Pigeons and the French

Life is full of small puzzles: why for example were there recently eight hour long  queues on English motorways as people tried to cross into France? The official explanation was that the French were, understandably, being over-zealous checking incomers after the recent terrorist attacks. Having said that, having only one policeman checking the passports of car passengers and each individual on every coach doesn’t suggest any great sense of urgency. Nor does it address the question of why there weren’t similar queues and equally rigorous checking on other nations bordering France. Does Schengen trump security, especially when it’s in neighbouring countries like Germany and Belgium where terrorism is most rife? Never mind. Just one of life’s puzzles.

Another thing that has me puzzled are pigeons. There are hundreds of thousands of them. Millions. But have you ever seen a dead one? With so many of them the streets should be littered with dead pigeons. The old C19th concept of a mythical  ‘Elephants’ Graveyard,’ is highly romantic. A Pigeons’ Graveyard, less so. But where do they go?

A Smithsonian scientist offers one explanation. It’s convincing enough, with the caveat that Britain is not well endowed with possums, raccoons or Turkey vultures.  

My final puzzle also concerns pigeons. Who taught them morse code?

I’m serious. I’m woken up every morning by one. Unfortunately it knows only the letter L which it repeats ad infinitum:   . _  .  . 

Walking to town later that day, I heard other pigeons, each of which jealously guarded their own unique letter. I heard a U   .  .  ­_

  a P .  ­­_  _  . 

 a Q  _  _  .  _

I think I’ve found a new hobby. And I’m wondering whether if you put enough pigeons together they might eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare in Morse, though that would, I suppose, depend on their longevity.

No one has talked about Skodas yet

One thing I miss most about the closure of the old Leisure Centre swimming pool is the changing room badinage and those who over the years have become friends. True enough, in a small place like Monmouth, we occasionally pass each other on the street, but a nod and a smile  proves a ghostly reminder.

Respectable pedestrians on the pavement, but within the privacy of the changing room something else.

There was Sirius, an elegant, skeletal 85 year-old, who never bothered to dry his toes and calves with a towel. Instead he’d stretch himself out on the bench and position them beneath an electric hand-dryer: Algy, who once worked in Rockfield Studios and helped produce The Stone Roses: Marmaduke, who arrived each day with the regularity of a cuckoo clock. You’d first hear a scuffle as a bicycle pushed it’s way through the door. In winter, he’d be muffled up like a medieval Mr Toad, his eyes encased by goggles, his head kept warm by a vivid red C14th coife: Ginger, who’d enter with a bounce whenever Liverpool won and wore a weary smile when they didn’t: Tom, a country boy in a small, modern estate, always ready to advise on the best ways of killing a magpie or indeed any rural pest. Conversation was varied and rich.  A small coven of three weirdly owned Skodas and would talk about distributers and parts of a car I’d never heard of before. Marmaduke was an astronomer, who talked with equal authority on local archaeology.

The names are clearly fictitious, the people real, each of us eccentrics in our own different ways but now adrift in picturesque streets.

It was one of the reasons I joined Monmouth Boys Gym and Pool, less to become a bronzed man-god than the fact I missed the non-consequential banter between strangers; easy, uncomplicated.

 The sauna I found disconcerting.  Silence and steam is comforting, the conversations less so. One woman talked non-stop about her daughter's pony, another about her son's disappointing grades. One man talked about an upcoming triathlon.

The changing room was equally disconcerting––At first. The body furniture, If I'm to be honest.

It put me in mind of those online sites that sell steamy romantic novels. They tend to have covers that look much like another: ripped young men staring moodily into the middle distance. Some wear Stetsons but little else, others have a woman draped around them doing interesting things with long, coloured nails. These new, temporary strangers in my life looked like book cover models, many preoccupied by triathlons, marathons and relative track speeds.

 I felt like a chubby Corinthian surrounded by Spartans until the norms of the changing room once again proved universal. After a particular gruelling session in the Gym, two others joined me in the shower room. Both were in their late seventies but looked much younger. One had been wheezing with exertion, balancing on some kind of wobbly ball and pumping iron at the same time. The other had been riding the bicycle at a speed approaching warp factor 9. 

