JON SNOW

This Will Take A While To Develop -
 - which is business as usual around here.  Ah, the luxury of not having an editor!  Or a definite word limit; I aim for 750 as a minimum, but this can easily be exceeded if I get on a roll.  Creativity - you know how it is.
     Anyway, back to the First Unpleasantness and the Italian Front, which I'll bet you knew nothing about.  I mentioned this earlier in the week, thanks to a prompt from the Youtube channel 'The Great War: Out of the Trenches", and a very cold Indy Neidell.  Art?

Indy plus crew

     Just to recap and set the scene again.  The fighting here between Italians and Austro-Hungarians was amongst the mountains, up to two miles above sea level.  Things were bad enough in spring and summer, as it is never fun when your fellow man is doing his level best to shuffle you off this mortal coil.  In autumn and winter the weather made things even worse, as the temperatures plummeted well below freezing; perhaps 45C below zero when the wind-chill got factored in.  Over on the Western Front the weather might make you ill - it certainly wouldn't kill you stone dead in a matter of hours, as with this war in the clouds.  I think another picture is warranted.  Art?

Comparatively warm inside their homely glacier

     An environment, as you can see, dominated by snow.  This is proper snow - Laura, Italian colleague, was describing snowfall 4 metres yards deep in her part of the country, which is a bit beyond what the feeble Allotment of Eden can manage.  Art?

We try.

      "Yes yes yes," I hear you chunter.  "Where, exactly, does this "JON" bit come in?"
     Er - welllll I was being a wee bit cheaty and click-baity there, I confess.  I should have more properly put it "J.O.N." as it's anacronym, although I don't think the punctuation copies across to Facebook.*
     Darting wildly off-track (except not really) we then jump across the Adriatic to the Balkans, where the whole First Unpleasantness began.  If you recall, Gavrilo Princip of the Black Hand perforated a couple of Hapsburg notables with bullets, and began the whole sorry business.

Gavrilo

     Here an aside.  Ol' Gav wasn't promptly shot on the spot after his little assassination binge, and indeed only died in 1918 from tuberculosis, which is a bit of a bummer if you're an assassin expecting to go out in a blaze of glory.  The Austro-Hungarians not as sinisterly bloodthirsty as painted, it seems.
     Anyway!  Ol' - actually Young but that doesn't contract in an amusing manner - Gav was a member of a pan-Yugoslavian - er - 'movement' or 'a terrorist' depending on where you stood:  the Order of the Black Hand.
     And what is Italian for "Yugoslavian" but "Jugoslavien".
     And what is Italian for "Order" but "Ordine".
     And what is Italian for "Black" but "Nero".
     There you have it:  thanks to J.O.N. there is martial involvement in the snows.

You were expecting this, weren't you?

Meanwhile, Back In Westeros -

As you know, Conrad is ever one to offer advice to people in sticky situations, and that at the end of an obscure cult television series known as  "Game of Thrones" was pretty damn sticky.

     To recap: the Army of the Dead, essentially tens of thousands of zombies, has gotten over the wreckage of The Wall and is poised to stagger rampant over the lands south of the breached mega-structure, led by the White Walkers.

Close enough.

     Liam, who unlike most of you is familiar with this minor entertainment, postulated that the Army of the Dead will remain in a frozen state as they lumber south, because Winter has arrived and will either follow in their footsteps or precede them.

Winter.  For the unfamiliar

     Well!  This rather countradicts Conrad's suggested strategy for Jon.  My idea was to evacuate everything out of the way of the invading horde, merely leaving a small baiting decoy force in their path.  Inexorably they would draw the wights into conflict with the armies of Cersei, and then merely have to clear up what remains.  The southern heat, ran my assumption, would rapidly turn the wights into merely mobile mince and a lot of them would fall apart before reaching King's Landing** thanks to the sub-tropical heat.

Thus

     I still think my idea has merit, because those shambling wights are still going to have to plod thousands of miles - if it's that far, my memory's a bit hazy - and a lot of them will have fallen apart before getting to grips with Cersei.  All Jon needs to do is follow and build big bonfires.  Simples!***

 

Wow, over count already and we've only covered two topics, although said topics are quite broad.

 

I Was Right

Right, I tell you! And not just in my own head.  Last night, at Pub Quiz, one of the questions was "What group was Vince Clark in besides Yahoo and Depeche Mode"?

Yahoo.  Maybe.

     Of course Conrad was in there immediately with "The Assembly", which was a short-lived and rather obscure group with Fergal Sharkey on vocals.  Art?

THE PROOF!

     And the quizmaster stated that the answer was "Erasure".

     Pah!^

 

 

 

*  A rock-solid excuse I am sticking to.

**  I apologise for using so much jargon, yet it adds to the atmosphere, doesn't it?

***  Except that would make for a very short series.  It can't be that simple, surely?

^  To be said in a Loud Disgusted Voice (Conrad's default)