Stormbringer

I Am Typing This At Work  -
 - so whether it will work properly is a moot point, as I took a photograph at the bus stop and will need to load it up later on.  Oh the dizzy technical complexities of creating a blog in the modern world!  If it works, here's the vista from a dark, damp, cold bus stop.

Well, I was complaining about lack of snow -

     Anyway, we are marking the arrival of Caroline, a chilly-tempered lady who causes a great deal of havoc when she hits the town.  The storm Caroline, not a real person, in case you were wondering.  The first - sorry, what's that?  You were expecting a critical analysis of that classic heavy metal album "Stormbringer", by Deep Purple?
     Sorry, no.  You're not getting a picture, either.  Art?

Mercury.  A heavy metal.

     As I was saying, Caroline:  here is a blanket of snow lying over the Yorkshire moors, which is good, as it means you see less of the Tyke's terrain, which can only ever be a good thing.*

     Look, there's no sense in whining because you're not getting fan-boy adulation about Deep Purple, it's not my fault that you're so utterly literal (we shall come back to this). 

Take That, O You The Ill-informed!
Conrad, as you ought to be aware, has an interest in the First Unpleasantness that can be worrying to those with less of an obsession about it.  Anyway, one usually hears the canard trotted out** about how cavalry were useless, hay-scoffing, farting anachronisms.

In England, motive transport.  On the Continent - dinner!

     Well, not on the Eastern Front, certainly, thanks to the very large spaces that gave lots of manoeuvre room for mounted formations.  The Teutons had dismounted their cavalry long before war's end, meaning that, in their advances of March 1918, they had no mobile arm capable of exploitation, to the considerable relief of the BEF.
     Jump ahead to 9th October 1918, Gattigny Wood the location, and oh what's this?  It's the Canadian Cavalry Brigade, that's what.  There was a considerable force of armed Teutons infesting the wood, inclined to behave badly and not give in.***
     "Charge!" went out the order.  Art?

The Jockey Club does not approve

     The Fort Garry Horse and Lord Strathcona's Horse proceeded to carry out a mounted charge that overwhelmed the Teuton defenders, netting 230 prisoners, three artillery pieces and forty machine guns, at the cost of 80 casualties.  So much for being an unwieldy anachronism!

And there we shall pause as I need to go eat some food, or risk fainting away.  As I am still quite a hefty bloke, this would probably cause destructive damage to the structure of The Dark Tower.

Four hours later, here we are in my Sekrit Layr at The Mansion.

Oh go on then.

     Which has nothing to do with folding paper, a subject that came up at the Pub Quiz last night as Phil tried to fold his answer paper.  The general consensus is that you can't fold a piece of paper more than 7 times; Conrad recalled, from his dustbin-like memory, that Mythbusters had tackled this particular myth head on.  Art?

The folding begins

     They managed to fold it a total of 11 times, although in the later stages they had to use a road-roller to flatten it down and get rid of air pockets.  They also used a forklift to help fold it, as it was quite beyond human ability by then.  Art?

Triumphant

     The Youtube video has some staggeringly stupid comments appended from members of the public, who ignored that wise aphorism about keeping your mouth shut, and thus only be suspected of idiocy, rather than opening it and removing all doubt.
     "But Conrad!" I hear you squawk.  "Why this cruel and cutting comment?"
     Because it's true.  Kari commented that the whole thing acted like a giant sail, catching the wind beneath it.  The video narrator uses the analogy of "the parachute" to further this description, which immediately led to a bunch of numpties loudly claiming that "A parachute isn't paper".

A bunch of loons**

     Then you had others loudly claiming it was plastic, despite it clearly being paper for all 5 minutes of the video, and others stating that the 7-fold rule only applied to A4 paper - sorry, where does it say that, ever at all?

Finally -
Whilst on the subject of people abusing the right to be stupid, your humble scribe read with utter disbelief about the man whose friends covered his head with a plastic bag, added seven bags of Polyfilla (a quick-setting cement) on top of that, then put a microwave oven over his head.  Art?

Word fail

     They were trying to create a mould, apparently.  I feel that there's a joke in there somewhere ...

*  We in Lancashire still feel cheated by the War of the Roses
**  Do you see what - O you do.
***  Bally bad show, chaps!