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| HURRAH FOR BOO SABOO! | |
| By gerardconnolly | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 11 June 2006 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I have always admired Woody's skill at making so much of the mudane. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Truth can so often be staranger than fiction. ‘ What’s in a name?’, you say. Or rather somebody did. Mmmmmmmm. That’s a sore point with me. Living somewhere named Elephant Green rather tends to leave me open to a wearisome progression of, alas, usually spent and predictable jokes. I could probably put up with it the more easily if some of them were remotely funny. After all I earn my living trying to make people laugh and am always on the look out for promising material. Sadly not so here. I have never been able to comprehend the determination of so many of my fellow human creatures to dissolve into the vortex of helplessness at the simple mention of my address. They obviously know something I don’t. It is always irksome to the point of rancour to be on the outside of a joke. But no matter. I have bigger fish to fry. And I mention my discomfort only by way of explaining why it is that when asked where I live I usually and rather sheepishly reply ‘ Saffron Walden’, to forestall any mutual embarrassment. In truth I am deceiving no one by saying thus. Since Saffron Walden is but a short walk away. Irritatingly however for those who know this corner of our planet where Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire not so much meet as collide, Saffron Walden is itself of such notoriety as to provoke a maelstrom of equal hilarity. To the good people of what is now termed the Anglia Region, Saffron Walden is renown for being a location where people are, well , ahem…. candidly,……congenitally crackers! Here I do understand something of the humour. Believe me I do not overstate the case when I tell you the bloody place is a geriatric museum wherein no two pieces of architecture are the same spanning in age the seventh to the twenty first century. Thanks to despotic planning regulations it has grown little since the 1930s other than to engineer a circular one way system from which there is no escape and might one day easily serve as a more secure alternative to Guantanamo Bay. A peculiar sense of isolation is compounded by the fact that it has no railway station and is accessible only with tortuous difficulty from any Motorway. It probably does not need saying that it is not somewhere to indulge shopping therapy. But if anyone has a half day spare to loiter in gossiping queues while women smelling of an odd mixture of lavender and urine delve into some black hole of a purse for coins, it does have five thriving independent Game Licensed butcher’s shops. Also two tobacconists and a taxidermist’s. I’ll repeat that in case anybody thinks it a misprint : a taxidermist’s. Reader; make of that what you will. Oh yes. One other thing worthy of note. The whole obscene monument to the worst instincts of perverse seclusion appears to be owned by The Quakers! I am sure many of you have frequently asked yourselves of late what it is Quakers, or, more properly Friends, do when they are not busy quaking. I am now at liberty to tell you. They are equally busy owning Saffron Walden. For this is a town in which you cannot fart in your own front room without the permission of The Friends. They appear to have trousered everything of value akin to civic society, land, properties, meeting houses, schools, gardens, graveyards etc. Even the Public Kahzi looks to have been erected thanks to their largesse if the plaque is to be believed. Though what The Almighty would be doing looking for a leak in some Essex backwater defeats me. What kind of Heaven is it that doesn’t have latrines? It would be bad enough even if the soi disant Friends were at all in any way friendly. I assure you they are not. Since, having regard to the fundamentals of Quaker theology, to wit, ‘Seizure by The Spirit ‘, leads to the imperative to ‘ Speak Out! ‘. Fine. But not if the lippy bastards are ten places behind you in the Greengrocer’s. God’s Butt !! I have lost count of the times I have had my eye on a nice bunch of carrots, only to have some sneaky snivelling Christian fundamentalist shriek out from behind the like of the sparrow in the cat’s jaws, rise from the dead and snaffle the lot !! I thought it was souls they were interested in not fresh vegetables. And if they are not stuffing their shopping baskets ahead of everyone else, the rest of the potty zealots are plotting the kind of draconian bye laws that would not disgrace the Levellers of the Puritan Revolution!! Would you believe in Saffron Walden there is a mobile Swear Box in the Town Hall! Small irony perhaps that one of Saffron Walden’s most admired landmarks, the huge and sprawling fourteenth century chalk plaster building, The Sun Inn, became in 1647 the home and headquarters to God’s Englishman himself; Cromwell, the victor of Naseby, ' God’s Crowning Glory ‘. From here he rode out to Worcester and his destiny as the Protector of a God Fearing Commonwealth. But not before he had made his famous, or rather infamous, chilling plea for unanimity to his squabbling chums in London unable to settle on who it was who was supposed to be running this nation : ‘ Blessed Friends I beseech you in the bowls of Christ that you all of you desist from devilish division, and hang together in this most grave matter. Or yea, assuredly , I swear by His Holy Cross you shall all of you hang separately ‘ That was to his friends, mind. God alone knows what his enemies could expect. Not a man given to ambiguity. Glad I didn’t live next door to him. Though very much in step with the self righteous citizens of Saffron Walden. Like the retuning