Tanks For The Memory

Damn.  Missed The Date
I have not posted a photo of a tank for lo! these many months, but rest assured Conrad is still as interested as ever in these large, expensive, dangerous machines.  He is also rather taken with a trailer for "Fury", which appears to feature the M4A3E8 Sherman*.  Anyway, September 15th was the 98th anniversary of the tank going into action at Flers-Courcellette, during the Somme campaign in 1916.  Expect a LOT of guff in the media in 2016, especially September.  Remember, gentle reader, that you can always refer to BOOJUM! for a cooler and more analytical review of what happened one hundred years ago.

But no current affairs

TWTIK**
More interesting throw-away words and quips from this volume today.  "Snell", which may be aged Scottish idiom because I have no idea what it means, nor does the internet.  "Douce" apparently means sober and sedate.  "Daughters of Rahab", in Doctor Dunn's allusional way, are ladies of easy virtue***.  "Taal" is also mentioned alongside Flemish, leading Conrad to suspect it a dialect of same, but it isn't really clear and once again Mister Internet is no help.  Bad internet!  Naughty internet!  No biscuit!

Stoicism And Epicureanism
These both crop up in "I, Claudius", of which more anon.  They are schools of Classical Hellenistic philosophy, taken up in the Roman Republic and Empire, which Conrad felt he could describe as "self-denial" and "self-indulgence".  This simplistic analysis proved rather enormously inadequate when goggling at the sheer amount of detail Wikipedia provided.  Rather than skit I shall skate, in the sense of "Right! Enough of that, NEXT - "

Snake Plissken.  World's baddest Epicure.

"I, Claudius"
Conrad picked up a splendidly-bound edition of this novel, only because the author had served in 2nd Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers - who are the subject matter of TWTIK - and I also have his autobiography of that time^.
     At present he is describing Germanicus's campaigns against the Germans in, obviously - obviously! - Germany.  The German tribes are obviously the enemies of Imperial Rome, but Graves doesn't over-exaggerate their negative traits.  He also makes the point that they drank beer in enormous quantities, then feels (in character as Claudius) he needs to explain exactly what "beer" is.  Conrad does remember that the Greeks, and hence the Romans (who liked to copy the Greeks as they were so sophisticated), drank wine rather than beer, and they took it well-watered.

Beer.  No, Bear.  No, Bear beer.  Oh I'm confused!

     All this is even more interesting when you consider Graves full name:  Robert Von Ranke Graves.  Yes, German heritage there, though he dropped the Von Ranke bit when in the British Army.  He was an officer, you see, and being called a Ranker would rankle a bit^^.

"Maquillage"
Again, Conrad has to apologise for Oscar his subconscious.  This word popped up in the forefront of my mind whilst walking past the Call Statistics Monitor.  I can only think that it's because Anna was sat nearby, and she has a business thus:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/KA-make-up/565261433544465
    
     - otherwise I got nothing.
     Oh, the word!  Sorry.  It is French, as you might have guessed, and it means "Cosmetic" or "Makeup".


Confusing English:  Sweetmeat versus sweetbread
If ever you come across someone who tells you that English is easy to learn, poke them in the solar plexus^^^ with a bamboo skewer.  I give you the above two words.  
     Firstly, "Sweetmeat".  This contains no meat.
     The word refers to confectionery or sweets. Got that?  Okay.
     "Sweetbread" has nothing to do with sweets, baked, yeasted or wheat products.
     They are a species of offal - the thymus, testicles or pancreas of the calf and lamb.
     There you go.  English.  In some parts of the Galaxy speaking it is a shooting offence.

Sweet

Bread.
Like I said, frightful.

Finally
Conrad was a bit distraught at the vanishing of his specially-commissioned locker artwork last week.  However, fate took a hand, as did Anna~, and the dancing doggie duo will shortly be back on the locker but CEMENTED ON.

BOOJUM! - ever ready to exploit small cute animals

     (Anna found this on the floor and saved it)




* Possibly with the Horizontal Volute Spring Suspension system, it was dark and I couldn't see properly
** Oh, come on, you should know this by now!  "The War The Infantry Knew" by Captain J.C. Dunn
*** Er, that is, prostitutes.
^  See?  It's all circular and frightfully clever.
^^ I repeat, frightfully clever.
^^^ Then tell me where exactly this obscure anatomical region is.
~ Nope, no Executive Producer credit for you here.