The War of the Pig fully told

 You know I maintain that some of my best ideas come in that moment between being awake and slipping into the arms of Morpheus; you can feel the restraints of the hectoring voice of everyday sense falling away and you feel able to freewheel down the slopes of speculation, like wondering if it would be a good idea to make fellows do an aptitude test before taking up a job.  It may mean that we may get a Minister for Farms who knew one end of a cow from another or shop keepers who understood that customers were more than occasional nuisance and should be allowed, by them to depart with some of the stock rather than accounting a good day when this hadn’t happened.

 

Well, the other day I was in such a state. I’d been to the Turkish baths on the third floor and Abdul -  had given me a through going over, don’t know why he wants to be known as Abdul, real name of Kenneth, his people come from Writtle – as did Robert the Bruce’s.  I suppose it takes all sorts.  Anyway, I was laying out on the wickerwork loungers by the pool when it came to me to wonder what would this Age be remembered as.  Spain had had its Golden Age and apparently it was being hinted that the Mother Country should fess up and admit to having had a Copper Age between Stone and Bronze.  I presume it was at this time all the odd shaped spoons and under sized ornamental jugs my mother used to buy on holiday were made.  I am of the general opinion that this will be known as ‘The Exceptional Age’ and I will tell you for why.

 

Knowledge is a good and noble thing to be hoarded up for situations when you appear to be surrounded people with less than the common share, however I feel the freely available stores of it now readily available to folk has led to a contrary and mean spirit in far too many.  A chap may declared upon a general theme and almost at once a small and uncharitable voice will bring up some rare case which, while proving the proposition, does not overturn it.  I am not talking about the everyday occurrences when a fellow declares, all things considered, it has been a jolly fine day, and his significant other says, in pointed tones, that it would have been even better if someone had not dragged mud in all over the carpet.  No, I mean the other sort.  A chap declares that Europe was plunged into a deep and profound schism in 1946 and indicates that Winston Churchill, at a bit of a loose end now the British People had run out of wars for him to fight, had gone back to his former trade of making memorable speeches had referred to ‘The Iron Curtain.’  Within minutes someone will point out that Josef Goebbels had, in fact, come up with the phrase not the great man of Chartwell.  This may the case but the horrid Hun clearly didn’t do anything with it and left it to our man to actually make use of the term and anyway, what the hell has that to do with Post-War constitutional arrangements in Poland, which is what the who thing was about in the first place.

 

I say all this so that you understand that what I have to say is just between you and I and not for common broadcast as I would not wish to have Woodeats Major upset. 

 

Perhaps I should explain something first.  We at the club have always had a soft spot for a chap of an independent turn of mind and one capable of action of the more amusing kind, providing they observe the proper properties.  We like our non-conformists to nod towards conformity.  Ben Franklin was such a cove, always enjoyed his attempts to get rank bad hats to go kite-flying with him during thunderstorms.  It was some of his chums in the Boston branch of the club who decided to put one over that ill-minded bounder Fred North.  We still have the note they sent to us in the Club Museum.  ‘Have dressed up as the natives and poured tea into harbour without even warming the pot first.  That’ll teach No-hope North to get between a man and his cuppa.’  So was born the American Revolution.

 

Well, during the ensuing conflict it became necessary for the Continental Congress to have somewhere in London to call their own during the tense talks that followed the bloodshed which lead to the birth of the United States.  A room on the fourth floor annex became American sovereign territory and what with all the hurried, sweeping things under the carpet, that followed the embarrassing loss of the New World no one felt the need to go back and rescind the law and so it remains a small part of the US of A to this day.  I believe it counts as part of the District of Columbia, so residence have been able to vote in Presidential elections since 1961.  It became known as the Trinity Billiard room sometime in the nineteenth century, not for religious reasons, but because nautical chaps from that institution found it agreeable to mix there.  Go there today and you find fellows from the Royal and mercantile service and at least one cove who did a two month stint of the Woolwich Ferry.  Certainly, out of deference to things on the other side of the Pond chaps drank their rum out of tea pots during prohibition and at least one stiffly worded note about attacking ‘neutral territory’ was sent to the Reich’s Chancellery in 1940 when the Hun’s bombs damaged some plaster work.

 

Well, I was talking to Woodeats Major the other day and he is earning a modest crust writing for the ‘Bunting’ series of military monographs.  Splendid little booklets, fine lithograph prints.  Apparently they had run out of all the important wars and the end was in sight for many of the minor ones. They had done skirmishes, hold-ups and minor bruisages.  He had just finished ‘Military Opticians in the Age of Napoleon’ and he was searching around for a new topic.  Inconsequential wars was his theme and he proudly proclaimed that ‘The Pig and the Potato War’ was a war without any causalities – and he just didn’t mean those medieval ones which claimed such because no one with a coat of arms had been roughed up or the one between Holland and the Scilly Isles which nobody noticed was still going on.  No this was a war with an Admiral, a colonel and at least five warships.  I patted him on the hand, wished him well, and now feel the need to unburden myself to you.

