This will be arriving next year, dear reader. Not as iconic if you're Italian or American, since your centennials would be 2015 and 2017.
Anyway, I have to start making my mark as a pundit on the Great War - as it used to be called before the second unpleasantness - because probably half of my 400 military history books deal with Word War One in some way (not that I've read all of them yet) and reading and recollecting them enables me in the way of punditry over more than 99% of the UK population. At my current rate, my hex-and-counter wargame of Third Ypres might be ready by the centennial year 2017; no, I am not a quick worker!
One of the factors that fuelled the Great War's outbreak, conscription, is going out of fashion in Europe. It was never in favour here in the UK - we had it from mid-1916 onwards, and for the Second World War and a few years after, but conscription is alien to the UK and any MP proposing it is signing a political suicide-note. The major players, France and Germany, have gotten rid as well.
Why is this relevant? Well, because if the UK did have conscription prior to 1914, it would have put a severe crimp in the German General Staff's plans for war. They could plan to smash the French whilst holding the Russians at bay, then railwaying their army east to smash the Russians, but posit a third enormous army able to descend on the German coastline and their plans begin to collapse.
We will return to this subject, dear readers. Oh yes!
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| General Blackader. Yes, really. Google if you do not believe. |
Nieman-Marcus Cookies
In anticipation of next weekend, wherein the Family Connolly will be holding forth as vendors at a car-boot sale, I have been costing Nieman-Marcus chocolate chip cookies. The recipe amount comes to about £3, if we factor in not just ingredients but the gas used to bake, the electricity used to mix, the washing-up liquid, and most importantly, the time I gave up to bake them. I get paid £9.26 per hour in my daytime job, you know.
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| This is what mine look like. Honest. |
Obloquy
Which is defined as A Big Fat Criticism, Something Really Hurtful, and What Your Friends Won't Tell you. Honestly? It sounds like a butter substitute that you make cakes with when you can't afford the real thing. That, or it's French for "excellent boat-parking at the marina". Then again, it does sound like an awesome swear-word in Russian - "May your mother ***** *** ******** eels forever!" kind-of-style.
Why do we have English grammar here? because there are no tanks today! That, and your rounded BOOJUM! education, dear reader.
Tally-Ho!
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