Émigrés, they seem to learn nothing and forget nothing. All of which leads nicely to talk of elephants. Or more particularly one elephant. The Museum Elephant. For you see, fittingly, the Museum Elephant found his way to Saffron Walden and he it was gave his name, or more properly that of his breed, to Elephant Green. You will all of you be doubtless aware of The Museum Elephant In case anyone isn’t this was the title afforded the majestic and tragic animal that was transported from India in 1851to be displayed at the Great Exhibition. Allegedly the first such elephant to go on public show in theses islands, he was much admired by notables, including What’s- her- name that was on the throne at the time and her batty Kraut Consort that had organized this imperial shindy. Thereafter since it was too much of a bus ride to pootle back home, he was then constrained to recoup his keep by touring the country very much the star in what was in effect, a Freaks’ Circus. His name by the way was ‘ Boo Saboo ‘, which, it later appears, meant something akin to ‘ Lifelong Friend ‘. Some friends he found here!!! Despite his imposing size, his huge fearsome tusks and his reputation as a bull elephant, it seems he was a shy even timid creature, bewildered and terrified by the novelty of his frosty and distinctly unfriendly surroundings so different from the banks of the warm, welcoming waters of the Ganges that were once his home. His predicament was not improved by the regular beatings with planks he received in order to persuade him to move in the required direction. Still less the encouragement to the onlookers to get their money’s worth by pelting him with stones and even setting off fireworks around him in order to provoke a reaction befitting ‘ The Greatest Monster from the Blackest Jungles of Her Majesty’s Realm ‘! Anyhow. To continue. Late in 1858 when the snows of the East Essex winter were at their worst and the fields were frozen hard as the heart of a vengeful woman, the unloved creature arrived in Saffron Walden as the main attraction of Mr Lehman’s ‘ Mighty Menagerie of Mythical Monsters ‘ . By now weakened by ill use, neglect and a diet, if that is the correct term, that seems to have consisted of anything tossed in front of him owing more to putrefaction than nutrition and that caused his bodily functions by now frequently to misfire, Boo Saboo was exhibited in a field of Lord Howard de Walden on his fabulous and fabled Audley End estate. Lord Howard, a descendant of Henry VIII’s Chancellor Thomas Audley, signatory of Thomas More’s Death Warrant and, as reward, his replacement, was a celebrated aristocrat with a peerless pedigree. Accordingly the animal was paraded before His Lordship and his vast array of supper guests and subsequently put on view that same evening to the paying public. At nightfall, since there was no way of restraining the beast, it was decided to tether him to the enormous central wooden oak pillar of His Lordship’s pride and joy : his celebrated palatial oak beamed barn. Yes. You can guess the outcome. Indeed they must have been either drunk or even more stupid than the natural inbreeding of the English ruling classes normally allows. A moron with a lobotomy could have predicted the result. This was a logging elephant. And not hours into the night, having brayed himself senseless to no avail, Boo Saboo did what humans had taught him to do for a living all his sad and short life. He gave an almighty yank on his mooring. And in an act of defiance akin to Samson in the Temple of Dagon almost a century before Midnight’s Children won back their freedom from their conquerors, he struck an audacious blow at the hub of the British Empire, reducing His Lordship’s prized and precious barn to an unsightly mountain of matchwood. Thereafter at once he legged it over the fields in the dead of night still chained to his log like some mammoth version of Marley’s Ghost. And on reaching the road he took a sharp left….. for Bishop Stortford !?! What on earth the pitiful vandal hoped to gain by visiting Bishop Stortford is unclear. Even the dotty deranged inhabitants of Saffron Walden would not be seen dead in Bishop Stortford. With a little more foresight he could just as easily turned right for Cambridge, where as a clapped out, useless and thick skinned incontinent, he may at least have been eligible for a College Fellowship. No matter. He did not get far. The thunderclap that signalled the barn’s collapse appears to have woken the entire county and the Magistrate was roused from his bed and the Militia mobilised and saddled with muskets and flaming torches. Poor Boo Saboo, bellowing and still dragging his log was then pursued through the surrounding hamlets in a farcical chase resembling a nineteenth century pilot for the Keystone Cops, leaving in his wake a trail of destruction that included in addition to the barn, gates, fences and hedgerows, a flattened pig pen along with its equally flattened unlucky slumbering inhabitant. He was finally cornered on a sloping Green not far from the village of Wendens Abo. There, at bay, exhausted and petrified with fear, he is said to have missed his footing on the frosted grass and keeled over, seen by the light of the torch flames to go down with the slow and sad grace of a sinking galleon. Unable, or, more likely, unwilling to rise again, his tormentors left him till daybreak might afford them an opportunity to decide his fate. They needn’t have troubled themselves. Sometime in the blind and biting cold darkness before dawn, Boo Saboo’s unhappy life ended, alone and abandoned in a foreign field, far from the sunshine to which he had so often awoken amongst his herd so long ago in his native land. Fittingly Nature covered him with a shroud of snow. A veil to hide the legacy of human cruelty. Faced with the trouble and expense of removing