Talk About Complicated

 No! I Am Not Discussing Tensor Mathematics

Rather, about an especially unpleasant time in the history of Europe, when political and religious conflict managed to render this, Our Continent, one of the most unpleasant places ever to live.  I refer - obviously! - to the Thirty Years War, which was a continent-wide conflict that mixed politics, religion and economics for the whole triumvirate of awfulness.

     In any war that last for 30 years, you must imagine that there are a few casus belli that persist beyond the beginning's "Your mother smells of rancid goat's cheese" and Good Lord Aloft was it ever so in the 30YW.  Why, even we peripheral military non-entities the British were involved, which sounds bizarre, as if this Sceptred Isle would ever get involved in Continental warfare!

     The reason I mention this ghastly affair is because I wanted to see if there were any awfulnesses during this time that matched that of the Siege of Drogheda.  There was the sack of Magdeburg, where 20,000 of the city's inhabitants perished in flame and pillage, though I don't know if this was an isolated incident.  And, looking at the whole war, it would take probably half an hour to read about it only in outline, as it involved everyone in seventeenth-century Europe.  Which was not the consolidated map we see today, O no!  Art?

Thus, after the war ended

       I think the word that sums it up best is "palimpsest" which I'm not going to explain, you can go look it up yourself.

     We shall definitely be revisiting this topic, so you'd better force yourself to enjoy it.

     Edna!  Lick that porridge bowl clean*!

"Sand And Steel" By Peter Caddick-Adams

We're getting somewhere with this epic tome - page 758!  So still a quarter of it to go.  I did make a note about page 736, where Ol' Pete takes a lot of previous authors to task about sloppy history.  He is referring to Gold Beach, where Perfidious Albion's 50th Division came ashore.  Art?

I guarantee there's a cup of tea just out of shot

     Ol' Pete castigates what he considers "sloppy history", where what actually happened is glossed over in favour of bland retellings.  As he has it, the reason casualties were so low on Gold was in, significant part, due to the extremely intensive training the Allies had gone through, unlike the Teutons, who spent all their time digging holes.  The only counterattack by the Teutons came at Gold, where their "Schnellbrigade" got sent into action, late.  By "Schnell", meaning "Fast", the Teutons demonstrated their sense of humour, because these were soldiers on bicycles.  O the mighty Wehrmacht!  hmmmm.  Not only that, because they'd been sent all over the place they'd already cycled 40 miles before arriving at Gold, so they were probably a bit winded**.

The mighty Port Winston in action.  Need a port?  Bring one with you!

     I was going to warble on about Mulberry B, though I think that can be done a different day.  Next!

"Castigate"

Of course you know Your Humble Scribe too well to be surprised that I pondered on this word when taking Edna for a trot.

     It comes, inevitably, from Latin, and turns up first in the seventeenth century.  There were probably a few castigations made at the sack of Magdeburg - anyway, it's composed of "Castum" which means "Pure" and "Agere" which means "To compel to be".

Agere gear?

     There you go, BOOJUM! educating yourself one fact at a time.  Two if we're pushed.

Dam Yankees

Do you see what - O you do.  I'm afraid it was inevitable that we had a look at another dam failure, that of the Oroville Dam over in South Canada, which you ought to recall, as it was a pretty spectacular failing.  Art?

This is NOT what it should look like!

     This is why large masses of water need to be treated with caution; once there was damage to the spillway, it was immediately magnified.  Art?

With puny dump-truck for scale

More puny humans repairing

     Because the original photos have nothing to scale against, these two ought to provide some food for thought.  It looks rather more impressive than the frankly stop-gap measures taken at Todbrook in Derbyshire.  Then again, when it comes to throwing money and technology at a problem, you need to look hard to find someone better at it than our trans-Atlantic cousins***.

Porridge Drying

A very long time ago Your Humble Scribe worked at Stepping Hill Hospital as a Catering Assistant.  O what a horrid job!  Not helped by the fact that I lived many miles away, with no bus service on a Sunday morning, so I walked from Longsight to Hazel Grove.

     Anyway, the kitchen had four heating units with about a thirty-gallon capacity, in which were kept warm custard, gravy, something I can't remember, and porridge.  The custard cooked into a coating over the day, as did the porridge, except even more so.  To remove it you needed a paint-scraping blade and plenty of oomph.

     Ghastly job!

     There was endless free food, however, so it did have it's moments.

Porridge, you are bested!

Finally -

Apologies for another random word popping up in my head.  This time it was "Kekule" and apart from thinking that it seemed to be a person's name, Conrad was none the wiser.  Art?

Pioneer of Beard Growth Lotion

     He turns out to have been an important German theoretical chemist of the mid to late nineteenth century.  Sounds dull.  Unless he invented ingenious new explosives, which would be cool.

*  A selfless service.  Porridge remnants dry like concrete.

**  Take that, Max!

***  This is a compliment