Slave To The Rhythm

Week one of 2017 is nearly over here in Monaghan’s 4th largest workwear store and having dusted off the mince pie crumbs , accepted the fact that , despite my best efforts, it’s not possible to drink the world supply of Rioja in a week, grimaced at the adverts for body hugging spandex and lycra sports outfit which I know won’t fit me unless they include a whale bone corset and a little man from the village to heave me into it, asked the council to move a bottle bank to my front gate as it would be kinder to the environment than me having to drive all the way to their one and back daily, then rang them back to say ‘never mind’ because I’m not drinking again…ever…well, until February….wait , there are still FOUR weekends to go this month , called them back again , put all of last weekend’s Sunday newspaper colour magazines, unopened, with front covers featuring near naked Greek gods on the cover sneering about abs , caterpillar fungus diets and detox, straight in the recycling bin, and received twenty seven emails from seemingly well-meaning life coaches/Death Eaters/gurus all offering a plan…no THE plan…to make 2017 ever so slightly different to 2016…I realise that this is almost exactly the same as the first week of 2016.

 I am a slave to the rhythm….or so I thought….

Over Christmas I had such joy at witnessing my kids getting to see Spinal Tap, Alien, The Matrix and Blackadder for the first time. A record player made an appearance too and some old albums were resurrected from Granny and Granda’s attic. The combination of formative music, comedy and movies meant that lots of memories from the 80’s came flooding back.

It was that kind of Christmas….mostly. We also had this bizarre notion to introduce a new family tradition and duly took part in the Christmas Eve swim in Holywood lake. Like all Irish lakes , Holywood will suck the marrow from your bones in July, so the prospect of jumping into it on December 24th was terrifying. A crowd gathered ,made up of triple layered well wishers and thirty bluey marble hued cowering lunatics at 10.00 am, posed on the duck poo strewn jetty for shivering p-p-pfhotos and then they jumped in one by one and swam 30 metres to the pontoon to the other jetty and get out. I stood on the edge, one of the last, trying to psyche myself , failing, trying again…my Soulmate jumped in….well if she can do it…I jumped….hibernating frogs and pike were awoken from their muddy sleep on the far side of the lake, swans took flight in terror and the ghosts of the long dead Celtic chiefs that had once lived on the crannog cowered as they heard me scream under the water.

I vaguely remember surfacing and then doing my famous doggy paddle/drowning man/breaststroke combo to get to the other side. I was half way when I realised that I wasn’t breathing. A moment later my lungs recovered from the shock and spasmed back to life. I clambered out and saw something clamber out beside me….it was my daughter….I have a daughter….and something on the end of my feet that resembled offertory candles….my toes. I saw a beautiful lady up ahead , shivering , wrapped in a towel and holding out towels for my daughter and my candle toes and me. My daughter said something to this beautiful lady which sounded like ‘nun’ and I thought that it was inspiring that this young nun had taken the Catholic church to a whole new level of humanity and community participation by joining us in this swim…and she’d even brought me a towel…and then I realised that my daughter hadn’t said ‘nun’ , she’d called her ‘Mum’ which must mean….I have a wife ! And what a wife ! To think she left the nunnery for me….

We made our way to the shed where someone had placed a patio heater and some soup for us. I vaguely remembered being there before…..15 minutes before, when we’d got undressed. A little boy, nice chap with a big smile was getting dressed beside my pile of clothes. It was Elliott ! I have a son !!! A moment later Mrs.Harraghey gave me a hug…I remembered…she’s the best teacher in the world. And then Liam McCarren came over, laughing, and I remembered him…I’ve known him since we were in 4th class in primary school. He said that he’d got out of the lake before me but couldn’t leave the jetty as he was laughing so hard at me ‘swimming’ and that when he saw my face as I clambered out he thought he was going to go into hysterics ! And then I remembered that he hadn’t been funny in 4th class either….

The patio heater warmed my bones, the soup spread it’s restorative powers within and the laughs and smiles lifted my spirits.

As we made our way back to the car we all agreed that it was great to have done it but that we’d never do it again. By the time we got home we were already planning to do it again next year.

So where was I ? Hmm..Christmas….1980’s….YES ! Kodak !

In 1985 Grace Jones released ‘Slave To The Rhythm’ , a wonderful song , written mostly by Trevor Horn who had produced all the previous year’s number 1 hits for Frankie Goes To Hollywood…..the other Hollywood, the gaudy one in California, our haunted lake has only one ‘L’. Anyway, he’d written the song for FGTH and intended to release it as their follow up single to ‘Relax’ but somehow it ended up being the song of the year for Grace Jones. It is brilliant and so is the video.

The video opens with a shot of a designer cutting up a photo of Grace which was to feature as her album cover.

It was only yesterday when I looked up the video that I noticed that the photo had a Kodak label.

I’d forgotten Kodak.

In 1985 , when Grace was singing the song, Kodak was the world’s largest manufacturer of both cameras and the film that the photos were printed on. They employed 145,000 people , had a turnover of US$12 billion and four out of every five cameras sold in the United States that year was a Kodak.

It’s easy to dismiss their bankruptcy and demise over the last ten years as a result of the arrival of new technology and more exactly digital cameras , as if they were a dinosaur , unaware of the digital asteroid that caught them unawares. No , Kodak in fact , had invented the world’s first digital camera in 1975. They were well aware of it’s important and impact, but they were slaves to their own photo film business that tried to pass digital off as a fad and in a last ditch effort tried to develop a home printing business model before they realised that people generally not only preferred to take the photos digitally, they wanted to share them digitally, and they no longer even needed a camera to do it.

So, this year I will do my damndest to make sure that I don’t , and Monaghan’s 4th largest workwear store doesn’t fall into the Kodak trap of becoming a slave to our previous rhythm. We’re an ecommerce company and generally the path ahead for anyone in this wonderful line of work is clear, fight against Amazon, work with Amazon, be cannibalised by Amazon, compete on price, cut out the non-core, compete on price, cut customer service, compete on price, stop all marketing nonsense, compete on price…….quietly exit the stage.

Or, well, let’s just say that we have a few surprises up our sleeve. We won’t be cutting back on customer service or that blogging/marketing malarkey.

Before Christmas we’d sent out a blog concerning the ‘Four White Envelopes’ idea. This morning yet another of our wonderful customers sent me an email. It simply wished us a happy New Year and attached a receipt from Paypal for a €50 donation to the Capuchin Day Centre in Dublin. He asked not to be named, so can I just say, Edenderry’s Philip Duffy, your secret is safe with me.

Not a bad way to start the year is it ?

QUIZ

Tell us something new you’re going to do, or appreciate more, this year and we’ll send you a new fleece and make a donation to Brother Kevin, for the answer that we like the best, or find funniest.

Toodles,

Paul