 

The Island of San Juan is not, as one would expect, in the West Indies or somewhere off the Cantabrian Coast but tucked in to the north-western part of the Americas, and that, I believe, is where the problems started as it clearly in the wrong place.  In 1846 the Oregon Treaty had tried to sort out whereabouts in the Americas a chap stopped being a troublesome yankee and turned into a respectable subject of the Queen-Empress.  The document had said the division lay ‘"along the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver Island, and thence southerly through the middle of the said channel, and of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, to the Pacific Ocean ‘ however it was not noted by those returning from a rather good lunch that the blasted place had two, not one strait.  Mapping was only just coming out of its heroic ‘stick another mermaid on it and trust to luck’ era and all things considered attempts to clear things up had got nowhere.  Meanwhile just under 30 American settlers had arrived and set about turning San Juan into a little bit of home.

 

Now it came to pass in 1859 that one Lyman Cutlar was out checking on his potatoes, some reports say they were a variety of Mr Govat’s Belgium Blue, but this can not be confirmed, where upon he discovered a large black pig eating his crop.  A man with few porcine finer feelings  shot the swine.  Charles Griffin, whose pig it was, was not happy and demanded $100.  Cutlar would not pay and the authorities were called on to arrest the fellow.

 

To cut a long story short, Captain Pickett – he of the famous Confederate charge - arrived with troops,to defend the rights of settlers to slaughter domestic animals at will and Rear Admiral Robert Baynes brought forth warships and marines to defend the rights of pigs everywhere to eat what they damn well wanted to  Urged on to do his duty, the Admiral is believed to have told his superiors not to be a bunch of bloody fools, conflict was avoided and for the next 12 years Yankee and Red Coat gazed at their mortal foe and then settled down to a convivial time, complaining to each other about how their officers were idiots and new recruits didn’t known the meaning of proper soldiering as warriors the world over still do to this day.  The war became known as a war without causalities – ‘cept the pig.  This is not the case.

 

It can now be whispered that, actually, news filtered back to London and the fellows of the Trinity Billiard Room felt the nation’s honour had been impugned by the pig.  Fetching out the Old Glory, and just checking it had the right number of stars -a quick bit of embroidery was needed to add Oregon on to bring the number up to 33 -these nautical chaps established a barricade half way down the corridor; started singing patriotic songs and affecting accents that would have them drummed out of any musical hall you care to name.

 

It wasn’t long before someone noticed and word went round the Winter Sports Reading Room and assorted snugs and nooks that the damnable Colonials were cocking a snook at the Old Country and, well, Yorktown was unfinished business and it was time to teach those wretched Sea Fencibles a thing or two.  The Harrrington Yeomanry cavalry was embolden and substituting pluck for a  lack of horses, made a rush at the America position.  A well aimed billiard ball is capable of inflicting a nasty crack on the skull and the infirmary was soon sporting a few extra in-mates.

 

The Trinity Room was placed under siege.  After some initial squabbling when it was found that the besieging forces were some what rich in the officer classes but lacking, as it were, chaps from the sharper end of conflict and seniority disputes [did the Poona Irregular Cycle Battalion have precedence over the London North East Railway Military Police?] were finally settled the blockade was maintained with vigour.

 

Like many of the greatest military actions in the annals of our nation, the forming of an America force owed more to spur of the moment bravado than long term planning and about tea time it was noticed that the defenders, while rich in courage, were lacking in common biscuits.

 

This could not be borne.  Somehow they managed to hold on till mid evening, sharing round the mints one cove had in his pocket and making an experimental soup out of the cue chalk.   It was then noticed that some of the floorboards in the room could be lifted and a sally forth was planned.  Slipping out by way of a rope fashioned from the string in the billiard tables’ pockets, a brave party of defenders thus made it to the Cheese Pantry. 

 

Many things have been said of the Maids of the Cheese Pantry.  Some point to their grace and handsome features, though not to loudly because upsetting them is the quickest way to finding yourself with an inferior Red Leicester, kept, I suspect, just for the purpose.  It may be said they know exactly what time of the year to buy a superior Serbian Donkey milk cheese  and which Welsh farm gives the best Gorua Glas.  It had not, however, been previously noted that they can formed an improvised militia to defends their fermented cur with a speed that make Minutemen look tardy.  The attackers were routed and not without loss as a marble board wielded with care and precision can leave a nasty dent.

 

At this point the dinner gong went and sense was restored.  A quick parley was held and it was agreed a truce would be maintained until the respective governments could sort it out.  Thus ended the War of the Pig and Potato, not, as history tells us, without loss to either side, but in a two all draw, all four of whom were expected to be let out by matron the following morning.