“We’re living in a strange time
We’re working for a strange goal
We’re turning flesh and body
Into soul”
Scott / Thistlethwaite
Late 19th century improvements in the quality of telescopic lenses allowed more detailed observation of the red planet, Mars. An Irish astronomer, Charles E.Burton, was apprenticed to Lawrence Parsons, the eldest son of William Parsons , the 3rd Earl of Rosse, who owned the largest telescope in the world at the time at Birr. At different times they would travel around the country with portable telescopes , making observations from different places, giving them more advantageous views of planets due to weather, light pollution, or simply the hospitality of curious hosts. No host was more curious , and wildly hospitable, than Derrick Warner William Westenra, 5th Baron Rossmore, owner of Rossmore Castle in Monaghan. In fact , so extravagantly hospitable was he that he practically bankrupted the family and their estates over his lifetime. In 1879, while being royally wined and dined in Rossmore , they journeyed out to Bragan in Sliabh Beagh, the highest point in Monaghan, to observe Mars, which was at its closest to Earth, and Burton noticed straight lines on it’s surface and drew a map of them. This became known as the ‘Canals of Mars’.
This discovery led to an explosion of speculation about life on other planets and many people suggested that an advanced race lived on Mars. People then began to imagine life on Mars and then fear an invasion from there. H.G.Wells 1898 book, The War of The Worlds ,became an instant global best seller.
It wasn’t until telescope lenses were improved further in the early 20th century that it was shown that there were no straight lines, and certainly no canals on Mars. What had convinced Burton , and many others that there were, was an optical illusion where we , as humans, subconsciously connect dots with lines that aren’t there.
Some people refer to it as Ninio’s Extinction Illusion, but that sounds a bit freaky to me. I like to think of it as Milo’s Good Glue.
Milo has been a feature in my life since we were 12 and first year in St.Macartan’s College in Monaghan. We learned no Latin together, we sang The Green Fields of France in a school in Leningrad to a class of bemused group of elite communists, we thought we were going to be priests, we had our first smokes, we fell in love ( with Patricia and Eileen…not each other…though having said that, I do indeed love Milo ), and , well, he’s been a sort of Cheshire Cat in my life ever since. The first thing to appear is his smile and then the rest of him seems to materialise out of nowhere. But the reason I’d name the optical illusion after him , is that he sees needs in people that others don’t, or at least he sees them before others do. He makes connections that others don’t. He does a lot for others and rarely if ever thinks of himself.
Each year since I was ill we’ve had a sort of school reunion which we call our annual ‘Not Dead Yet Dinner’ and when I call or message everyone to see what date suits and if they can make it, the second question is always “Will Milo be there ?”.
The Good Glue bit is stole shamelessly from the Good Glow team. Similarly to Charles E.Burton, and Milo, they see connections that , perhaps, they simply wish were there, and through their running community, their events, their trips, and Georgie and Jamie’s personalities, they make the dots connect in real life. Admittedly Georgie’s doing a lot of the heavy lifting in the personality stakes there. My Soulmate thought we’d enjoy running with them in New York a couple of years ago, and we did. But in the brief two years since we have been connected to the weirdest and most wonderful group of people with nothing in common except their own individual awesomeness, and a fondness for Jamie and Georgie.
This invisible glue compelled us to go to a wake in Dunleer last night and queue for an hour to simply hug a member of our Good Glow community and tell her that we were sorry for her loss and that we were thinking of her. We only hugged and spoke for a few seconds, that was all we could do. Still, it felt like the right thing.
We are all very different to each other.
Some people we know all of our lives, some we’ve only met briefly once or twice on a shared experience , and yet our dots are forever connected.
Milo’s Good Glue.
I like that.
I may make a tee shirt.
Toodles,
Paul
P.S This is for you, you are my favourite.
P.P.S Milo is running in the London City Marathon and raising money for a cancer charity, you can donate here.
P.P.P.S This is this week’s worky blog
The Wrong Trousers
There’s nothing worse than the wrong trousers. Whether they are too big, too short, too tight, too baggy, too heavy, too light, or someone else’s , if they are not right they can have you on edge all day.
My first experience of this was at an early age. We lived in a bungalow in Monaghan and Dad heard from someone about this brilliant material that you could cover your attic floor with which would reduce your heating bills. This same someone also recommended getting a skilled tradesman do install the rolls of fiberglass as it could be a messy job, but Dad dismissed this notion, as he had previously built his own garage and had me, aged 12, and my brothers John, aged 9 and Stephen aged 6 sitting around doing nothing, and between us we’d get the job done.
