“But how many corners do I have to turn ?
How many times do I have to learn,
All the love I have is in my mind ?
I hope you understand
Gotta love that’ll never die”
Richard Ashcroft
It’s funny the things you think of when you’re lying on your back staring at the ceiling while you’re holding up your left leg in ‘tabletop’ and pointing your right leg at some ridiculous angle while straining against a tightly sprung medieval torture device in a Reformer Pilates class on a Monday evening.
The first thing I thought was that I regretted getting Niall , our instructor a card for his birthday. We’d given it to him at the start of class and judging by the exercises he put us through he clearly didn’t like the witticism I’d written inside :
“I’d normally write something funny here about Reformer Pilates, but as we all know, there’s NOTHING funny about Reformer Pilates !”
We’d also given him a wee present and when he asked what it was I said it was a gift voucher for a six week Pilates class out in the Kilmore Hub with Emma Rooney, as we all heard that she was brilliant. He didn’t smile.
But what I was really thinking about was the music he was playing in the background to distract us from our pain. Niall is a bit younger than Jonny, and they’re both considerably younger than Ray, Declan, Brendan and I , and yet the music he plays is generally classic rock. Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pearl Jam, AC/DC, with smatterings of Cream, and the odd Red Hot Chillie Peppers.
When he played the Red Hot Chillie Peppers I told him about Nick Cave’s quote “If I’m ever near a stereo and saying ‘What’s this shit ?’ the answer is always The Red Hot Chillie Peppers”. Niall queried what music Nick Cave listened to when he does Pilates. I didn’t answer because I was trying to get my foot out of a cuff that was fastened to something behind my head , and this predicament was further complicated by the fact that I was lying on a moving board. I managed to huffle puff my way out of the first one, but Niall had to help me with the second.
The next exercise comprised of a bizarre contortion where my hands are now in the cuff, the moving board is extended out by holding my feet on a bar and pushing back and I now have to flap my arms. I looked like a dying dehydrated butterfly. Thankfully I was distracted by The Verve playing ‘Lucky Man’. Immediately I was transported to 1997, the year that song came out. Richard Ashcroft the writer and lead singer of the song had single handedly made Wallaby shoes and bucket hats fashionable, and as I was the Irish agent for No Fear, producers of bucket hats before and after they were fashionable, and the brand he wore, I loved him more than most. My Soulmate and I went to see them play in The Point Depot in Dublin, which is now the 3 Arena. Back then it still had the cast iron pillars supporting the ornate metal veranda on three sides of the hall. And you could smoke. It was a very cool , smoky gig. Those were also the days when you bought the album, so we knew all the songs. Great times.
I started thinking about The Verve’s classic hit “Bittersweet Symphony” which used a sample from a 1965 Rolling Stones tune ‘The Last Time’ and resulted in them getting sued by the Stones manager and Richard Ashcroft had to sign over all the composition rights to it to Jagger and Richards. Virgin, The Verve’s label had secured the rights to use the song, but not the composition rights. I always felt sorry for them. Many years later Jagger and Richrds’ kids complained that it wasn’t fair , and in 2019 they signed the rights and royalties back to Richard, along with all the royalties they’d received, a cool £5m. It turned out that The Stones manager, Allen Klein’s policy was to protect the band at all costs and sued anyone and anything that infringed in the slightest way on their imagery and songs. Jagger and Richards hadn’t wanted to sue The Verve, but Klein threatened to quit if they didn’t , he was convinced the dam would break if they allowed it. It was only after Klein passed away that they signed it back over.
Yes ,, I thought all of that when doing the Dying Dehydrated Butterly routine in my Reformer Pilates class.
I also thought that Niall probably wasn’t born when the song came out.
After that , through another set of routines that defied description, but I’m sure are described in fine detail in the Geneva Convention under the ‘Banned Inhumane Treatments’, I was only thinking of making it down the stairs.
On the way home I switched on the radio and the song that was playing was…’Lucky Man’.
On Tuesday while out running with My Soulmate and her fellow Gazelles , Aideen and Grainne, I found myself humming it as I plodded after them around Rossmore.
On Wednesday I played The Verve’s ‘Urban Hymns’ album several times as I pottered about, and today , which is your yesterday, I called into my brother John’s office to say ‘Hello’ and he was playing ‘Lucky Man’.
Sometimes I think the Universe is trying to remind me of something. Maybe it’s that I should simply dig out my old Wallabees ? Maybe its that I most very definitely am a lucky man.
Strange thing is , each time since Monday that I’ve heard it this week , I’ve thought of Reformer Pilates.
