Rock lobster

After including the lobster card in the previous post I decided to do a bit of research. It turns out that the lobster pictured was, as the caption said: 'the most famous of all the shellfish'. He was adopted at the age of three months by the recently widowed Mrs Jeffers who emigrated from Maine to the small seaside town of Mudeford in the UK in 1979. She and her worldly goods travelled over by ship specifically so that she could take Simeon (as she called him) with her; in fact a specially adapted lobster pot was suspended from the ship's deck for the duration of the journey so that her pet crustacean could enjoy the homely pleasures of the Atlantic waters en route.

On settling down in their new surroundings in England, Mrs Jeffers and her lobster became enthusiastic members of the local Bridge Club and Simeon gained some notoriety after being taught to play 'Bourrée' on a miniature descant recorder. He was even featured performing this to an enraptured Sue Lawley on BBC 'Nationwide' some time in 1981 but sadly no footage of this exists.

However, his story doesn't have a happy ending. Mrs Jeffers started a relationship with a local electrician who by all accounts was a bit of a cad. Jealous of the obvious affection between Simeon and his owner, he said he was going out to get a fish'n'chip supper one evening and whilst Mrs J was bringing in the washing he surreptitiously placed Simeon in a Tesco bag and took him with him to 'Oh My Cod' where witnesses say he was greeted very warmly.  Simeon was never seen again and we can only assume the terrible thing that must have happened to him that fateful night.

But of course you can't believe everything you read on the web (not even on this blog).  I mean, it is with some incredulity that I read about the 19^th century French poet Gérard de Nerval who apparently had a pet lobster called Thibault that he took out on a leash to walk on the Parisian streets. This is, unsurprisingly, a little better known than the tale above and you can read more about it here

Apparently you can keep lobsters as pets if you have them in an aquarium and they're quite easy to please in spite of their grumpy demeanour, eating a variety of foods and generally loafing about all day.  A piece of lobster trivia: they can amputate their own claws, legs and antennae if need be to get out of a dangerous situation, and grow them back. Kind of makes the idea of playing a miniature descant recorder a little less ridiculous.

Ridiculous or not, depending on your taste, is Salvador Dali's Lobster Telephone (aka Aphrodisiac Telephone) which he created in 1936.   Lobsters and telephones were sexually symbolic in Dali's work.  I know you already know what it looks like but, go on, have another peek...

Back in the groovy early '70s my mum's favourite piece of furniture was a 'lobster pot' stool made out of wicker. It looked like this:

As I'm sure you can imagine it went very well with the macramé wall hangings in our house.  I loved that stool.

I can't have a lobster pot stool or a lobster aquarium or a lobster telephone but I would happily indulge my lobster love with this dress:

This was created a few years ago by the label The Rodnik Band which has wonderful pop art inspirations and I must admit I'm rather taken with it.  I'd be more likely to wear it than this other outfit of theirs – although I applaud the 'presence' of  'pubic hair' and I'd be curious to see the reactions it could provoke. Especially if accessorised with a lobster on a leash....

(Well, of course!)

Outsiders of the world unite

He had pale blond hair which hung limply around his ears and down to his shoulders, with an ill-advised straight-across fringe that did little to draw attention away from his huge, hooked nose.  Skinny to the point of bony, I recall that his limbs looked too long for his body and that his fingers looked too long for his hands.  Large feet, too.  Always inside Clarks Wayfarers shoes (we used to call them ‘Cornish Pasties’.  If you know the footwear I mean you'll know why).  They were just visible beneath the hem of his light brown and highly unfashionable flared cords. 

Then there was his voice.  I first met him when we were 16 but, even at 30 (the age he was when I last saw him briefly) it was as if it hadn’t quite broken yet.  It oscillated unpredictably between high and low notes, and it took a while to get used to realising that the variation in octave didn’t actually indicate surprise or fright or any other emotion.  There was just something not quite right with his voicebox which gave him a strange kind of involuntary yodel.

I spent three years in  his company at art college when we were in our teens;  he became one of my best mates there.  I liked him, I felt safe with him, felt like I understood him.  Plus, being shy too, I was comfortable enough with him to really be myself and to not feel inferior or intimidated.   Our friendship was liberating.  We’d frequently go to the town’s record shop at lunchtime and browse through the album racks, I’d take the piss out of the heavy metal LPs he pored over while he laughed at the names of some lesser known bands I searched for.  I won him over to the B52s for a while, though - I remember that.  Like many really shy people who find themselves treated as outsiders, he had a great sense of humour - nicely dry and often wickedly caustic.  And he was the most wonderful artist, the best in the class by a long stretch.  He had an incredible imagination and an amazing talent for difficult perspectives and angles that the rest of us would never even begin to attempt  (in fact I still won’t).  But, the last I heard of him, he was long-term unemployed, long-term single and living alone in a town centre tower block bedsit.  I just don't think he had what it takes to fit.

There’s no punchline to this post, no twist, nor revelation – I don’t even know quite why I started thinking about my old college mate in the first place!  I suppose I was just wondering why it is that some of us feel like ‘outsiders’ (even if in disguise…) and others don’t.   Who decides what the ‘inside’ is?  And who decides what fits in it? 

This is the song I turned him on to.  Funny how you remember these things.

And it still sounds great to me!