Cart Imitating Strife

This Might Take A Bit Of Explaining
No great problem for me, I love explicating especially if it makes me sound clever or you seem less bright, it's a comparison thing.
     I'll tell you another thing I miss: really strong black coffee with a couple of ounces of honey in as a sweetener (just keeping you informed).
     Okay, you may remember that Your Modest Artisan is currently waging a wargame using the 'Polemos' ruleset, both to see if he likes it and to iron out any kinks or omissions, of which there have been several, and that it concerns the English Civil Unpleasantness.  Art?

Being trained in musketry

     Here an aside.  "Civil" wars are usually the least civil of all kinds of warfare, and tempers got worse the longer the ECW went on for, to the extent that civilians on occasion got together to defend their communities against whichever army was trying to pillage or press-gang.  There was an awful lot of religious fervour stewing away under the surface, too, since the Puritans were very, very suspicious of the King showing pro-Catholic tendencies, which were often as imaginary as real.  The Queen was a papist, that much was true, and papists were viewed as trying to slyly introduce catholicism into England, which was bad because papists were Eeeeevil Beyond Belief, like a combination of Freddy Kruger and The Thing.  Any Irish Catholics caught in the service of the King were in for a great big nasty surprise, frequently a fatal one.
     That's a bit of background.  Art?

The Royalist baggage train lumbers forth

      Rather jokingly, I mentioned that the Royalists are fighting a delaying action to allow their baggage train to escape from the hamlet of Little Noshing; not because it holds their supplies of powder and shot, bread, water, cheese, spare muskets and pikes, but rather because it contains the King's rather saucy correspondence with his mistress ...
     Well, real life has come full circle and bit me on the gluteus maximus, because in reading about the epic Royalist defeat at Naseby, what do the Parliamentarian forces manage but the capture of the King's real-life correspondence!  This was a colossal propaganda victory for the Roundheads, since the letters showed Chas had been plotting to bring over an army of Irish Catholics in his cause, which is like <thinks for an apt metaphor> asking the Daleks to come invade Earth, pretty please?

"DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS! ABOLISH PARLIAMENT!  NO NAUGHTIE PARITY!"

     Oh, and bringing over a Continental mercenary army 10,000 strong - imagine inviting the Cybermen to invade Earth.  Hence today's woeful parody of "Art Imitating Life".
     Incidentally, here's the gaming table at the end of Turn 14.  Art?

All miniatures by Baccus

     Rather as I suspected, that narrow gap between the hills and river has meant a confused, dense melee, with both sides struggling to manoeuvre properly.  This is what happened in real-life if the terrain constricted movement.
     Motley!  Shall we re-enact the execution of King Chas?  I've got a great big hatchet - no, no, I was going to use a cabbage, not you!
One For The Road
To continue our punning about the consumption of alcohol.  Moderation in all things, Conrad says - except banana-toffee popcorn, you have to finish the bag once opened otherwise it goes stale - and your liver will thank me.
     Okay, last week a giant scouring machine went up and down Tandle Hill Road, removing the palimpsest of a road that we've endured for the past 20 years.
     Today Conrad was witness to giant lorries carrying payloads of tarmac down the road and in the direction of Tandle Hill Park.  Curious/inquisitive/nosy <delete where applicable> as ever, I took Edna for walkies after work, just to see what was what.  Art?

     Of course I had orders to carry Edna across the seething tarmac wastes, as we cannot risk her paws getting soiled with petroleum products, and if we did Conrad would be in water that was not merely hot but superheated steam.
     I've not been for a proper walk down Tandle Hill Park for so long that they've nearly finished rebuilding that house.  You know, the one they gutted.  Art?

     The only bit remaining from the original is that twisty chimney-pot.     Enough rem of niscing!  On with the wibble -

Today I Learned
Taking advantage of the fact that for work today I was answering e-mails, not the phone, I fired up one of Spotify's recommended lists, and - do you know, they were worryingly accurate in what I liked.  Standout track was "Song Within A Song" by Camel, which is the first song of theirs that I've really liked.  They were always around as one of the second-tier prog rock bands, and did they constitute part of the Canterbury Scene?

The album it hails from

     You can tell it comes from the Seventies, especially some of the keyboard fills.  A nice bright clear production, though.
     Next up in terms of "Oh!" Factor was "Fifth Horseman Of The Apocalypse", by waitforitwaitforit - Ultimate Spinach.
      Steady on, chaps, I like spinach and have a pack in the fridge that I bought on tonight's weekly shop, yet I'd never go quite that far. Art?

Can't quite see where the spinach comes in.

     The band hailed from Boston and had their fifteen minutes of fame for three years in the late Sixties.  Conrad was perusing a list of their personnel, when one name jumped out at him: Jeff Baxter.
     "Not Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter, ex-of Steely Dan?" I gasped*.  Yes, it was.  He of the nickname that only he knows the origin of.  Art?

SMOKING A TOTALLY NORMAL ORDINARY UNEXCEPTIONAL CIGARETTE

     He jumped ship when Becker and Fagan, the beating heart of Steely Dan, decided they weren't going to go touring ever again, ever, never, nope.  Jeff then joined The Doobie Brothers, and then went into Ballistic Missile Defence Systems.
     No joke.  We will come back to this**.
Finally -
Well, I was having a quick scope for a comic strip I remember from either "Beezer" or "Topper", which featured a semi-serious strip with more conventional artwork than the usual cartoony "humour" stuff they were normally filled with, and - nothing came up.  It was set in North Africa, you see, during the Second Unpleasantness, and featured a robot camel.

Sorry, not much of a stop-gap

     I shall keep looking.  Just prepare to be disappointed <sad face>.


*  Okay, murmured.  I was going for dramatic effect.  Sue me.
**  How can we not!