A Bit Before Your Time
I think it stars a young
Elizabeth Taylor.
As I sit here with my cup of
coffee – instant coffee at that – if you could see me then you’d probably
crinkle your brow a tad. Feel free to
crinkle even if you can’t see me – I’ve painted sufficient of a word picture to
make you feel as if you’re sitting alongside your humble scribe.
Yes, coffee – instant – I can leave this
bit out from now on, alright? – because it takes toooo long and creates too
much mess if I were to brew a pot of loose leaf, and there’s no electric hob to
heat up my Italian cafetiere.
Anyway, that’s nothing to do with what I
wanted to bang on to begin with, which was – the Coincidence Hydra fastening
it’s teeth in my tender nethers. Again! This hasn’t happened for a while, so I was
getting a bit hopeful. But no! For Conrad’s behind is a piquant and tasty
morsel.
| The Coincidence Hydra (What? You expected a pic of Conrad's buns?) |
You see, I happened to take note of that
character Polonius, who is from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”. We’ll get to that in a little while. Ol’ Pol, by all accounts, is a thorough
rascal, a knavish churl – or would that be a churlish knave? – and is quite the
rotter.
Here an aside. The name “Polonius” means “Of Poland” and,
were I to hail from that region, I’d be pretty offended at Windbag Willy’s
characterisation. The Poles, frankly,
are not people you want to offend.
 |
| The Poles hate Shakespeare, too! |
Back on track. There I was, reading “Have Spacesuit Will
Travel” and guess who crops up in the text?
None but Polonius.
I wish the universe would stop trying to
hint darkly at whatever’s going on and just tell me via Facebook.
Now that’s out of the way, let the
gaily-apparelled motley begin it’s drunken stagger!
Shakespoke
Back to Ol’ Pol. Do you see a pattern developing here? He it was, via the Barf of Avon, who wittered
on wisely in “Hamlet”, who was Danish.
And who ends up dead. And all his
family with him. Way to go, Will, you’re
really racking up points on the Continent.
So –
“To thine own self be true.”
Because deceiving is bad for
you.
Lying to people is a curse,
Lying to yourself is much worse.
Actually I’m not too sure about that, I
lie to myself all the time and I’m fine**.
 |
| Close enough |
Apropos
Of Nothing
In fact it is of something, I
just wanted to use “apropos” in a sentence.
It’s French, you know.
You may have noticed that my Header for
BOOJUM! has changed, and now sports a rather evocative painting – hang on, who
is it by? <goes to check> British artist John Harris. It illustrates the Okie city of New York New
York, encountering a vessel in deep space.
 |
| Some of John's other work. |
The author James Blish describes the
city’s bruising encounter with the Hruntan Empire’s ‘Duchy of Gort’. The protagonist, Mayor John Amalfi, is
grateful that the city’s armoury hadn’t been updated recently, as there is
apparently a piece of 40th Century kit called a “Canceller” that the
Hruntans might have been able to engineer.
“What?
That doesn’t sound either sinister or impressive, Conrad,” I hear you
say. “Does it get rid of overdraft
charges or pencil entries on the crossword?”
No, it cancels suns.
“Oh.”
Oh indeed.
A
Lesson From History
Pay attention at the back,
there. As you ought to know by now,
Conrad is an Olympic-level bore on military history. WAKE UP!
We shall now travel back in time 99.5
years, to the last big German offensive of 1918, known as the “Kaiserschlacht”
or Kaiser’s Battle. It was mounted in
March of that year, and was the last gasp desperate gamble of the Teuton’s
generals. They had to win, win big and
win right away, or they’d lose, as the South Canadians were pouring into France
at an alarming rate. The Teuton high
command had sneeringly dismissed the South Canadians as being unable to bring
an army to the table before 1919, so the hundreds of thousands arriving fresh
and eager in early 1918 – a year early! – put the wind up the Kaiser and co.
 |
| Though not, obviously, from the Teuton point of view |
The German army, on borderline starvation
rations, short of everything, with what they had frequently ersatz, aware that
their home front was equally starving, had been told that things were even
worse on the Allied side. This was due to the result of the U-boat blockade –
they were told.
O dearie me! What happened when the Allied line was pushed
way back by the offensive? Why, the
Teutons in the ranks found literal mountains of food and provisions piled up in
wild abundance in huge dumps.
They had been lied to. Consistently and at length. Consequently they were not happy – that
U-boat blockade was a mirage. The Allies
weren’t starving at all. Morale took a
big knock, and this helped to diminish their performance.
 |
| Allied supply dump |
Nor was that all. The ever-hungry stubble-hoppers stopped to
plunder said supply dumps, which again upset the attack timetable. They gorged themselves into a stupor with the
food (much like Conrad on a cruise ship) and drank themselves into paralysis
with looted alcohol (much like Conrad on a cruise ship). Again, this upset performance and timetable;
there are accounts of whole German units being wiped out as they advanced,
drunk out of their skulls.
 |
| Probably dreaming of sauerkraut and weiner schnitzel |
“Illuminating and educational, Conrad,” I
hear you humbly acknowledge. “But what
relevance does it have for the world of today?”
I’m glad you asked. There isn’t space or time to go into it here,
but there is a parallel, very much so in a contemporary way.
Well, here we are at getting on
for 1,000 words, which is well over the usual amount. I’m typing this up at work, and will
conceivably add a few more words at home once I load up the pictures. So much for brevity being the soul of wit!
-
Hang
on, did Windbag Willy come up with that one?
Dog Buns! He did, and in “Hamlet”, too. Damn
that Coincidence Hydra!
| Reprise. And still no pics of Conrad's rear |
* Don’t worry, it has a
chaperone.
** Opinions vary on this.
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