A Mistake To Not Make

Again?
Conrad is baffled - back in the office Your Humble Scribe was able to select Blogger's  Trebuchet Font and IT WORKED! and the repellent extra line-spacing had gone, too.  Yet here we are at home in The Mansion and neither correction to this wretched iteration are retained.  I dunno.  Perhaps my team of assassins wiped out the wrong people?

An "Oooopsie!" moment

     Which has nothing to do - O I see we've gone back to Verdana, have we? - with what I wanted to pontificate about today, namely the adventure of merely travelling home from Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell.  
     Incidentally, the word "Pontificate" has an interesting history.  The usual interpretation is that of one using excessively formal language, kind of like Conrad when he's on the phone at work.  It derives, as you would guess, from the Latin, and "Pontifex Maximus", who was the Roman high cheese in their collection of religious officers.  From there we get the French "Pontiffe" and voila! The Pope.  At this point other blogs would descend into cheap satirical humour; we do not.

Chateau D'If.  Close enough.

     Where were we?
     O yes, LITHIUM WAFER BATTERY DES - no, no, it wasn't that - 
     PEDIGREE PIG BREE - hmmm, no, it wasn't that, either.
     Aha!  Yes, the Torment Of Travel.  Your Humble Scribe decided to travel back from Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell on the 182 bus, which was a major mistake.  There were two extensive sets of diversions thanks to roadworks, which will persist until November 2025, and then the bus diverted to Shaw before even reaching Royton, as there is another diversion in place thanks to closed road.  I am far healthier for all the extensive walking, thanks for asking.

I had to walk from here.  FROM HERE!

          Motley!  Go fetch me a couple of bottles of my favourite whisky - it begins with "Johnny" -
     Yes, fitter, and also MUCH MUCH ANGRIER!

O Marketa!
What does our favourite Angry Young Czech  (O I feel a bond of kinship) have to say about interesting and obscure words in the Czech language, which that fraction of you out there studying Czech might find interesting?
"Zustat po skole": keeping kids after school.
     Well - Marketa, you are being ambiguous there.

STILL not going to give away her surname*.

     The thing is, this is a wildly ambiguous statement when translated into English.  Which, I ought not to need remind you, is the Mother Of All Languages and you'd better get it correct.  Marketa gets an automatic pass as she is young and attractive.
     As mentioned, there are two interpretations of the phrase:
1)  "Keeping the kids in after school": also known as DETENTION.  Where educational miscreants are PUNISHED, because they are ICKED <excuse me, the " " key has stuck, let me just hit the keyboard ith my sledgehammer and see if that works - O it has done>  WICKED.

These guys.

     2)  Agreeing, as a socially aware neighbour, to accept your neighbour's children into your own home after school because Neighbour Mum and Dad don't get home from the Nuclear Warhead Refrigerant Reprocessing Centre until 19:20*.
     So, Marketa, the question is, which of these two alternatives are you referring to?  Hmmmmmmmmm?
     There is a rather grimmer interpretation, which may have occurred to you and which I won't go into just yet …
     - and coming back to this cold, I'm not sure exactly what I was referring to.  Something spectacularly horrid and grim, knowing Conrad.
     Next!

It's In The Trunk
Or, as we say here in This Sceptred Isle, "The boot".
     I did look up "Eddie Trunk", and needn't have worried about doing so at work, for he is not some fearfully sordid sleazebag.  Er - well, some might question that.  He appears to be a music podcaster and DJ.

In all his Trunkiness

     Here is where I learned the sad news that Martin Birch had died.  This is probably not a name familiar to you whippersnappers out there, as he retired a good twenty-odd years ago. However, he was The Man when it came to heavy metal music production.  He made it initially with Deep Purple, and so impressed other bands that he was in demand for decades.  Why, he even produced for the thinking man's heavy metal band, Blue Oyster Cult.  Art?

Martin of yore

Finally -
Your Humble Scribe has finally finished "Sand And Steel", Professor Peter Caddick Adams' epic retelling of D-Day.  He began it well, with a dedication to two other military historians I also hold in high regard: Gary Sheffield and John Buckley.  He ends it with more acknowledgements, including one to that one-man publishing empire James Holland; you ought to remember Ol' Jim having Ol' Pete in his D Day documentary from several years ago (Ol' John was in there, too).
     Guess who else gets an acknowledgement?  Al Murray.  Yes, the comedian.  Unbeknownst to many, Ol' Al actually has a history degree from Oxford, though I don't know what grade or level or whatever classification the dreaming spires use.  You will not find many military historians crediting comedians.  Although, come to think of it, Gary Sheffield did mention "Blackadder Goes Forth" in his introduction to "Forgotten Victory".
     And that's all you're getting.  Normally I'd finish this off over lunchtime.  Not today, I had a dinner date with the lovely Anna, and I'd much rather spend time with her than spoiling you lot with loads more fresh scrivel.  Besides, we're only about 50 words short of the Compositional Ton.

     And with that, we are done!



 *   - you perverts.  You should be ASHAMED of yourselves!
**  And they then have to undergo a 2 hour decontamination session.  O the life of a modern parent!