top. Previous to this Bristish Army boots issued to the elite regiments and officers were slouchy almost knee length things which collected dirt in the creases and gathered water like a barrel.
Wellington had noticed the boots for the first time when he asked to see James Graham, a sergeant in the Coldstream Guards, who had locked the north gate at the Hougoumont farm , under heavy fire, preventing the French army, led by Jerome Bonaparte from encircling the British and Prussian troops at Waterloo. Having secured the gate Graham went on to save the life of Captain Wyndham by shooting a French sniper who had him in his crosshairs, and then later the very same day recused his brother Joseph from a burning barn.
Wellington, having heard of his exploits referred to him in dispatches as ‘The bravest man at Waterloo.’ and requested to meet him. A very nervous James Graham was brought to Wellington’s camp the next day , after the Allies victory and was presented to Wellington, who greeted him warmly.
“Welcome Sgt. Graham ! Welcome. And please take a seat, no need for formality, I simply wanted to hear of your exploits directly and shake the hand of the bravest man at Waterloo.”
“Yes, Sir. Thank you Sir.” Graham said nervously, as he sat stiffly on a stool opposite Wellington.
“Is that an Ulster accent I hear ?”
“Yes Sir. Clones , in Monaghan , Sir.”
“Monaghan, indeed ?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Earl of Clermont country , isn’t it ? Rossmore Park ?”
“Yes, Sir…although…” Graham remembering who he was talking to , stopped.”
“Although ? Carry on , my good man.”
“Although, in Monaghan, begging your pardon, Sir, that we refer to it as Countess Clermont country, as she owns Rossmore and the towns, and is the brains of the operation as it were…begging your pardon.”
“Very good, Graham, very good.” Wellington replied. “I’ve heard that said. Now tell me all about yesterday.”
“Yes, Sir. Well , we left Enghien at 3 in the morning , with the 2nd Brigade, fine men Sir, if I may say , and we marched through the night, 25 miles to Quatre Blas, fought that day, won, and then moved to Hougomont to be in place for the Frenchies next attack. They attacked around 11, and quickly spotted that we had one gate unlocked, for supplies and reinforcements, and made for that. A hundred or so got in ad there was a pitched battle, hand to hand. Myself, my brother, Captain Wyndham , Harvey and Gooch fought our way through to close the gate against anymore getting in and……” Graham stopped. He noticed that Wellington was staring at his feet. Nervously he asked.” Have I offended you Sir, I meant no….”
“What ? No, no, my good man. I was distracted by your boots, they look….they look…are they dry ?”
“Yes, Sir. I know they’re not standard issue, but I took these with me from home, and they are much more comfortable, and, yes…they keep my feet dry.”
“What size ?”
“Sorry, Sir ? What size are my boots ? I’m a 9.”
“Yes, man. May I try them ? I am crippled with these Hessian things.”
Graham slowly took off his boots and watched amazed as Wellington put them on and darted around the tent, saying ‘Magnificent’ to himself, over and over. After a few more circuits of his tent, one of which he conducted , half skipping, as if he was on a hobby horse , he suddenly stopped and said :
“Can I keep them ?”
“Sorry, Sir ?”
“Your boots ? May I keep them ?”
“Of course Sir. I’d be honoured.”
“But what will you do ?”
“I’ll order new ones from Clemence, the Clones cobbler.”
“Wonderful !”
And that in fact is how the idea for Wellingtons originated. Another wonderful idea stolen , shamelessly, from Monaghan.
They should really be called Grahams.
Toodles,
Paul
