გამარჯობა

<Falls Off Chair Laughing To Himself>

O you should have seen your faces!  That, Ladies, Gentlemen and Those Unsure, is the Georgian script for the Georgian word for "Hello" - pronounced "Gamarjoba".  It looks as if Mister Tolkein had a say in creating it - although his area of expertise was Scandinavian, I believe, rather than Caucasian.

     I just thought it would be amusing to continue to educate a little more about this nation state, since it is somewhat off the beaten track and whilst you get hordes of British invading the Iberian and Hellenic peninsulae, they're a lot less frequent out further east.  Art?

     As you can see, Georgia lies between two much larger neighbours, and one suspects that there is a Georgian variation of the 'Polish Europe" map which has "Northern Bully" and "Southern Bully" upon it.

     One thing that has been important to Georgia for the past 8,000 years is - wine.  It is one of the oldest wine-making regions on the planet and all you need to do is look it up in Wiki, where there's enough information to keep you busy for half an hour.  Art?

Georgian wines a-brewing.  Or whatever wines do.  Conrad no expert.

     Since the Georgies adopted Christianity, growing grapes and making wine became very much a part of the national heritage, and as much a way of thumbing their noses at the teetotal Southern Bully as making something nice to drink.  The Northern Bullies, who are the very opposite of teetotal, guzzle as much Georgian wine as they can get their trembling hands upon.  Rumour has it that the Russo-Georgian War came to a hasty conclusion after there were veiled threats of wine exports being cut off ...

     I KNEW IT!  Yes, I thought I recognised that name: Tengiz Abuladze, a film-maker back in the Sinister era - it came up when I was looking at Georgian culture.  His last film was "Repentance", which is a stinging, bitter criticism of the Sinister years, and above all that odious pustule Lavrentiy Beria*.  Though he was careful not to actually use that name, or he'd have vanished along with the film reels.  Art?

The pustule himself

     It's certainly no feast of fun; recommended, though.

     Motley!  You've gotten off scot-free today so far, so I insist you run the Gauntlet of Fear.  Yes, it's the walkway under the roundabout.  O just my bucket of darts dipped in tetrodotoxin ...

The Game Is Up

What are you squirming nervously for?  I meant the Polemos-rule wargame I've been running for a few weeks now; what guilty secret are you suddenly all anxious about?

<crickets and tumbleweed and a shutter rattling in the wind>

     I will find out eventually - anyway, let us prod Art awake with an electrified pitchfork -

     Next time I'll use a different paste table, as this one kept creating the Lower Dimchurch Fault.

     Okay, let us analyse this picture.  The Royalist wagon train has only one wagon left on the table, meaning it'll be off the board in two moves.  Feildings Regiment and the surviving Royalist cannon have also whizzed off the table, thanks to being in March Column, which allows you to move quickly but renders you very vulnerable.  Aston's Loyals are the only Royalists left (near the bridge), and they too have adopted March Column and will be blitzing off the table, as none of the Parliament troops are near enough to catch them.  Cowardly Lord Maurice, having abandoned Wilmot's Horse, is currently heading for home, too.

     You can see the unwieldly scrum that occurred in the tight space between the Deenum Hills and the headwaters of the River Pielloric.  It was very awkward trying to manoeuvre troops in this congested area, with Parliament not being able to use their numbers effectively.  Whilst it might be stretching the Polemos rules a bit trying to accommodate this, it was a real problem in the English Civil Unpleasantness; if the ground was broken up by fences or hedges or walls or ditches, then it was very difficult to keep your men in proper array.

     I'm getting the hang of things now, so a third battle beckons.  You will, of course, get to hear all about it.

"The prospect of free beer concentrated men's minds wonderfully"

"O Noes!" Squeaked Conrad's Wallet, Again

Chin up, wallet, old bean, it's payday on Friday!  Besides the weekly shop, what else does Your Modest Artisan have to spend his dinarii on? thanks to the cruel injustice of being forced to not pass half the shops in Gomorrah-in-the-Irwell whilst traipsing to the office.

     Two things.  I picked up a bookmark that's been hidden within another tome at the weekend, and noticed that it was advertising a peculiar and mysterious agency calling itself "The Book Depository".  I am not altogether sure what these "Book" things are, so I explored further and - would you believe it!  It's an online books shop, called, I believe, "A bookshop" (stop me if I'm going too fast) that will send you one of these "Books" if you vend them a number of English pounds.  Fancy that!

Some of these "book" things, in case you, like me, are unfamiliar with them

     Second thing was a video that TIK made on his Youtube channel that was only 16 minutes long, which is a model of brevity for TIK, as his stuff is rarely less than 30 minutes long, and though I love him like a brother, I do have a pathetic-but-still-there social life to keep up with.

     Anyway!  He was featuring "Telling Lies About Hitler" by Richard Evans, which was a forensic analysis, and literally so, of the now-disgraced David Irving's historical opus.  TIK did a little exercise in showing three extracts from Irving's work, and then going back to sources - there was absolutely no correlation between the two.  He read out Evans' verdict on Irving, which I won't quote or paraphrase as I wouldn't want to dilute the icy academic hammering inflicted.

TIK with books.  Oops - er - I mean "books".  Those mystery objects

     I have to say, this work by Evans sounds very impressive.  I wonder if it might be found on the Depository of Book?

This is what a "book" looks like in real life.  Who knew!

Finally -
Conrad may not be at his brightest today, because, as he was readying for bed and sleep, a thought suddenly came into his head.  
     Thanks, thought.
     "Further to English Civil Unpleasantness statistics, isn't there mention in Peter Young's "Edgehill" about how much food and drink each man was supposed to have?"
     Yes, there is.  Each man ought to have, daily, two pounds of bread, a pound of either meat or cheese, and a bottle of wine or two bottles of beer (say a pound for the latter).  Thus four pounds of food per man per day, and for an army of 14,700 on the side of Parliament, that meant 27 tons of food to be provided per day, every day.  And the "every day" bit is important, as your chaps would simply desert if they weren't fed and paid.

What the generals ate

     Of course it's not even as simple as that, because bread will stale rapidly and is only fit for toast the next day, so it would have to be provided fresh daily if possible, which brings in problems of yeast and proving and -
     Thanks, thought, I said to myself at 00:34.


ნახვამდის!

("Nakhvamdis" - Georgian for "Goodbye")

*  That's probably made Tsar Putin very very cross.