Courses For Horses

No!  I Haven't Got It The Wrong Way Round
Do credit me with a modicum of sentience; if I put the phrase in that way, that's because I wanted to say it that way.
     Before we get down to the meat of the matter and the tattle of the title, here's an interesting story and an indication of how Your Humble Scribe's mind works (which is as instructive to me as it is to you).  Art?

Not guilty!

     This must have been a slow news day for the BBC: they had a clip about a South Canadian homeowner who came home, to discover that his house had been cleaned in a most thorough and professional manner (apart from the kitchen).  Those responsible had even left roses made from toilet rolls, which implies a touch of whimsy as well as manual dexterity.  Art?

Sic

     Our mystified homeowner didn't know who'd done it, as he certainly hadn't requested nor paid for such a service, and nobody subsequently confessed to having done it, which is wise, for South Canadians are litigious folk at the best of times.
     Now, let us seem to change track apparently at random, and jump to the independent music scene in Manchester in the early Eighties, and a band known as The Diagram Brothers.  Art?

"Some Marvels of Modern Science"

     Their magnum opus - in fact their only opus - which title is given above.  TDG didn't outstay their welcome, unlike other bands composed of cyborg zombies.*
     The particular track I intend to highlight is one called "Ron! The Morris Minor's Gone" and here you need to be shown exactly what a Morris Minor is.  Art?

A car that screams "Ugly"

     The song was written about a court case concerning a young motor vehicle apprentice who was unemployed.  He would steal cars or vans at random, fix them up so that they performed perfectly, then return them to their owners, until he got caught.  The judge doing the sentencing stated that he hoped the publicity given to the case would impel someone to offer the defendant a job, as he clearly had great practical aptitude (if not sense).
     Thus, Conrad's brain immediately joined the two stories together; was someone touting for business by picking random premises to clean in order to showboat their ability?
     Probably not.  You have to admit, you now know more about the music scene in Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell than you ever used to.

As it was a loooong time ago.  And yes, I've been to that cinema

     Now, motley, this chain that we've manacled to your ankles?  It goes across the pavement, down that opened sewer manhole cover and comes up at that other one over there, where we've tied it to the axle of a milk float.  Bon voyage!

"Hard To Be A God" By The Strugatsky Brothers
In this case, they really were brothers: Arkady and Boris.  I have recently read therein this novel a description about the lead villain which was extremely dodgy in terms of allusion, so much so that it's a wonder the censors allowed it.
     I refer, of course, to "Don Reba".  Allow me to copy the Brother's description of him:

"  He emerged out of some dusty basement of the palace bureaucracy three years ago, a petty, insignificant functionary, obsequious and pallid ...  and this tenacious, ruthless genius of mediocrity grew like a pale fungus ..." 

     Now, the reason why this ought to have sent alarm bells a-clanging in the narrow minds of the censors is that this practically mirrors how Stalin came to power in the Soviet Union.  There were far cleverer and more able politicians around than he, whom dismissed him as no possible threat because he was merely a grey bureaucrat.  Well, the Grey Bureaucrat got himself comfortably settled, took over the Bolshevik administration and then snuffed out all the other politicians.

A literal and metaphorical example

     That unpleasant little gnome who got airbrushed out of the photograph and history is Yezhov, who was responsible for an enormous amount of bloodletting in the Sinister Purges, at the direct orders of Stalin; who later decided to get rid of him.  This is the kind of dangerous allusion that the Brothers were making!
     Conrad suspects that "Don Reba"'s description was only permitted because the loosening of censorship under Krushchev hadn't yet been reined back in.

Back To The Title
Ah yes.  Having thankfully put two immensely long Dickens novels behind him, Your Humble Scribe is now turning his attention to that tottering mountain of military history books, which he dares not add anything more to until it has diminished a little.
     Thus we come to "Four Years On The Western Front" by Aubrey Smith, though it was originally published anonymously as "A Rifleman".  Art?

Smithy, out of uniform

     Ol' Aubs went through the Second Battle of Ypres, which was every bit as unpleasant as you can imagine, and at about a fifth of the way through his narrative, he has volunteered to join his battalion's transport column.  This totals about 80 men, with several dozen wagons, trailers, limbers and carts, all of which are horse-drawn.
     Dobbin is very much the major mover for all transport on the Western Front, though motorisation did increase as time went on.  This means Ol' Aubs has to learn to ride a horse, a novel skill to him, especially as his horse could be fractious and cheeky.

General Service wagons

     He also had to learn how to steer a wagon, because they didn't come with a steering wheel; you had to control the towing steeds with harness and whip, and at first his progress was so bad his fellow instructor got seasick.

Finally - 
Despite it being a Bank Holiday, Conrad does not feel motivated enough to bash out two blogs today, so this is the only one you get.
     I realise you may think this shockingly lax, but I've still got at least five episodes of "Justified" Season Three to watch, and then another three seasons after that, and Degsy has been making encouraging noises about something called "The Orville", and - dammit, that tottering mountain of military history books!

Hmmmm.  "Star Trek" casts a long shadow.

*  You know who.  They roll and they stone.