When is a tortoise not a tortoise? When it's a turtle of course; especially in America and from pop songs emanating from Trump's own country [ see below ]. Actually I'm really rather fond of turtles as my dear daughters find a physiological likeness between them and myself. It's something to do with those crinkly, scaly folds of surplus skin that flap effortlessly around the neck region as we grow older. I personally always prefer the chicken-like analogy, recalling Winston Churchill's praise of egg layers when at a critical moment in World War II, in 1941 in fact in response to a comment made by Field Marshal Petain, he thundered ' In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken; some chicken, some neck.' Somehow ' In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a turtle ',doesn't create quite the same impact.
Back at the other end of life in Seaford, Sussex in the 1950s my early memories of tortoises, of which we as owners were intermittently fond, are of their spending the winter hibernation period in the glory hole. Now I hasten to reassure you this was no more than an early 20th century glory hole -- the cupboard under the stairs into which were thrust coats, books, hats and scarves as well as Victorian carpet cleaners and hyacinths in their early stages of growth, apparently fancying gloomy solitude as they struggle to achieve an upright state before tasting the sweetness of the south coast air and developing an unappealing droopiness. Anyway it was that kind of glory hole rather than the more modern and vulgar variety -- goodness knows what the tortoises would have made of one of those. On one occasion at least their behaviour was less than civilised; they ate each other. Our ' How to keep a pet tortoise ' book stopped short of providing information on this cannibalistic habit but it did happen and we're sorry. [ This apology is in keeping with the 21st century custom of believing that the hideous wrongs of long ago can somehow be righted and the perpetrators exonerated by a solemn, noble, courageous, irrelevant expression of regret, produced usually to silence an army of social media critics ].
So we roll on to the very early 1960s and the American inability to distinguish between a tortoise and a turtle; can you? All most of us know about the turtle is that he or she live on the Goloppagus [sic] to at least the age clocked up by old man Methuselah and he, as you will know, was still going at 969. These creatures somehow seem closer to Edward Lear's Jumblies or the Dong with the Luminous Nose until Eddie Cochran came along. One of the truly great pop/rock singers of his time, in a deplorably short career spanning the late 1950s, my younger readers, of whom of course I know there are none, would do well to press your YouTube into action and listen to Summertime Blues, C'mon Everybody, Three Steps to Heaven and above all, the B side of that last mentioned final recording, The Story of Dan and Shorty. Pay careful attention to the moving and formative lyrics which I produce in full:
Now a country boy called Shorty
And a city boy named Dan
Had to prove who could run the fastest
To win Miss Lucy's hand.
Now Dan had all the money
And he also had the looks
But Shorty must have had something, boys,
That can't be found in books.
Well, a-cut across Shorty, Shorty cut across
That's what Miss Lucy said;
Cut across Shorty, cut across,
It's you I want to wed.
Now Dan had been in training
A week before the race
He made up his mind
Ol' Shorty would end in second place;
And Dan with his long legs a-flyin'
Left Shorty far behind
And Shorty heard him holler out
' Miss Lucy, you'll soon be mine '.
Well, a-cut across, Shorty etc etc
But Shorty wasn't worried,
There was a smile upon his face
He knew that he was a-goin' to win
'Cause Lucy had fixed the race.
And just like that old story
About the turtle and the hare
When Dan crossed over the finish line
He found Shorty waiting there.
Well a-cut across Shorty ....... ad infinitum.
Before analysing this profound text, a footnote on Eddie Cochran himself. Unusually for a pop star born and resident in Minnesota, he died in a taxi in Chippenham, Wiltshire, having just performed in the Bristol Hippodrome in April 1960, aged only 21. Some of us thought that his original, technical brilliance would help him to put Elvis in second place; just as we had thought that Buddy Holly, killed in a plane crash a year earlier but nevertheless later to be a profound influence on The Beatles, would also knock the King off his throne. Thank goodness Cliff Richard [ some turtle-like qualities now developing about his person ] lived on and on, singing the same old ditties in the same old way for another 453 years. Only the good die young, they say and it's certainly true that, if you perish early, you have less time on the planet to be really naughty and mess up but, if you're capable of achieving some sort of fame and if you can pop your clogs nice and young before you have a chance to blot life's copy book, you may well achieve eternally iconic status. Just look at Alexander the Great, Boudicca, Jesus Christ, Joan of Arc, James Dean and Amy Winehouse -- all dead before their 33rd birthdays with personal reputations forever untarnished and in fact well burnished.
Let us return in any case to the more important business of Dan and Shorty. Was their story akin to that of the turtle [ tortoise ] and the hare? One fears that old man Aesop, author of the original, whose prime purpose was to preach a little morality through his fables, would be spinning in his tomb if he knew that his tortoise, a genuinely law abiding plodder, who overtook a conceited hare which had disdainfully paused for a sleep, was compared to Shorty who used unethical methods, against one who strained and sprinted from start to finish to win his race. And yet, one might argue, there's something of the hare about Dan who, we surmise, was only too conscious of his fortunate situation: one who had all the money; he also had the looks , gloating in his anticipation of his hollering to Miss Lucy that Shorty would finish in his second place. However, there is a vast gulf between our approval that Dan got his comeuppance and our endorsement of the underdog who cut the corner. When if ever, is cheating in a contest permissible? When encouraged and aided by the target of your affections? When your opponent is the personification of undiluted arrogance? I must leave this weighty dilemma with you, reassured that in the original version the tortoise has an unblemished reputation -- and still wins.
