More Cheery Beery Puns

I Nearly Typed "Cherry" There
Doubtless some brewers aiming for notoriety will have composed a fermented ale beverage made with cherries, and I don't doubt that there's already three different varieties of "cider" made with Maraschino <and there Conrad's knowledge of cherry varieties flags>.
     In fact, even though this is an un-anticipated tangent, let me just check on Google about this topic, for I am now curious to know - 

I knew it!  I KNEW it!

     Conrad, emphasising his status as a dinosaur, would be quite happy if They stopped mucking about with the flavours of beer, as he's only just adapted to having more crisp flavours other than ready salted, salt and vinegar and cheese and onion.  The modern world is moving dangerously fast!

"I thoroughly approve!"

     Yeah, I thought you'd approve, Peter.  Art?

Peter BERRY.  You see?  You see how everything links to everything else?

     That's Peter Berry of Baccus Miniatures.  The slacker still hasn't gotten round to doing figures for the First or Second Unpleasantness -
     Excuse me, we've gone off on a tangent from the tangent.
     Beer!  Art?

     This one is, rather bizarrely, dedicated to - er - lead pencils.  That's the punny title and what those numbers refer to.  O - pencils.  I suppose all the modern youth are only familiar with Photoshop and digital artistry?  The HB rating of a pencil shows how soft or hard the graphite is; the softer ones are like drawing with black butter, and the hardest ones will rip a hole in your paper if you apply more than the merest smidgeon of pressure.  We shall take it for granted that you know what paper is.     Now, more beery puns!  Art!

     I dug Austin's book out of the Book Cavern and am pretty sure I've never read it before, so I've been blitzing (no pun intended) through it tonight.  Don't worry, we'll be coming back to the English Civil Unpleasantness, O Yes Indeed.
     You can see the beery pun in Major-General Frost's memoir, can't you?  He was an officer in the Parachute Regiment, you see, ending up commanding 2 Para at Arnhem.  He and his unit had been in some very, very sticky situations in the past yet got out of them; in Tunisia the battalion had been about to over-run by the entire Teuton 10th Panzer Division, when the Luftwaffe turned up and absolutely bombed the blazes out of their own men.     Once I've worked my way through Austyn, I shall get working on ADTM.     Motley, have a snifter of this Polish Pure Spirit - not all at once, you idiot, it's 150% proof - bend over, take deep breaths -

Goodbye liver*

Bach To BedlamSorry, just been listening to Bach's "Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring" as played on church organ.  Herr Bach himself was an extremely aggressive organ player, so much so that one contemporary reckoned having him play across Prussia's churches would render all the organs destroyed and the audiences deaf.
     And the lunatic asylum Bethlehem Hospital, occasionally known as "Bedlam", was, in the first third of the seventeenth century, undergoing a change in medical practice.  Art?

James Blunt eat your heart out

     Well, now that we've established a little mise en scene, let us move forward a few short years to the English Civil Unpleasantness.  As Austyn and Peter Berry both pointed out, there has been an enormous increase in the amount we know about the ECW over the past couple of decades.
     Which has a long way to go in order to depose the Victorian-created view of "Roundheads and Cavaliers"; the real situation was a heck of a lot more complicated than joyless Puritan kingslayers versus gaily-laughing men in big hats.  Art?

Musketeers in Montero and Monmouth caps

     One problem was that England (and Wales) had been at peace for so long that there were no experienced bodies of men to wage war across the land, which is a kind of given in peacetime but a major problem when generals want to indulge in a little internecine activity.  In fact there were few experienced generals, come to that, with those who were actually capable in command having to defer to politicians of higher social standing.     As mentioned in connection with that ECW wargame I am running, the general lack of any martial background meant that soldiers were impressed into the ranks once the volunteers ran out, and they ran out fairly quickly.  Who knew that you had to march in the rain, go without food, sleep in the mud and have nasty horrid people trying to kill you in a war!  

A good example of how smokey the battlefield got

     Thus there were very high rates of desertion, where men would simply go home rather than stay in the ranks; since they were merely civilians in uniform and not proper soldiers, they felt absolutely no investment in risking death or mutiliation.  Sending an army any distance cross-country was an invitation for all the stragglers to desert, given the opportunity.  
     Well, that will do as an introduction to the ECW, which Your Humble Scribe also notes has the ability to arouse passions even today, 380 years later.  The Divine Right Of Kings versus The Will Of The People - only you can judge!


Piles Of Isles
Those of you with a memory only slightly better than that of a goldfish will recall Conrad recently posting a picture that is justly famous, "Isle Of The Dead" and I suppose we need a small prompt for those of you with goldfish-memories -

Thus

     The Wikipedia article on the painting's composition and inspiration has a couple of candidates that may well have inspired Bocklin, the painter, and as you know Conrad is a big fan of islands, especially tidal ones.  Art?

Pontikonisi

     This is an island just off the coast of Corfu, sadly not tidal but you can't have everything.  It does have a certain desolate splendour about it, don't you think?
     Then there is - Art!
 

Saint George

     I don't have the keyboard to get the title correct, as it's a Montenegrin island.  A gloomy impressiveness, don't you think?  A bit of a nuisance if you need to pop down to the shops for a loaf of bread, mind.     It's not widely known, but Herr Bocklin must have gotten fed up with being typecast as "That Isle Of The Dead chap" in much the same way Bill Pullman got fed up being typecast as "Archetypically Nice Guy Next Door"**.  So he did another picture - Herr Bocklin, not Bill - entitled "Isle Of The Undead" called "Isle of Life", which see - Art?

A right merry frolic

     That water looks cold, though.

Finally -
As you ought to know by now, Conrad has words pop up in his consciousness at random, and yesterday proved no exception.  There I was, emerging from the depths of sleep, and the word "Lagomorph" was instantly front and centre.
     "Aha!" I said to myself - aloud, since I was alone and risked scaring nobody - this is obviously from the title of some cheesy Fifties black and white low-budget sci-fi stroke horror film" (the best kind!).  "Revenge of the Lagomorphs" or "Lagomorphs of Doom" or even "Evil of the Lagomorphine" (a South Canadian 'educational' film for the guidance of youth).
     Sadly, the truth is a little less exciting.  Art?

O well.

     Still, we'll always have "Night of the Lepus", won't we?  Art!

I kid you not.

      And with that, we are mercifully DONE!

*  Makes an excellent industrial cleaner, too
**  He showed them in "Torchwood", hmmmmm?