A Cultural Coffee Comparison

We Here In This Sceptred Isle -
 - rather think we have a handle on South Canada, because, so the reasoning goes "We've watched all the episodes of 'Friends' and seen all the 'Fast And Furious' films".
     Sadly this does not befit us to understand South Canadian culture.  You can't sum up a nation of 300 million people in a forty-five minute long television program, especially since <grits teeth so hard they chip> they cast off the British benevolence in 1776 and have been making their own way in the world ever since.

We did get our own back in 1814 ...

     CAUTION! Watching all the "Fast and Furious" films will turn your brains to jelly.
     For one thing, what's legal in one state may well be illegal in another, and the states are wildly different the further apart they are.  Apparently, according to South Canadian colleague Ben, Californian Republicans are almost right-wing Democrats*.  You won't find much Cuban culture in Oregon, nor a big timber industry in Florida.  I think reading the uncut version of "The Stand" also cemented this difference in my mind.
     Anyway, let me attach a photograph, after I motivate Art with the electric pitchfork -

      Somewhat eerily, Your Humble Scribe had an identical experience at a coffee shop in Portland.  The waitress came along and refilled my empty cup, to my bewilderment, explaining that they'd keep doing it until I was jitterbugging with caffeine.  A small but telling difference 'twixt them and us.   

     Yes yes yes, I did mention that dread subject Politics; politics three thousand miles away, making it safely distant.
     Motley, I want to test the efficacy of this electric axe, come over here, will you?

Middle Five Hand Jive
I just made that up, impressive, aren't I?
     Allow me to put up another photograph, once I motivate Art with the electric axe -

No hack job here!

      Not bad, hmmm?  No mistakes at all, though I did have to look up where paraffin comes from -
  DOG BUNS!  That's TH   REE 409's just driven past, one after the other - <insert furious swearing here> First Bus!!  AND ANOTHER ONE!!!*

      - as my knowledge of the petrol distillation process is a little hazy.
     - AND ANOTHER ONE!  WHAT'S GOING ON!!
      Well, I did post this item in order to showcase my literacy skills and shall now have to end it because all it's doing is showing how angry I can get**

It Went Down A Bomb
Another example of a cultural difference - some would say superiority - between Perfidious Albion and South Canada.  If you used this phrase over there, after frowning they would assume you meant something did badly, when it means the complete opposite.
      - yes, Vulnavia, that was another 409 but it was going in the opposite direction, which is allowed -
     Work colleague Lee, he of the dad jokes, mentioned that he'd been watching a program on a history channel where the Teutons were building a fake airstrip with wooden planes, wooden figures and wooden runways in the middle of a wooden wood.

Thus

     According to Lee, the program then claimed the canny British came along and dropped wooden bombs on it.
     Now, I have heard this claim before, in what I think was the pages of "Airfix" magazine many decades ago, except in this variation it was an English decoy airfield and the wooden bomb came courtesy of the Luftwaffe.
     A quick Google search brought up an air-oriented website where they go into the matter in depth, as it's quite controversial and nobody seems to be able to prove it really happened.  There were 32 comments on the article and it stirred up strong passions!
     You see what you did there, Lee?  
     I think we'll come back to this one, it has legs***.

<insert tree-based pun here>

As A Late Aside To "The Big Country"
Somehow, as I am wont to do, I ended up in the bowels of teh Interwebz when having a look at the plot for the above film, and came across a tribute to the late Jean Simmons.  One paragraph struck me, showing that she wasn't at all precious about her films or acting.  Art!

She also enjoyed “The Grass Is Greener,” which co-starred Cary Grant, “because it was comedy and I usually play these uptight puddings,” she said in 1988 in the Toronto Star.

Jean in TBC.  Uptight?  Perhaps.  A pudding?  Debatable.  Hot?  Undeniably so!
(She plays a school-teacher and you know Conrad and clever women ...)

     What you may find surprising is that she hailed from -
     THAT'S THREE GONE DOWNHILL ONE AFTER THE OTHER!  SOMEONE IS TAKING THE 
     <hastily chugs gallon of gin>
      Ahem!  From Cricklewood, in London.  One of our better exports.

"Alamein To Zem Zem" By Keith Douglas
You may recall me mentioning KD being killed in Normandy on 9th June 1944, after coming back from a strictly unauthorised nosy around a French village.  He had been living on borrowed time, frankly, given what happened to him at Zem Zem.
     The Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, his tank regiment, were engaged at Wadi Zem Zem in January 1943 and suffered heavy losses; losses that weren't to be equalled until late 1944.  The reason KD's narrative and title comes to an end at ZZ is because this is where he gets injured, and seriously so.  Art?

Burning bashed Bosche

     Two of "A" Squadron's Crusaders were knocked out, along with nearly all of "C" Squadron, as the SRY drove into an anti-tank ambush, and one of the two Crusaders was Keith's.  He was lucky to be alive, as the anti-tank shell that came through the turret side missed him by inches.  He suffered a leg wound, and baled out, feeling concussed, which he probably was - being inside a turret as it gets perforated by a 50 m.m. solid shot tends to make the head ring a bit.
     After trying to move his tank, having already evacuated the driver, when KD got out again a Teuton tank was perched where it could see all.  He then had to cross 200 yards of open desert to get to cover - slowed down by rescuing an unfortunate trooper with one foot shot off.  Either the Hun didn't spot him, or, more likely, they did, and forbore to shoot an unarmed man helping an injured one.

"Brewing up" by KD

     He and another officer, given the pseudonym Black, head to the rear to get transport for the wounded, which is when KD trips a wire and a mine; he is wounded  again and evacuated and only returns to the SRY in May.  Poor old Black is so badly wounded he never comes back.

     Well, that would be a bit of a downer to end on, so - Art?

There you go - only slightly disturbing.

     Chin chin!



*  I apologise only a little for this near-hysterical level of exclamation markery, since you can obviously see why.
**  When I take over the world, First Bus are going to <Mister Hand redacts four hundred very frightening words>
***  Wooden ones.