An Occupational Hazard

That Is, Getting Trampled To Death

Of course - obviously! - I am not referring to our modern world, where the Health and Safety Executive and COSHH have taken all the fun out of life, because why shouldn't I be able to own and use a functional Thermite Cannon, hmmmm?

"Because of Death," replied the H&SE

     That reminds me of Jonathan Swift's quote about it's quite alright for a man to have an interesting array of exotic poisons at home, as long as "he does not vend them about like cordials."  Catch me cutting loose with my Osmium Tetroxide*!
     Sorry, where were we?  O yes - "Le Mort D'Arthur".  Sir Thomas Malory's magnum opus.  King Arthur had declared a tournament at the Castle of Maidens, which had been cried about the land, so every knight who fancied a bit of organised havoc would be there.  Including Sir Tristram, whom at the time had been banished from Cornwall by his very naughty uncle, King Mark, and who liked to wander around anonymously.  Art!

Sir T:also a talented harpist

     That chap hanging around in the background is Sir Andred, Sir T's cousin and a sneaky, spying tattletale, who constantly spies on his more famous and able cousin.  The utter peach.

     What struck Conrad about the mass tourneys and jousts was the number of knights involved; hundreds of them on either side, so it paid to pay close attention to whom you were attacking because everyone had a different design on their shield, different lances, different harnesses - no uniformity.  Sir T used a simple black shield without any kind of heraldic device upon it, effectively remaining unknown to nearly everyone.  Sir Perides suffered today's title fate; he was 'unhorsed' in the middle of a mass scrap, probably being stunned to boot.  Sir Tom then takes great glee in describing how he was nearly killed when forty riders trampled him in the process of beating the stuffing out of each other.  One feels for him; having a quarter ton of horseflesh, together with an armoured knight of at least a hundred pounds mass, lightly stamp over you once is had enough.  Forty times?  Ouch.

"And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how mince was invented."

     Enough medieval maundering, for we have places to go and lines to write.  Forsooth, and also Zounds!

     <crackling of Tazer being used is heard, also shrieks>

Conrad Is Vituperative, Choleric And Unassuaged

A tad more impressive than plain old "Conrad is ANGRY!" don't you think?  Of course the culprit is Friday's Codeword, which really pushed the boundaries of what's acceptable.  You know my thoughts on this already, which bear repeating: trying to solve a Codeword with only a 2-letter key is hard enough, without introducing foreign words.  Or Latin.  Or words that have a hyphen in.  

     Let the indictment begin.

"CILIA": You what?  Collins Concise Dictionary defines these as the technical term for eyelash OR hairs on the surface of a cell that beat, enabling movement. Art!

"FAUNA": Animal life.  From the Latin "Faunas", a goddess of living things.  Which these Codeword compilers would not long be, were they within reach.

"GAUCHE": Tactless.  From the French for 'awkward'.  QUITE.

"AGARS": Presumably they refer to petri dishes full of that gloppy nutrient solution one puts down to encourage the growth of disease cultures?  The one that Our Hero (or Heroine, women can do science too, because it doesn't involve heavy lifting or firearms) finds five minutes before the credits roll, meaning Humanity Is Saved?  

Late Breaking News!  Zombie plague beaten!

"ECLOGUES":  WHAT?  What in Dog Buns is an 'eclogue'?  A high-temperature steam-sterilising container?  A text discovered by French explorers, preserved in a cave in Armenia?  Boring speeches by a bunch of tree-huggers?  Go on, do your stuff, Art.  Yes, even if it still tingles.

What did Scott, Gordon and Brains write**?

     GRRRRRRRR.

"Field Guns In France" By NFT

This is kind of an introduction, followed by a tangent, which you ought to be used to by now, so if you were looking for a linear narrative or common sense, THE EXIT DOOR IS THAT WAY!

     NFT, or Major Neil Fraser-Tytler, recounts how he was strolling around his portion of the front lines on the Western Front, when he came across the Prince Of Wales (later Edward VIII) " - as usual, looking fit and hard as nails".  Art!

POW to port, with his dad at centre.
("Dad" also known as King George V)

     Eddy, as we shall call him, attempted to join the army the minute war broke out, as he was both patriotic and keen (and naive).  "NO!" said Lord Kitchener (that chap pointing on the posters).  K of K wasn't so bothered about Eddy getting killed stone dead, he was more worried about him being captured alive by the Teutons, and thus providing them with both propaganda and political leverage.  Horribly pragmatic chap, K of K.

     

Eddy again

     Eddy was a persistent chap.  He eventually got enrolled in the Grenadier Guards, and was then posted to an admin job at GHQ - so far from the front lines there was no danger of him getting anything more dangerous than a sore tooth.

     However - you probably saw that coming, didn't you? - it was probably rather hard to restrain Eddy, and he was always up in the front lines, most especially when he shouldn't have been.  NFT had encountered him previously literally in the front line trenches, dozens of miles from where he could have been sitting in perfect safety.  He refused any kind of special treatment and endured exactly what the front-line Tommies did, which garnered him immense respect.
     So there you go.

Finally -

As you should surely know by now, Conrad has been ploughing a lonely furrow in his promotion of sharks, with the line "Sharks are our friends!" being trotted out whenever we hear of a shark attack.  The sad fact is that for every human casualty, 100,000 sharks are killed, and a lot of them are victims of Chinese Shark Fin soup hunters***.
     ANYWAY, I couldn't resist checking out a Youtube channel with a marine biologist and shark expert debunking various films.  Art?

     Meet Apryl Boyle (thanks mom and pop), who is so effusive and exuberant and <thinks> expert, that she quite charmed her viewers, including this large curmudgeon.  We shall come back to this, it has legs.   Yes yes yes, unlike sharks, how hilarious you are.  Chin chin!

*  It's expensive

**  Alan has nothing to contribute, as in real life

***  I am not making this up.