And Now For Something Considerably Different

For NO! I Am Not Going To Refer To That Show
Because if I do, you're all going to be trying to do their sketches, in varying degrees of awfulness.

I shall have something to say about this.  Later.

     This Intro has nothing comedic about it, so if you were expecting lovely fluffy bunnies and rainbows, which are never that numerous at BOOJUM! anyway, I am afraid you are in for a torrid time of it.
     "Get on with it, you fearful old biffer!" I can hear you jeering.  May I point out my complete lack of biffishness?  Thank you so much.  The 58 years old I admit to.
     Anyway, what I intend to talk about is the 23rd Division in the Great War, a division that had just gone through one of the successful attritional slogging-matches of the Third Ypres campaign: the Battle of the Menin Road.  Art?

An unlovely place

     As what might be considered a kind of reward, when emergency help was sent to Italy after their disaster at Caporetto, the 23rd Division was chosen as one of the 5 divisions Perfidious Albion sent along (there were 5 French divisions, too).  The British were feted along the way by the Italian population, and behaved impeccably; allegedly, when they left Italian houses they had been billeted upon, not a chair was out of place, not a fag-end on the floor, not a glass or spoon taken.
     After a bit of shifting about, the 23rd ended up on the Asiago Plateau.  Art?

British hospital behind the lines

     The plateau was heavily wooded, and the trees here were real trees, not the branchless, leafless stumps of Flanders.  It was also an effort to get up to the AP, due to the hilly nature of the terrain, because this was warfare in the hills and mountains.  Mountains tend to also be made of rock, so you can't just decided to dig a foxhole and sit in it; you need engineers with power tools and explosives to create a trenchline.

Grim soldiers of the Br - I say, chaps, you're supposed to be grim!  Grim, not laughing!

     The Italian troops were content to sit in their (very well-constructed) trenches and watch the Austro-Hungarian troops opposite do the same; as the history says, this front had gone stagnant.
     Enter the British (and the French).  Sitting still and twiddling one's thumbs was not their way, and the Austro-Hungarians must have wondered what hit them.  The 23rd immediately sent out officer patrols, reconnaissance patrols and fighting patrols; they sought out enemy outposts, the enemy front line, suspected listening posts, and they attacked them, capturing prisoners for identification and interrogation.
     For all that, this bucolic landscape must have been absolute manna to the Tykes and Geordies of the 23rd, after the brown lunar aspects of Flanders.
     As the title says, considerably different.

The Asiago in winter

     What do we have here?  Why, a pedicure and manicure set - would you like to be our guinea-pig, motley?

A Bit Of Random Art Appreciation
I don't know why - the mind is a tricky thing, isn't it? - but the cover art for that seminal heavy-metal album "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" popped up in my head a few days ago.  I can only put the front cover up as a small image, as there are <ahem> naughty bits involved.  Art?

That's close enough!

     There you go, all red and orange, definitely depicting a chap on his way, post-death bed, to the Infernal Regions.
      Here a couple of asides.  The art here is by one Drew Struzan, at the time a workaday graphic artist who got paid all of $250 for his efforts.  He won fame in later years for his work on Star Wars poster art, and - Art?

An example

     The second aside is that the cover art dates from 1973, when SBS came out, meaning it was on a large card cover with a front and back.  You've seen the front cover artwork, which is all that tends to get put on CD releases now, meaning all sorts of swivel-eyed loons came out with nonsense about satanism and black magic and putting sugar in the salt cellar, that kind of thing.  Art?  Back cover please! 

You can have this one as large as you like

     This one is pretty obviously a sad farewell, appreciative and dignified and a 1800 twist from the front cover; this bloke is shortly going to be shaking hands with Saint Peter.
     It's an interesting album, with a lot of stories attached, which we may come back to, and it's a lot more than the Obvious Metal Hammer you might have expected from the Sabs.  Also, it conspicuously lacks fluffy bunnies and rainbows, and has Rick Wakeman playing on one track.

     Dog Buns!  There was a link at the end of the page that had the SBS album cover story on, which I left up because it had a couple of bands with awesomely objectionable names, except I deleted the link, and on following it back, those bands have disappeared.  There was religion and siege warfare involved, I remember that much.  O well.  I may chase it up tomorrow.

Rick.  A man suffering from piano-envy.

Finally -
Conrad is ever one for mucking about with words, as you may have realised by now.  If you have been faithfully following BOOJUM! for Lo! these many years wondering when the in-depth critical analyses of Lewis Carroll are going to arrive - then I feel sorry for you.
     Anyway, not to blow my trumpet or anything, but Your Humble Scribe was handed a collection of Mensa Calendar notes, which have a puzzle on each page that range in difficulty from one star - * - to five stars - *****.  Art?

     Five stars?  I got the first three straight away and a couple of minutes to get "WHITISH", so either this isn't as hard as it's claimed to be or - 
     NO NO IT'S INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT HONEST!