Ironically, as Dad was involved in a health and safety business, he also dismissed the notion of coveralls, gloves, masks or goggles. Actually, that’s not completely true. He wore coveralls, gloves, masks, and goggles while cutting and laying the rolls out between the joists in the attic, but as we were only carrying the rolls up into the attic and rolling them out for him to cut, we’d be grand.
And indeed, we were…at the time.
It was a couple of days later that the underpants I’d worn that Saturday in the attic made their way from the laundry basket to the washing machine, the line, the hotpress and eventually ended up in my drawer in our bedroom and as they were at the top of the pile , and I wore them to school that the trouble began.
Sitting in my seat I began to wriggle involuntarily as my whole bottom, hips and thighs started itching. My seat was one of those wooden bench ones with a back and a solid iron bar which seemed to run in a loop providing the frame for the back of the seat, runners along the floor which ended rising up to support the desk in front. I was trying to ease my itching thighs by pressing them as hard as I could against the underside of the desk while simultaneously moving side to side. I thought I was doing this unobserved , but when I looked up I met the gaze of Fr.Nolan staring back at me.
“Do you need to go to the toilet ?”
“Eh, no ,Father.”
“Are you sure ?”
“Eh…yes Father.”
“Well stop wriggling in your seat.”
“Yes, Father. Sorry Father.”
I tried to sit still, which is impossible once you’re been told to sit still. Fr.Nolan’s ecclesiastical admonishment also seemed to aggravate the itching , so I tried to subtly manoeuvre my wooded ruler down the back of my trousers. This did provide momentary relief until Fr.Nolan roared “BOND ! Up here now !”.
I was bright red as I walked up to the front of the class, and he grabbed me by the arm and marched me out of the room. I was terrified. He bent down and said , gently, “Are you OK ? You’re not at Primary school now. If you need to go to the bathroom, just put up your hand and ask. Now please go to the bathroom and come back when you’re ready.OK ?”
I was about to say that I didn’t really need to go, but at this point I needed some relief so I nodded and ran off to the toilet. In one of the cubicles I took off my trousers and removed the offending undercrackers. The relief was instantaneous. I put my trousers back on and then realised I now had to dispose of my lovely purple Jockey y-fronts. My initial idea of simply sticking them in my pocket lasted until I saw myself in the mirror and saw a boy almost identical to me , except that he seemed to be smuggling a hamster in his left pocket. I looked at the bin and then saw into the near future , where sixth years would be hunting for the boy who had gone commando. ( This being 12 years before episode 50 of Friends was broadcast and Rachel introduced us to the very idea of going ‘commando’, the sixth years would be shouting “Who’s the perv ???”). So I simply flushed them down the toilet. I flushed and waited a moment to make sure there was no sign of them. There wasn’t , but the toilet seemed to be filling desperately close to the seat. I did what any first year in St.Macartan’s College would do in the same situation. I said a prayer to St.Vincent Ferrer, the patron saint of plumbing…and then left , making sure no one saw me leave.
The trousers still itched for the rest of the day, but not as badly. To be on the safe side , I made sure that I caught the ends of both legs in the chain of my bike on the way home, also ensuring that they were mangled high enough in the leg that they couldn’t be shortened and foisted on John.
Oddly those toilets, located on the ground floor , on the way to the gym/theatre, still flood to this day.
So trouser comfort is crucial !
In 1993 Aardman Animations made a ‘Wallace & Gromit’ film called ‘The Wrong Trousers’, bizarrely several years later the Managing Director of Aardman bought some Snickers trousers from us and had to return them for an exchange for a different colour.
I was best man for my brother-in-law, Stephen ,in 1995, and had the dubious honour of being the last person he slept with before he married Maria. Admittedly my other brother-in-law , Gareth , also shared that honour, as he was the groomsman. We spent the night before the wedding in The Dodge in Gweedore, and woke up to discover that we’d collected the wrong size trousers for Stephen. We spent a hungover half hour before breakfast all trying on all the trousers to find which fitted Stephen best and which ones Gareth and I could get away with.
My favourite wrong trouser tale involves the golden era of Hollywood star , David Niven. He attended Sandhurst, the British Army officer training academy, and when he’d passed all of his training he , along with all of the other cadets, was handed a form asking them to list , in order, 1 to 3, the names of the regiments that they’d like to join. As he was Scottish , Niven had to join a Scottish regiment, and simply put on his form “Anything but the Highland Light Infantry “. They were the only Scottish regiment that didn’t wear a kilt , they wore tartan trousers. He was duly assigned to the Highland Light Infantry…and his form stating his preference was pinned to the noticeboard in their canteen for a week before he arrived.
( Then I crowbarred in a work related bit that I’ll spare you here….but it did relate to trousers !)