Toodles,
Paul
P.S. This is Lucky Man
P.P.S This is an audio from an old blog called Softy
P.P.P.S And this is this week’s worky blog , about the futility of war…
Pig vs. Potato
On occasion there are many meaningless arguments within Monaghan’s 4th largest workwear store.
“Are cheese & onion crisps better than salt &vinegar ?”
“Is the Haix Protector Ultra better than the Haix Protector Forst ?”
“Does tea taste differently depending on whether it’s made with water from the stupid new Quooker hot tap, or from a decent God honest kettle ?”
“Is the coolest thing in my office the mechanical drinking bear, or the Spitting Image porcelain Maggie Thatcher teapot ?”
“Are Jaffa Cakes really biscuits ?”
“Is the Carhartt lightweight anorak better than the Snickers Flexiwork jacket ?”
“Will Stephen ever buy sausage rolls for the 11 o’clock break “
The answers aren’t really important…except to me, and are unlikely to be agreed on, much like the 1859 Pig & Potato war which took place between the US and Britain, and was , as always started by a chap from Monaghan.
The area between British Columbia and Washington State had been in dispute for a long time, complicated by the laziness of American cartographers and their love of using latitudinal straight lines instead of going and having a look. In this instance it was further complicated when, after agreeing to a border along the 49th parallel, they left it up to anyone who cared to sort out what happened when that line hit the sea.
Vancouver Island was already an established British colony, and not disputed , but there were several other islands dotted around, and one of these was San Juan. This island had long been the home of the Nooksack Indian Tribe, but their population was decimated when a visiting Spaniad, Francisco de Eliza introduced himself, and small pox to them in 1791.
In the oldest established way to lay claim to somewhere the British sent a Monaghan man , Charles Griffin, originally from Corcaghan, with a herd of pigs to claim that they farmed it, and the Yanks sent Lyman Cutlar a Kentuckian farmer to grow potatoes so that they could claim it. The two men lived alone on the island and initially helped each other out , lending nails, or food as the need arose. This camaraderie suited neither the British Empire nor the ever enthusiastic expansionist Yanks, so both men were separately issued instructions to initiate a dispute so that forces could be sent. And both were encouraged to spill blood.
Both men were unsettled by this.
At this point they’d become friends , and spent most of their time in each others cabins, sharing resources, but they realised that if they didn’t start trouble, their masters would send someone else who wouldn’t think twice about injuring the other to spark the dispute they desired.
Sitting on Griffin’s porch one evening he said to Cutlar, pointing at a pig in the garden “Bessie there’s not well.”
“Sorry to hear that Charles, she was a fine pig.” Cutlar replied.
“Aye, none finer. I don’t think she’ll last.”
“Indeed…I wonder if she’d fancy a wander in my potato patch before she passes on ?”
“She’d like that , she’d like that a lot…but I wouldn’t it want to cause any trouble between us.”
“Between us ? Never ! But might it be a solution ?”
Griffin beamed at his friend. “I’d say it would be the way she’d want to go !”
That night Griffin left the gate of his garden open and Bessie went for a wander. A short distance away Cutlar left the gate to his potato patch open and Bessie obliged and died a perfect Pig’s death, having lived a long wild life, munching on potatoes, when Cutlar shot her.
The next day the two men met and helped each other draft their letters to their respective masters demanding satisfaction for the cost of a pig, in Griffiths case, and two destroyed drills of potatoes in Cutlars.
The British duly threatened to arrest Cutlar, and Washigton sent troops to defend him and the Brits then sent three Royal Navy warships. Both sides established military camps at opposite ends of the island , with 461 American troops on one side, and 2,000 British troops on the other. Everything was set for a battle that was sure to spill over onto the frontier until the arrival of Admiral Baynes and three more Royal Navy ships and his discovery that war was about to break out between Britain and the US…over a pig.
In 1871 the British and the Yanks signed the Treaty of Washington , with the only area of dispute remaining , Griffin’s pig, Bessie, and who owned San Juan.
In the end it took a triumvirate in Geneva , chaired by Wilhelm I , the King of Prussia, a year to finally decide that the island belonged to the Yanks. The Royal Marines withdrew on November 25th 1872, and the Yanks, once they were sure that the Brits didn’t sneak back , you know what they’re like, left in July 1874.
All that was left were two abandoned barracks, and two old friends, Charles Griffin, and Lyman Cutlar, who turned one barracks into a piggery, and the other into a potato storehouse. They lived alone, happily on the island until the Winter of 1889, when they passed away, within a week of each other.
All in all , that dispute, known as The Pig War, made little difference.
Much like our own daily disputes.
But, in case you’re interested the answers to the original questions are :
Cheese & Onion, no, yes, the mechanical drinking bear, yes, no, and definitely no.
Cheers,
Paul
