OLIVE R HARDY

Ah, Yes!
The golden age of silent comedy, where you didn't need to bother with a script, just an insert card that would appear on-screen with the word "Golly!" done in elaborate curlicues and scrolling penwork, and nobody minded as long as you came up with inventive ways to injure your fellow man.  For myself, I always found the industrial mincing-machine to be hilarious; your mileage may vary.
      Oliver Hardy was one half of the comedy duo Laurel and Hardy, which you ought to know but may not, some of you being too young to appreciate slapstick rendered in black and white.

"What do you mean, "hefty"?"

     Here an aside.  Yes, yes, it's early for an aside.  Once again, whose blog is it?  If I can continue?  I can?  Thank you.  Thank you so much.  Laurel and Hardy, where Stan Laurel was BRITISH, actually, a minor point that may have slipped your minds.  Charlie Chaplin was British, too.  Buster Keaton was South Canadian but maintained such a cinematic sang froid that I think we can claim him as an honorary Brit, too.
     There you have him, Oliver Norvell "Babe" Hardy.  I don't know why the "Babe" nickname, unless it was ironic, as he was a very hefty chap indeed.  That, of course, was part of his appeal, since it contrasted so well with the very skinny Stan Laurel*.

Stan and Ollie much amused; policeman much less so

     Typically, none of this has anything to do with what follows.  Sorry!

"Warfare And Agriculture In Classical Greece" By Victor D. Hanson
Now, this is a very interesting book, at least to those of us with an interest in the culture and society of historical Greece, not to mention it's warfare.  At the time VDH is writing of, circa the fourth century BC, armies of hoplites - the soldier of the day - would invade the territory of their enemy at the drop of a hat.  The Greek city-states, which have been long held up as models of civilisation, were always going at it with each other in ding-dong duels of destruction.

A Greek polis

     Typically, the invading army would devastate the areas they marched through, seeking to draw out the defenders in a pitched battle.  Prior to VDH's work it was assumed by various scholars that this "devastation" meant leaving a blasted wilderness behind, devoid of anything except an ashy landscape swept by occasional zephyrs** (the agriculturally relevant crops we are talking here are wheat and barley, grapes and olives).

A Greek staple - no, hang on a minute -

     Not so!  As VDH points out, there was a very narrow window of opportunity to catch crops in the field when they were dry and flammable.  Vines simply do not burn, and olive trees are extremely difficult to destroy by fire, since they simply sprout again in spring.
     In fact, it is very, very difficult to destroy an olive tree.  When mature their trunks are extremely thick and it takes immense effort to chop down a single tree.  If the bark is "girdled" then they still don't die, merely reverting to wild olive above the removed bark.  If cut down then they simply sprout again in the spring.  In fact the only way to kill an olive tree is to dig it up, and, given the enormous root system of enormous roots, this again is a tremendously difficult and time-consuming job.
     Hence the blog title for today, about the hardy olive - Olive r hardy.

Clearly an inspiration for Captain Scarlet

Looking Back In Anger, Forward In Trepidation
As some of you may be aware, we have recently had some of that horrid white stuff folks call "snow" here in the Allotment of Eden, an inch or two of which causes utter pandemonium across the country.  Councils throw up their collective hands in horror, drivers reduce their average speed to 23 m.p.h. and schoolchildren attempt to murder one another will rock-hard balls of ice.

A comet, which is: a ball of ice, hard and rocky.

     Now, I am getting a lift into work today, with in-drive entertainment provided by the Flophouse, so that's good.  Coming home, however, I shall be cast upon the tender mercies/flinty heart/malware-infested mainframe of First Bus.  As I posted this morning, let's see how a snowflake or two traumatises them.
     Updated addendum:  clearly they didn't want to risk a highly unstable double-decker tonight, so we got a lower-centre-of-gravity single decker, that was immediately rammed full.  Peak time, you see.

The tiny terrors that terrify today's transport

     Let me put this display of staggering ineptness in perspective.  Stan, who hails from Bulgaria, had come back to work from a visit to the family home.  He blithely reported that the temperate when he left was minus 200 Centigrade, that the snow was 120 cm four feet deep, and that everything ran as normal.  Bulgaria, Busgaria, I'll get back to you on that.

"Did someone mention Rocky?"

Right!  I've hardly touched on what I actually wanted to post about.  Well, there's always tomorrow.  

Dosvidaniya!
*  Did I mention he was British?
**  In keeping with the theme of Hellenic didactism.