He Ever Left the Pomegranate Unblemished
Concerning an ancient jock, a questionable tea-set, a ubiquitous slantiness, and a contentious salad fork.
Going the extra Milo
When people talk about the Greatest Sportspeople of All Time… well, firstly, I don’t really listen for long, because I find it hard to care (which is different from saying no-one should care. You are very welcome to care. You wouldn’t believe some of the nonsense I care about.) But secondly, it’s notable how often the nominated GOATs are still living, or at least died in the last century or so. Seems statistically unlikely.
But how could we know about great athletes of the distant past? you conveniently ask. I’m glad you conveniently do.
Milo of Croton, shown here on one of his more trying days, lived in the sixth century BC and became a by-word for strength for the rest of antiquity, like that boy who left your school a few years before you arrived, but your games teachers all still talked about. Only, not years, but centuries; and not your games teachers, but Cicero and Aristotle.
He won the wrestling championship at siz consecutive Olympic games. They were held, then as now, every four years, so that’s twenty four years of being the best at wrestling. At the seventh:
The challenger won not by overpowering Milo, but by avoiding him.
Coincidentally, this would also have been my strategy. But never mind the wrestling. Listen to his party tricks.
He would clasp a pomegranate in his hand and bid others try to take it from him. None could, yet after, when he released his grip, it would be found he ever left the pomegranate unblemished.
Just imagine if in the best part of three thousand years time people still remembered how hard it was to take a pomegranate off you. And yet how tender you were with pomegranates. And you’ll have to just imagine, because I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, it’s not going to happen for you. I’m sorry.
Sometimes, he would stand on a greased iron disk and challenge others to push him off of it.
I do like the casual tone of that ‘sometimes’. Sometimes, he’d do that. Sometimes he wouldn’t. Just depended how he woke up feeling. You know how it is, sometimes you feel like you could stand on your iron disk all day long, resisting attempts to push you off it. Other times you can barely even be bothered to grease it up in the morning.
He would train between Olympic games by carrying a newborn calf on his back every day. By the time of the games, he was bearing a full grown bull of four years age. He would then carry it into the stadium at Olympia, where he would kill it, cut it up, and eat the entire bull by himself.
I started writing something here about trying to imagine the bull’s sheer astonishment on the last day, but I had to stop because it was making me sad. What I will say is, I’m not sure watching a man eat an entire bull in real time is quite the spectator sport Milo presumably thought it was.
Anyway, in the end he was eaten by a wolf. Or maybe a lion, depends who you ask. What everyone agrees on, though, is that the reason the wolf or lion was able to eat him- rather than being, as you might have expected by this point, punched into the sun- was that Milo had got his hands caught in a tree he was trying to rip apart. Here’s a picture of that happening.
The wolf / lion is not pictured, I imagine because it was skulking behind some bushes muttering to himself “He does LOOK stuck. But I’m just going to give him another five minutes.”
And what is his legacy? Well, in 1934 an Australian chemist called Thomas Mayne came up with a ‘tonic food’ made of malt, cocoa and that old reliable health food stand-by, sugar. He called it Milo, after ol’ pomegranate hands, and sold it to Nestlé, who marketed it in a green can with an illustration of Milo in one of his toxic relationships.
They’ve been making it ever since, (though unlike Tate and Lyle, they’ve since lost the doomed animal) and it’s now hugely popular all over the Southern hemisphere, especially Malaysia and the Phillippines.
And just think, that could have been you, if only you’d worked harder at school at not being pushed off your greased disc.
News and Ads
John Finnemore Among Other. I’m afraid the October one in Cambridge is now sold out, but there are still some tickets for the January one in Brighton.
It was going to be all sketches, but I’m now thinking of doing a first half of sketches, and a second half of one of the Double Acts (my series of two-hander half hour comedy plays), plus a Since You Ask Me. Does that seem like a good idea?
Sketch Book
Commentary Box, on
Well, first: alas, it seems that my fears were justified last week, and no, it’s not possible to comment on a Substack with a paid-subscription portion if you’re not a paid subscriber. This seems daft to me, and I’m sorry about it. But until this policy changes, or I figure out a work-around, I’m afraid Thrifty Squadron will have to peer through the bars of the Commentary Box at Spendy Squadron luxuriously expressing themselves. And that doesn’t lead to a social revolution, I don’t know what will.
Tealin very kindly says:
I'm not sure if you realise this, but the 2/3 of the post which is available to free members is *also* previously unseen writing…
This had… literally not occurred to me.
Re Parmentier and his beloved potatoes, Lia Buddle tells me that in France they say “J’ai la patate!” when they feel great. I didn’t know that, and I have the potato at learning it. Although, I to some extent lose the potato at learning that the French have a normal, boring word for potato, and don’t always call it the apple of the ground. Next you’ll be telling me they don’t always say ‘blow of the foot’ instead of ‘kick’.
V.edgy points out that the potatoes around the top of Parementier’s tomb in the photo are not carvings, they are real, fresh potatoes people bring to the cemetery and leave as a tribute.
Molly Blue Dawn expresses her keenness to try a Parmentier-style multi-course potato banquet, but then ruins it by saying:
(OK, maybe we'll skip the Brandade de Morue Parmentier, "salt cod mashed with olive oil and potatoes".)
Well, you can skip it if you like, Molly, but that sounds to me like a surefire way to get Antoine-Augustin Parmentier to haunt you.
Re teasing robots, Katie M asks if she can use ChatGPT teaching me how many Gs there are in ‘Go’ (two, apparently) as a warning to her class, and yes, she absolutely can.
And re disaffected bee-keepers… well! Since you ask Toblerones for a story of fiery wasps and non-existent compost heaps, they have an absolute roller-coaster of one.
Keys and Toffees
-Hey, did you finish the designs for the toy tea set yet?
- Yes boss, I’m just about to send… sorry, the what?
-The tea set! The nine piece afternoon tea set we’re making for the British market. Those guys love their tea! So, is it done yet? The factory’s waiting!
-Er… sorry, random question first, boss: Do you speak English?
-What? No, not a word. Why?
-No reason. All done!
And now, farewell to Thrifty Squadron, as Spendy Squadron step over the red cord to see a Venn diagram I’ve made, one set of which is marked ‘animal silhouette’, and a snippet from an early incarnation of one of the Double Acts.
Love,
The Airport