They had nothing but encouragement for my own feeble performance, friendly, wanting nothing more than to be generous. I may have been prejudiced against perfection, afraid perhaps. A week had sorted it out. Old or young, Spartan or non-Spartan, the urge to wind down and talk about nothing to strangers seems nigh universal. 

No one has talked about Skodas as yet.

They never told me there'd be nightmares

There has been a muted but persistent campaign, for some time now, that I need to exercise more. A visit to friends who attended gym three or four times a week would earn me a 'look'. Understandably so because since the closure of the pool, my twice weekly early morning swim has been put on hold. 

There was an alternative. Monmouth Boys School has a fine pool and gym, a snip at £340 a year. I considered what else £340 could buy me and entrenched myself in my soft leather recliner.

Until finally I broke. I’d spent an entire day sitting – working on the computer, watching TV, reading –– and it hit me that one day that would be all I’d be able to do. Worse––I was feeling so sluggardly––– It might be one day next week!

There was general disbelief when I announced my intention of becoming a gym bunny, but that was just the start of it. New trainers had to be bought, and then panic set in. Should I spend money on socks, sole infills to cushion shock, a sports bag for heaven’s sake? I put my foot down. No bag. Why would I need one? A plastic shopping bag had sufficed in the past. Okay, so this was Monmouth Boy’s School. I conceded the point. I’d use a Waitrose bag. It was hopeless. I won the day over sole infills and spanking new socks, but the bag, it appeared, was non-negotiable.  And now I’m the proud owner of a black Puma bag. Very smart it looks too.

The day came when money changed hands. I tried to persuade myself the £340 was a reasonable investment if I went four or five days a week, Hell, I might even get to look like Adonis or at least Vladimir Putin.

The following day I learned a hard lesson. Where I’d gone swimming before was a mile away. This gym and pool was two miles away, which meant I had to get up even earlier, leaving the house at 6 am  to arrive in a state of exhaustion  for when the doors opened.

First off the gym. Already busy. Awful lot of masochists in Monmouth. The guy there ascertained I hadn’t been to a gym for forty odd years and limited me to 5 minutes per machine.

Rowing machine. Feeling good.

Bike, less good but bearable.

Cross Trainer. Longest five minutes of my life.

The swimming that followed gave me time to consider.

Four times a week had come to seem far less attractive.

Especially after the nightmares that kept be awake in the small hours of the morning. Nightmares or demons, they revolved around two figures, increasingly trenchant in their advice"

Nigel Farage extolling the virtues of the Cross trainer and urging me on for a half hour session, and the far more frightening 

Anna Soubry barking at me (at one point I think she was) to stick with the rowing machine. They wouldn’t leave me alone as I tossed and turned, unable to sleep… already looking forward to my next visit to the gym.

Long Black Limousine

I was reading the obituary of Chips Moman, someone I’d never heard of before, and discovered he was the producer of Elvis Presley’s 15^th and possibly greatest album ‘From Elvis in Memphis.’ (1969) Moman had a reputation of revitalising careers, and keen to capitalise on the King’s ‘68 Comeback Special.’ Presley’s management approached Moman. They wanted Momon to record and produce an Elvis album in American Sound Studio at Memphis.

Elvis agreed to jettison his default band, the Jordanaires, in favour of the tighter, more adventurous ‘The Memphis Boys’ — Momon’s house band. Elvis also agreed to reduce the size of the huge entourage that accompanied him, and presumably sucked on cough sweets, because he began recording suffering from a heavy cold.  ‘When I told him he was off pitch, his whole entourage would nearly faint,’ Momon later wrote.

What I got from the obiturary was the sheer hard work that went into the album. In the first song, The Long BlackLimousine, “Elvis’s tone is rasping, coarsened by his cold, but the result after nine takes is raw and powerful.” 

Moman knew what he was doing. At the end of the session, Elvis said to Moman: “We have some hits, don’t we Chips?” Without hesitation Moman replied: “Maybe some of your biggest.”

And he was right.

In the words of the rock critic Bruce Eder, other than Presley’s 1956 album, ‘From Elvis from Memphis’ was Elvis’s “greatest album” and “one of the greatest white soul albums (and one of the greatest soul albums) ever cut.”

And so last Saturday when I had the house to myself I played the entire album very loud, and by the Seven Lords of Hell, he was right.