his vast frozen carcass it was decided to await the thaw and thereupon dig an outsized hole where he lay and turf him in it. Possibly from some semblance of sentiment at last, a chestnut tree was planted to mark the spot. And there he lay, forgotten as the tree grew from sapling to size, and the seasons turned,summer upon summer . He who in his life had harmed no one only to be criminally mistreated himself. Granted the unfortunate pig may not have seen it that way, but it wasn’t personal and the elephant had to boot entertained many. Forgotten, that is, until a century later, fired with post war civic zeal and armed with Ratepayers money aplenty Essex County Council hit upon the wheeze of naming many of their anonymous country patches. A task which included a name for the Green where Boo Saboo now rested. Wouldn’t you just know it, they devolved this cute little jolly upon their most assiduous busybody. And believe me, there was no body busier in promoting moral rectitude to the irritation and misery of her fellow citizens than that busiest of bodies, Essex County Council Member for the Walden Ward, Councillor Mrs Nellie Puttyman. A woman with religion most famous, or rather infamous, incidentally, for promoting a proscription against public ‘ conoodling ‘ on municipal property. All Seeing ; All Knowing Luminary of The Friends. Leading light of the Watch Committee. Doyen of the Police Consultative Council and self appointed Guardian of the Godly and of Public Decency, Mrs Nellie Puttyman, widow of the late Alderman Cecil Norbert Puttyman, OBE, former Mayor of Walden, appeared the ideal candidate to provide an elephant with an obituary. Not least since this obscene wobbling mountain of human flesh could easily pass for one herself. Decked out in her favourite pink blouson pink hat, pink coat and pink shoes and, one has to assume, pink unmentionables, to meet, better, encounter Essex County Councillor Mrs Nellie Puttyman was an experience akin to making the acquaintance of a giant animated blancmange. She it was who, presumably taken by the Spirit, hit upon the blindingly original notion of calling the place ‘ Elephant Green ’ [ any direct reference to Boo Saboo was thought too ‘ colonial ‘ ] and directed that a tin plaque to that effect be prepared for a ceremonial naming. By herself, of course. On the day quite a gathering had been arranged. The Green was surrounded with bunting and in addition to the local inhabitants and invited dignitaries and onlookers, the children from the nearby Primary School, having been fed a suitably sanitised version of the story of Boo Saboo, were assembled to sing a song. At a signal the proceedings began. An improvised band also from the school struck up. And as Essex County Councillor Mrs Puttyman waddled forward to mount a small podium set in the dappled sunshine of the chestnut tree, it has to count as one of those matchless strokes of malicious burlesque you could not invent, that the wide eyed and enthusiastic infants launched into an enthusiastic rendering… ‘ Nellie the Elephant packed her trunk and said Goodbye to the circus……..’ ! Most people would have spotted the cruel irony of the choice of music .But Essex County Councillor Mrs Nellie Puttyman was not most people. Like Hardy’s Henchard she had been conceived, cast and constructed on too grand a scale much to notice the idle minutiae of life. And, again like Michael Henchard, herein lay the roots of her tragic, literal, fall from grace. For as she called out from her podium with all the grace of a hooting beast on heat…. ‘ Hip Pip Hurrah!......Hip Pip Hurrah!!...........Hip Pip Hurrah for……… ’, It got worse! The back rail of her podium on which she trusted her weight, manifestly inadequate for such a Herculean contest, gave up its hopeless struggle against the forces of gravity and with an ear splitting crack reminiscent of the demise of His Lordship’s beloved barn, broke. ‘Boo Sabooooooooo….Ohooooooooo!!!!’ Instantly Essex County Councillor Mrs Nellie Puttyman, taken aback in more ways than one, was sent somersaulting backwards down the sloping Green, feet over head in a triumph of velocity over anatomy. And as if that were not bad enough as the ribald, rolling roadshow came to halt against a nearby Horse Trough with an excruciating thump the like of the Freight Train striking the buffers, the big blustering broad was beached, legs breached akimbo, staging before the good Christian people of Essex and their mandarins, a very indecent Great Exhibition of her very own. No not the seemly undergarments of a dignified widow… BUT A BLACK STRAP ON DILDO OF ELEPHANTINE PROPORTIONS PROTRUDING FROM A PAIR OF RACY RED RUBBER DRAWERS !!!! In the confusion and to cover embarrassment one of the teachers threw himself between the open-mouthed infants and the outrageous obscene spectacle. And in a final twist worthy of Brian Rix at his best signalled to the children, who cried out on cue in innocent unison : ‘ Hurrah for Councillor Mrs Puttyman!!... Hurrah for Boo Saboo!!’ I understand Mrs Nellie Puttyman retired from public life immediately subsequent to these events and soon afterwards moved out of the area. There is nothing further I or anyone else could add. Save to wonder if mischievous ghost of a wronged creature had once again taken his revenge on the humbug of a heartless world. I like to think so. That’s why when I open my window on a Spring morning to watch the pushy sun elbow his way through the clouds over Elephant Green I recall the old Gaelic blessing… ‘ You shall never be lost or lifeless, you who leave your laughter behind’. Sometimes, above the birdsong, distantly but distinctly, I think I decipher the echo of a trumpeting elephant…… Surely not……. Nevertheless,…. HURRAH FOR BOO SABOO!!! Slan! And my warm compliments to you all.
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