Politicians!

Doncha Love 'em?

No need to reply if you don't feel like it, it was rhetorical, and no need to worry that  Homeland Security or the FBI or even the CIA are going to break down your door - with an armoured self-propelled battering ram - because Conrad is, of course, talking about the politicians of history.

     This is the bust (WASH OUT YOUR SEWER-LIKE MINDS!) of Pericles, the Athenian statesman and general, who died in 429 BC, and for politicians it's been all downhill since then.  Peri Peri, to give him a nickname that would probably baffle if not enrage him, was a towering intellect and soldier, as able a politician as he was a <thinks> hoplite <crosses fingers>.  This is a rare combination, for as military matters have grown more complex, our political leaders require ever-firmer guidance and advice on what to do, where to do it, and how not to mess things up.

The Goat

     Yes, a case in point.  DLG was convinced that the Allies could win the First Unpleasantness by fighting the Austro-Hungarians in Italy, because only that way could the Teutons in France be - no, it doesn't make sense to me either.

     ANYWAY <still happy that we're on single-line spacing crosses more fingers> we are on the subject of "Military Operations Gallipoli Volume 1" and here's a thing -  

I apologise for Art.  Deploying tetrodotoxin darts and blowpipe now.

     You see, the General Staff of Perfidious Albion were all absent at the time politicians were busy debating about the Gallipoli landings.  The consensus at the War Office (no PC job titles in those days!) in June 1914 was that the First Unpleasantness would be over in four or five days weeks months, meaning that they didn't need a enormous staff in Whitehall to staff said War Office.  So the generals and brigadiers and colonels and majors all beggared off to France, where they delightedly set to at being proper working soldiers.
     Meanwhile, back at Whitehall ...

     The General Staff, you see, are experienced soldiers of high rank whose job it is to advise the government about any military plans they might be thinking of.  This is one of the things about Perfidious Albion and parliamentary democracy, you see ARE YOU LISTENING SOUTH CANADA as our elected politicians tell the uniforms what to do, not vice-versa.

     If the experienced soldiers are absent, then you get plans to invade Roast Beef Island in order to counter-attack the Invisible Purple Ponies, who live on Cloud Magpie Land, where the Pobble and his Luminous Toes are a serious collateral damage issue.

     We shall, O so inevitably, be coming back to this.

     Motley, put on this ultra-violet spectacle set - there - now, how many Purple Ponies can you see?

It looks good enough to eat

Bathos Minus Bath

I keep using this word without having properly researched it's provenance - no, no, you bafoons - "Bathos", not 'bath', sheeesh what do you think I am*?

     "A sudden ludicrous descent from exalted to ordinary matters or style in speech or writing", thank you Collins Concise.  Art!

     Well yeah.  Here you can see the new chair (thanks Degsy!) and adjustable-height table, and the new Mobile Bookcase (five functional castors), and that tall, narrow bookcase to port?  That contains lots and lots of very solid, hardback, heavy books.  Which all had to be taken out before the bookcase could be moved, and then replaced.  Conrad was well exercised yesteryon.

Peculiar South Canadian Customs

There's not much more peculiar that dipping biscuits in gravy <shudders> but the whole confluence about Thanksgiving is quite puzzling to folks over here in This Sceptred Isle.  It's not Bonfire Night, nor is it Christmas, so what exactly is it? and do South Canadians run a gauntlet of small extorting weasels trying to pry you and your small change apart?

That is one miserable-looking dog
("Free me from my Thanksgiving hell!!")

     You see, Conrad has followed a link from "The Horrors Of It All" to another of their friend's websites, which claims to present the worst of the worst of the worst of exploitation films, and Hay Pesto!  there was a link to bizarre, macabre and downright odd Thanksgiving photographs that had to feature a turkey and another kind of bird - Art?

     Yessssss.  Conrad thinks there is little room for intensive review of what denier those nylons are, nor how sharp that axe is.  Still, a ferocious whammer with the edged-hammer, and quite bemusingly humorous in a way.  Or - it's not just me, is it?

Thanks, Thanks, It's The Bottom Five Tanks

You surely remember yesteryon, when Conrad brought up the Number Two on our list of Bovington-Tank-Museum-Director's Approved List of Panzers Pathetique?  Yes, it was the Panther, that wehraboo touchstone of abstract awesome, which turned out to be a whole lot less awesome in real life.

     My terrific pal Listy, who is a published author and everything, posted an at-length blog about one of the post-D-Day scuffles between the British Americans and the 12th SS Panzer division.  Guess what?  The mighty metal monstrous mastodons of the 12th SS fall to the (puny but righteous) 6 pounder anti-tank guns and PIAT bomb-throwers of the Canadians.  Repeatedly.  (Cue complaints from the wehraboos "O yes O er O they were using atomic anti-tank bombs guided by - guided by - DEMONS!  Yes, atomic anti-tank rockets blessed by Beelzebub and Stalin.  With aliens.")

     Wehraboos: 0  British Americans:12

     I have spoken**.

Finally -

Conrad managed to finish off last Wednesday's Codeword in the usual 20 minutes, so he cannot really carp and cavil at the contents thereof, except one of them was "SPHERE" which I think you'll admit is pretttttty sneaky.  

     For one thing, they were a paperback publisher, and that volume above is the one that I had from back in the mid-Eighties, when it seemed the most niche of authors had a fair shout at being published.

     The word itself comes form, of course - obviously! - the Greek "Sphaira", meaning "Globe", which language and culture is where we came in -

      

*  DO NOT ANSWER THIS QUESTION

**  Yes, I have nicked this from "The Mandalorian" since it seemed so fitting.  We may come back to this.