What's In A Name?

That Had Better Not Be ANYTHING To Do With Shakespeare

For, if you know anything about Conrad, you know he hates the Barf Of Avon with a passion <shakes fist at Shakespeare for making English O and A levels miserable).

     DOG BUNS!! I just Googled and it IS from the Barb Of Avon.  Right, when I take over his collected works are going in a skip, getting doused with petrol and set alight.  There will be a Department of Anti-Shakespeare, staffed with relentless, remorseless bloodhounds who will track down and delete anything and everything to do with the Bark of Avon.  

<Conrad rubs hands gleefully>

     Anyone teaching English will be vetted and, if they prove the teensiest bit upset at Shakespeare getting shafted - off to the uranium mines with them!

     Where were we?  O yes -

     Your Humble Scribe mentioned "The Virginian" recently, which naturally begets the question: why is there a "West Virginia" and a "Virginia"?  The locals might have gotten used to it, but it sounds confusing to foreigners.  Art?

     Well, this goes back to the American Civil Unpleasantness, when there was only Virginia.  The western part of that state decided that they'd rather not fight to keep the institution of slavery, ta very much, unlike the rest of Virginia, which is why the division came about.  And that's how it's been for the past 160 years.  Art!

     That's West Virginia delineated in scarlet, and as you can see Virginia has a peculiarly arbitrary southern border that appears drawn with a ruler.
     So there we are, one factoid richer than we were five minutes ago.

Trees, Please

Hah!  I found the story I wanted, one set in the Allotment of Eden rather than South Canada, about TREELAW <insert bad pun here>.  The Original Poster on Reddit lived in a mansion house that had been divided into three properties, and in their garden they had two Sequoia trees, that were 200 years old, whilst their neighbour had one.  Art!

A.k.a. Redwoods

     Apparently the Victorians had a thing about the Sequoia and imported hundreds of them into the UK from 1860 onwards.  Some chump in the Reddit comments said they didn't believe the story because redwoods only grew in the US.  Hello!  Art?

Just some of the UK's redwoods

     To be concise, the single-sequoia neighbours were a bunch of bottoms, whose envy grew boundless when a storm toppled their tree.  The OPs family came back from a holiday abroad to find both their trees cut down, two oak trees on their land also cut down, and the Nasty Neighbours presenting them with an £8,000 fee for the removal.  "There was a storm" they lied in explanation.

     Unfortunately for the Nasty Neighbours, OP had put up one of these:

     A wildlife camera.  It showed the dirty deeds being done: there was no storm and the bottoms from next door had deliberately trespassed to inflict property damage.  OP called in a tree surgeon, who calculated that each redwood tree was worth £100,000 and were irreplaceable - you just can't order a 200-year old tree off the shelf.  Not only that, they also recommended getting a structural engineer to examine the house foundations, because the roots would rot and if they had gotten into the foundation - Danger Will Robinson!  The Nasty Neighbours were taken to court and with other charges were found liable for £500,000; they had to sell their house and move out in order to pay.  OP got a 'new' redwood that was 'only' 80 years old, new foundations, new kitchen, new loft extension and new neighbours, so a win-win all round for them.

     The first cut may be the deepest, but that last one can be the most expensive.


Current Affairs

No! we are not going to comment on Mister Trump firing all his legal team or anything like that, for Lo! we are on about "Military Operations Gallipoli" again, and the landings have finally taken place, at long last!

     Except at the wrong place entirely.  

     The author, Mister Aspinall-Oglander, mentions that the plans for the landings of the ANZAC forces alone occupied twenty-seven pages of foolscap, detailing when the towed boats would be sent in and in what order, etcetera.  However, nobody at any level seems to have bothered to find out what the currents were like offshore.  "None" is the assumption.  Wrong.  They were so strong that the towing steam launches were pushed a mile north of the original landing site, which was discovered too late to amend, and mixed the towed boats up as well.  You can see the landscape above, which is still covered with heavy scrub.  The Ockers and the Polite Australians were thus scattered, disorganised, mixed up and slow to progress.  Art!

When things had been organised for a while

     The ANZACs never recovered from this dodgy start.  Remember, there had been five weeks to find out what those currents were like.  We shall see how the British and French managed to muck up their landings shortly!

A Touch Of Whimsy

No!  Nothing to do with Lord Peter or Dorothy Sayers.  Although that does remind me I've still not read one of the novels - something about a dead man turning up on a beach -

     ANYWAY as you should surely know by now, Conrad does the weekly shop on a Wednesday, because habit and tradition.  Whenever he buys beer, Your Humble Scribe always has a good look at the bottles and cans, because there is nothing he will not use as grist in the ever-grinding mills of BOOJUM! and so we present you with - Art?

     I'm not really bothered what it tastes like, I got it for the label.  Bird, banana and bread-flavoured beer sounds like the kind of brew only drunk for a dare or having lost a bet.  We shall see.  Or, rather, taste.

     

I Told Of The "Askold"

Back in the day, this Tsarist cruiser had quite the exciting time.  She fought in the Russo-Japanese Unpleasantness (the Sinister's probably banned people from talking about this since the Ruffians lost), and was off in the Far East when the First Unpleasantness broke out.  As part of the Allied fleet out there, she was co-operating with the Japanese (!) and British, which must have raised hackles somewhat.

     She then got sent to the Mediterranean, forming part of the joint Franco-British fleet that swanned up and down the Palestinian and Syrian coastlines, blowing things up either by gunfire or naval landing parties.  Then she helped support the operations at Gallipoli, eventually cruising back to the port of Archangelsk in the far north of Russia, declaring for the Provisional Government.  After the October Revolution, the Royal Navy happened to s<coughccough>teal her and renamed her HMS "Glory", sailing her to Scotland.  Rather cheekily, after the Bolsheviks had won their Civil Unpleasantness, she was offered back to them for a modest 'we were only looking after her' sum.  Sadly, she was judged unfit for service - she'd been around and in action for twenty years at this point and was definitely the worse for wear - and got scrapped.

      And  with that, Vulnavia, we are done.  See you on the other side, and don't forget - Ambrose Bierce for President!