The Serendipity Of Stan

Sounds Like A Ben Folds Song, Doesn't It?
It isn't.  Just so we're clear.
     Okay, firstly I ought to apologise for using a pretty strange image yesteryon, which was masquerading as a man being electrocuted, when in fact it was the evil Red Lectroid Lord John Whorfin, masquerading in turn as Professor Emilio Lizardo -

Peter Weller's finest moment, and a pretty good one for Ellen Barkin and John Lithgow.

     You will have heard Conrad banging on about this cult wonder endlessly, and repeat after me Lord John Whorfin's signature line "Laugh-a while you can, monkey boy!" - I'm pretty sure the Lectroids do not have anthropoid ancestors.
     Okay, back to Stan.  I refer, in shockingly disrespectful manner, to Lieutenant Stanley Christopherson, DSO, MC and bar, Silver Star*.  Ol' Stan's diaries were published as "An Englishman At War" and Conrad has just finished making an annotation of them, which runs to 56 pages of A4 scrawling.  Art?

James Holland.  Gets everywhere.

     Aptly enough I finished up making a note about VE day last night, 08/05/1945, when Stan describes the British Liberation Army as going demented, with the skies full of flares and tracers, just before the official VE Day 2020.
     The memoir is a fascinating - well, fascinating to anoraks like Your Humble Scribe - account of a regiment that began the war as a cavalry formation, that would have fit right into the Brititsh Army of 1918, complete with riders who were members of the Quorn or who 'rode to hounds'; and which ended the war as an armoured regiment mounted in Sherman tanks, the most experienced, competent and respected armoured formation in the British Liberation Army.

Stan to port, with peaked cap, and Peter Kent, the SRYs Intelligence Officer

     This is the 4th memoir I have read by SRY members, with a 5th sitting in my Book Mountain, waiting to be read.  One is Keith Douglas' "From Alamein To Zem Zem", which I will have to dig out and re-read, as I am now intimately familiar with all the personalities.  
     And, as Jim Holland presciently puts it, 08/05/2020 is about commemoration, not celebration.  By this date in 1945 Stan was one of only two surviving officers from the 1939 intake, everyone else dead, invalided out, prisoners or transferred away.

As used by the SRY and built by Your Modest Artisan

     Well, that was a bit of a sombre ending.  Motley, bring on the empty horses!

That Joke's Not Funny Anymore
Dammit, I cannot find a picture of the advert I wanted to!  I've spent the past 10 minutes on Youtube and Google and nary a sign of it.
     Okay, one of the perils of having a retentive memory, a.k.a. a mind like a skip ("dumpster" for our South Canadian listeners), is having things like an old Carlsbert advert surface in your mind, like a sinister sentient submarine symbol.  Art?

The Carlsberg Brewery entrance
(Taken from an angle that doesn't show the elephant's swastikas**)

     You see, there was one of those smugly self-satisfied television adverts about some carbonated swill that Carlsberg made, which they lauded to the heavens as being better than <insert dubious analogy here>.  They then counterpointed this with a gag about how dreadful Danish music was, playing "Wonderful Copenhagen".  Art?

Ah.  South Canadian.  From a musical.
<dry retches>

     Conrad would like to shoot this down right here, with a nuclear-tipped Bomarc anti-aircraft missile, thank you very much.  What about Mew? and that classic "Cross The River On Your Own"?  Not to mention Carpark North, who were my first choice of band on Spotify Premium.  Oh, and The Knife.  And Lasgo.  Oh, and The Radio Dept.  Plus that compilation album of 50 Danish Dance hits.
     You see, anonymous advertising agency?  How you were O SO WRONG!

Whilst On The Subject Of Music -
 - and the pros and cons of having the world's biggest mental dustbin for a brain, Conrad would like to point your eyes and ears at a film he remembers getting promoted on the radio when it came out: "All This And World War II", which seems peculiarly appropriate for today.  Art?

Regard and shudder.

     Conrad thinks the whole thing begins with a quote, "This b****y war," and then the whole farrago began.  It was a film supposedly about the Second Unpleasantness, with a soundtrack of Beatles songs done as covers by divers artists, and it spent all of two weeks in cinemas before being pulled by the distributors, as both sales and reviews were excruciatingly bad.  The soundtrack, however, made a profit, because people would rather listen to Beatles songs, even covers, than watch turgid nonsense.  It came out in 1976, when there were only 4 BBC radio stations and 3 television channels in This Sceptred Isle, so our lack of alternative entertainment may also have something to do with it.
        
                                                    A Bogarak (Hungarian)
     How bizarre.  Did you know "A bogar tejet iszik" is Hungarian for "The beetle is drinking milk"?   I must ask Renata about this when lockdown ends.
     Anyway, ATAWW2 was so dire it was 30 years before they dared release it as a CD***.

Finally - 
Conrad came across a word on Thursday in connection with a geographical area of The Allotment Of Eden (it's been really dry and sunny of late): "Etruria".  He has heard or read of it before and never bothered to look it up or determine what, who, or where it is or was.  This is an invidious oversight, as it might be delicious.  The truth is interesting yet inedible.  Art?

A land of antiquity

     It was part of ancient Italy, and the inhabitants were the Etruscans, whom I'm sure we've all heard of, as they were an influence upon the Romans.  There seems to have been a trend amongst Victorian street-namers to use their name with abandon.
     Your Humble Scribe wonders - did said Etruria have any influence upon the naming of the fictional European nation of "Ruritania"?  Just a thought.

     And with that parting pecualiarism, we are done.  Done!



*   As Conrad likes to say, you do not find these things at the bottom of cereal packets.  And yes, the Silver Star is a South Canadian award.
**  Every word true
***  As it borders on being a musical, Conrad's only comment is "Heh!"