The tortoise said to the hare
' You know; it's not really fair,
'Cos you've got long legs
While I've got short pegs
But inside I'm more than hot air '.
And from this moral maze back to RPS Walker, the person you may remember from an earlier blog, who fostered my love of Shakespeare; no wishy-washy ethereal love this but a deep material attraction, as you might feel a profound yearning for an exceptional saltimbocca or an exquisite zabaglione. RPSW claimed, as we took a short break from an exercise in Oratio Obliqua in North and Hillard [ O, the things we got up to at prep school in 1960 ] that he had had an idea for an advertisement years before when working in some branch of colonial education. A tortoise had a can of petrol under a partially transparent shell with the caption That's how the tortoise beat the hare. Apparently the idea was used but Shell refused the acknowledge that the idea had originated with Mr Walker. I suppose that's oil companies for you.
Meanwhile here in Oxford, you may be intrigued to learn, several colleges of the university keep their own tortoise. Custos Testudinum [ Keeper of the tortoises ] is a much sought after position [ it is good to meet the Latin word and be reminded that Roman Legionaries approaching a town under siege locked their shields over their heads to protect themselves from weighty missiles and vile boiling liquids and, in so doing, giving the appearance of a vast lumbering tortoise ]. Every year Corpus Christi College hosts the annual Tortoise Fair. It lasts a whole weekend, raises considerable sums for charity and has as its highlight the main tortoise race over a carefully manicured lawn. Last year the eight competing tortoises were placed in a circle with the enticing prize of a lettuce leaf in the centre. What follows is gentler than pedestrian as the competitors have little in common with Usian Bolt. There was much excitement and a healthy reassurance about the independence of the breed when a spritely creature led the several hour long charge to the prize, got within sniffing distance of it, only to turn firmly in his / her tracks and return all the way to the starting position [ shades of that excellent Tom Courtenay film The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner -- those involved in education need to see this ].
Oxford incidentally is right up to date in terms of its sporting contests. Walking in the Parks last week
I saw both Frisbee and Quidditch being played with the utmost urgency at an inter-college level -- as well as lacrosse. This last took me back to a breezy February afternoon in 1969 when a desperate college lacrosse captain rushed into the common room seeking a volunteer to make up numbers for a team. I did not appreciate that it was for a place in the college first team to play in 'Cuppers', the semi-final of the inter college competition; I imagined the experience would be another jolly laugh. Suddenly I was involved in mortal combat of a very serious kind. I found myself on the left wing with fingers battered and toes freezing as I tried in vain to anticipate the direction in which I might travel to avoid any contact with the ball and, even more, the fearsome Goliath type warriors with weapons that could maim indefinitely. It was humiliating and I might have felt even greater embarrassment had not my underlying state of happiness been fortified by a midday visit to the Lamb and Flag. Bright College Days as Tom Lehrer used to sing.
Mind you, I was never much of a sporting giant although I did enjoy a spot of running at school and afterwards. It was, the distance stuff anyway, pretty unpleasant but, in common with banging your head on a brick wall, a most pleasant sensation when you laid off, as well as the agreeable absence of team members, needing to be heralded and ever ready to destroy your fragile spirit with bruising jabs and jibes. I wasn't speedy enough for the real sprints but found the 400 metres -- the 440 yards in those lazy, hazy, crazy days when we all knew how many rods there were in a chain and how many chains in a furlong, not to mention pints in a quart and quires in a ream -- rather satisfying. However, in the 880 yards I ran the first lap like a gazelle [ wounded variety ], confident that somehow I would be able to sustain that furious pace, only to die ignominiously at the bell [ not that there was actually a bell ].
As I say, I did enjoy the even more masochistically satisfying cross-country running and, in sharpening my fitness for this, I used to charge around the East Sussex countryside in the holidays with the Pevensey Marsh Beagles. With an unsuspecting hare the target, I was of course participating in an unforgivable, ghastly bloodsport but please forgive me; it was a different age and you shouldn't condemn Aristotle for failing to question the existence of slavery. As I leapt unceremoniously but enthusiastically through hedge and over brook, I usually managed to dodge the awesome sight of an unsuspecting hare being savaged by the usually friendly but now frenzied hounds. This standoffishness became difficult once as, because of my ability more or less to keep pace, I was entrusted with the ultimate symbol of coming of age in the hunting field -- a whip. It was thereby presumably intended that I would somehow enhance the general bloody scene but I didn't really know what to do with it so I stuffed it down my trouser leg, gaining restoration to normal citizen status but it was far from comfortable.
Over the years I did rather turn against most forms of hunting; not so much because I felt sorry for the pursued creatures meeting with an untimely full stop but because I thought it was probably not the zenith of a civilised society to dress up in uniform properly reserved for stewards at Butlin's, slurp a stirrup cup somewhat gracelessly, say ' good night ' to everyone at 1130am and then take delight in satisfying a bloodlust akin to the inhuman extravaganza enjoyed by Nero and his cronies in the Roman Colosseum.
Oh dear; I sense I am rapidly waving goodbye to many of my friends, those pillars and stalwarts of the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the Countryside Alliance; bless you all. And, as Hermia plaintively enquires in A Midsummer Night's Dream ' Whereto tends all this? '. The answer is absolutely nowhere so we'll stop now. Good night.
16th February 2020
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