Do you remember the Inn Miranda?
The idea for this little project came about after a post my
sister put on Facebook the other day, my sister is about 5 years older than me
and thankfully we share the same sense of humour and the same love of the
strange and unusual as well as sharing many of the same influential people, music,
poems and films that we grew up with or indeed being the person to influence my
music and film preference in many ways. The quote she posted was “Do you
remember the inn Miranda” which is from a poem by Hilaire Belloc (I’ve just
realised that he has the same surname as Indiana Jones’ rival in Raiders of the
lost ark :-) titled “Tarantella” which was written for Miranda Mackintosh whom
Belloc met at an inn in the Pyrenean hamlet of Canranc on the river Aragon in
1909. He wrote the poem some 20 years later as a new year present for the
Scottish Miranda. But this blog actually has very little to do with the poem
itself but more to do with a moment in time that could be recaptured for the
purpose of reminiscing happy times and a touch of nostalgia splattered with
what our Mother says is us going of into our own little world.
If you are over 30years old, you may remember that one of
the best things on TV in the early 90’s was a comedy duo called Reeves and
Mortimer who brought a unique brand of comedy to us in the form of “Vic Reeves
Big Night Out” and then “Reeves and Mortimer” on a regular weekly basis on BBC
2. We taped* the show every week so we could watch it over and over again and
as usual we would share it with many different people who would come round for
a drink on a Friday night at My Sisters house. These were very good times.
We love to quote from Reeves and Mortimer and can still re-enact
large chunks of script with ease which is a perfect way to allow our minds to
instantly jump back to a wonderful period in comedy and in our lives. In the
last couple of years Sky Gold has started to show these wonderful programs
again and only through watching them with my own children have I realised how
much I quote them as they now sit there saying the next lines before they are
spoken. My youngest daughter even has a stuffed toy called Gregory Mitchel, the
gorgeous sandy coloured Labrador after one of the regular characters on the show.
Anyway I’m starting to ramble so back to the point, “Do you
remember the Inn Miranda?”
Quite simply when we had recorded the show off BBC2 we got a
little bit of what was on before and after and when this particular season was
aired, the BBC were running a series about poetry and would have somebody
reading a poem after every program, one of these poems was “Tarantella” and the
bit that stuck was “Do you remember the Inn Miranda”.
Simple really, and as many people say “You had to be there”,
but what strikes me is just how one simple thing can trigger so much memory and
emotion.
On remembering this and actually looking up the poem after
all these years, another memory was triggered.
We used to (and still do to this day) love to discover
misheard lyrics, usually on my part I must admit, as Forest Gump would say “I
am not a smart man” and I have for years been singing wrong lyrics to songs and
miss quoting films etc etc, and with this poem (god knows what I had been
drinking that night) remembered the next part as “Do you remember the inn
Miranda?” “Do you remember the inn?” “With the pills and the thrills and ills
and the old.” “Do you remember the inn Miranda?” Which as some of you may
recognise as part of a Happy Mondays album title and the rest just some shit I
made up. This must be said of many of my memories; there is always something I
have seen or heard mixed with the constant barrage of thoughts I attempt to
make sense of inside my tiny mind.
I think My sister Kath is the person who is to blame for
much of this so she is who this first Bloggart is an ode to, there will be more
about her as she was quite integral to both “building my character” and as this
points out, influencing me as I grew up.
Things to share from this Bloggart are below.
http://www.kissthisguy.com
this is a brilliant website we found while sitting in an office we shared many
years ago, it is basically an archive of misheard lyrics, people post what they
thought the lyric was and what it actually is and most importantly the moment
they realised they were singing it wrong. Well worth a look.
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/tarantella/
This is a link to the poem I have mentioned Tarantella which as it turns out is
quite a good read ( sounds a bit like early 80’s rap haha ) and it is on the
poem hunter website which is a pretty good (not always accurate) resource for
poetry that I have used for a while. The new I-Phone app is actually better
than the website because you don’t get the electronic voice reading the poem
videos on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1yMrYke5v0
This is a collection spanning the first series of Reeves and Mortimer and tells
the whole story of Gregory Mitchell the Gorgeous sandy coloured Labrador and
his partner in crime Thomas Corkindale, I owe so much to these Fellah’s, I have
spent so many happy moments quoting the amazing characters that they created
and bonded with some very wonderful people who can share in there
quote-ability. I would recommend anyone to catch them on SKY gold or to but the
DVD’s on Amazon.
