Guitars and Birds and Princes, Oh my…

A chance viewing of an odd correlation this morning led me to wondering how many times Woodstock has changed the world.

1. Today in 1969 there was a bit of a festival in a dairy farm in New York State. It is noted as one of the defining moments in music history. Indeed, I gather the cows stopped giving milk that day and delivered cottage cheese from then on. Several of the biggest music acts in the world refused to attend because it would be a field full of hippies. Most of those bands are now considered hippies!

2. Today in 1330, Edward of Woodstock was born. He was a great military leader, married his cousin, had an emblem of three ostrich feathers, two illegitimate sons and died before his dad and so was never King. Although the Black Prince is pretty famous, his dad and his son are two of England’s less known Kings (Edward III and Richard II). Bummer! The Black Prince also sounds like a biopic of Malcolm X or Steve Biko or something. Take that, BNP if you’re reading!

3. Woodstock the bird from Peanuts. In a few episodes he is voiced in the form of scat singing! Apparently Woodstock wears contact lenses! He first appears in 1970, though he’d made earlier appearances under other names. A bit like Prince/Symbol/Formerly Known As… Michael Jackson curiously never changed his name, though I suppose he topped that by changing his colour and race.

4. Woodstock School is a Christian boarding school in the Himalayas! It abounds with monkeys. In 2008, the school’s principal was Mrs. Kaye Aoki. Surely she should be in a bar in Tokyo, being murdered by Japanese businessmen? Actually, Woodstock School sounds a lot like Keele University where I went: Hilly, remote and full of monkeys.

5. And finally, for now. Woodstock House/Palace in Oxfordshire, UK. After the English Civil War, Cromwell’s parliamentarian buttholes (sorry… Royalist tendencies showing through) went to survey the property and came up against a (ghost?) known now as the ‘Devil of Woodstock’. Described as something between a large dog and a bear, the Devil apparently ‘paced about their room for half an hour before disappearing under the bed and chewing away at the mattress.’ It turns out that this campaign of ghostly mischief was actually the work of one Joseph Collins of Oxford who had taken the job as the servant of the Parliamentarian commissioners. With a reputation for exploding candles and practical jokes, this ‘Funny Joe’ was the Devil of Woodstock. I like him already.

(I almost added the Battle of Tom’s Brook a.k.a the Woodstock Races, in the American Civil War, but I have a soft spot for Johnny Reb, and it was an embarrassing battle for them.)

Oh, and… One of my Books (Marius’ Mules) will be on www.historical-fiction.com as a giveaway any time now. I will also be adding either a guest blog or something else to Arleigh’s excellent site. Also as fab news for me, the Guisborough Bookshop (in North Yorkshire, UK) has agreed to stock my books and put up a display for ‘a number of weeks’. Yay me. So anyone reading in the Teesside area, please do go buy a copy in a week or two, once I’ve got it set up.