Very Peri

No!  Not The Doctor's Assistant Perpeguilliam Brown
Put your tongues back in and stop drooling, it doesn't become you.  And if we do have a picture of her, it will only be from the neck upwards.
     Anyway, what I wanted to type about was the Periwig, because - again, apologies for my mind being my mind - it suddenly popped into my head.  Art?

A periwig

     I know what you're thinking, and yes, he does look as though a hirsute waterfall is sitting atop his head.  Yes indeed, but this is what passed for fashion in the 17th century (and afterwards) and even today you will see the judges and barristers of Perfidious Albion bravely wearing these affectations.  Of course, nowadays we scorn the periwig and just call it a wig, because that's us, ever-so twenty-first century.  Art? - more periwigs!
    
                        A plethora of periwigs                                              Hmmm.  Not sure about this one
     Of course, Conrad being Conrad, we cannot possibly leave the matter there.  O no.  Because what did the febrile yet fecund reaches of my mind settle on next?
    The periwinkle!  For no other reason than that it comes after "Periwig" in my Collins Concise, where I looked the latter up.  Art?

Slimers

      We scorn the periwinkle, of course, us being so twenty-first century and all,  and generally describe it as a "winkle", which we eat with great relish, having to pick the cooked article out of the shell with a pin - which is where the term "To winkle out" has come from, another blog factoid you didn't know before today and you're welcome.
     Here an aside.  Let us have a moment's silence for Eric "Winkle" Brown, one of Perfidious Albion's finest test pilots and a man who must have flown every aircraft in existence*.  Art?

Eric!  Rocking it with Eric-ness.  And Winkleness, too

      Then there is the periwinkle - not to be confused with the above, which is probably why people shortened the snail, as you cannot grow them in your herbaceous borders.  Art?

Flowery stuff

      This particular winkle is a flower, as you can clearly see.  Flowers, readers; readers, flowers.
     I think that's about enough of wigs and winkles, let us mount our electric scooters and blast off down Thunder Road!**

 "Normandy 44" By James Holland
I have just finished reading Ol' Jim's latest magnum opus, and thought I'd report back to you about it, whether you wanted to or not.  In fact, especially if you were in the "not" category.
     Ol' Jim introduces the concept of what he calls "Big War", though he doesn't capitalise it as I have done, so maybe I can get a patent lock on it.  BW encapsulates using firepower and technology to do the fighting, rather than people - what the Teuton stubblehoppers of both the First and Second Unpleasantness called "Materialschlacht", with, and Ol' Jim does emphasise this, the minimum number of people in the front lines.  Art?

Ol' Jim, plus steel steed

     This necessitates having a very large (and long) logistics tail, and indeed two of every five Allied soldiers in Normandy were service personnel working way behind the front lines.
     One thing that is also brought to mind is the absolutely terrifying volumes of firepower that the Allies could bring to the field; the Panzer Lehr armoured division, for an extreme example, was utterly destroyed by mass South Canadian bombing formations.  For Operation Bluecoat, intended more as a "fixing" operation than with any great plans to break out, in other words not a major offensive, the brylcreem boys of the RAF still dropped 2,000 tons of bombs.  And for all the while the Teutons clung to their positions in Normandy, they were subject to naval gunfire, where the smallest naval gun was the equivalent of medium artillery, and the largest fired shells that weighed half a ton.
     Ol' Jim emphasises that this is how Big War is waged, and the Teutons had absolutely no answer to it - they had to substitute manpower for everything else, which is partly why their total losses were so much greater.

Also -

     Ol' Jim mis-spells "Spalling" as "Spawling" which is how it's pronounced, but he can't be blamed for getting it wrong alone, as the proof-reader and editor should have picked that one up.  What is it? Look at the tank above - the armour hasn't actually been pierced, but you can see it's been badly cracked (Teuton armour at this point in war lacking critical elements for high-quality steel); this would have caused great big chunks of metal to go flying around the interior, with results that can be imagined.
     Blimey.  I only meant to write a paragraph!

Criminally Enterprising
I hope you are enjoying our periodical trawl through the worlds of crooks in suits, as a bit of villainous larceny is always more entertaining than a knit-in or Christmas tree decorating with the in-laws.
     Let us now cast our jaundiced yet vindicated eyes over "United Sciences of America", set up in 1986 with a brief to supposedly sell health foods.

CAUTION! This picture is a lie!
(see hyperlink for more details)

     They also recruited "retailers" by the tens of thousands, who made more money recruiting more retailers than selling the dubious, mis-advertised health gubbins  USA was supposedly so ground-breaking with.  When their products were analysed and investigated, they were found to be utter tat, completely unfit for what they were intended.  NBC then did an expose of these crooks, which immediately stopped any more recruitment, thus impacting their income, and by April 1987 USA filed for bankruptcy.  Ha!  Once again the typical bell-curve of success that pyramid scams undergo.
     Here's a link to a very detailed analysis of USA:

https://www.mlmwatch.org/04C/USA/usa.html

     It's a very interesting read, if rather long.  Typically the crooks at the heart of it denied everything, refused to admit they'd done anything wrong and then started up another pyramid scheme doing exactly the same thing.  Pikers!***

 Finally -
We only need a little bit to get over the Compositional Ton, so this is it.




 *  487 of them, to be exact.
**  At a safe and respectable speed, of course.
***  This is not a compliment.