You Can Lead A Horse To Water

Indeed You Can

Quite why you would want to spend your free time getting Dobbin drinkwards is another matter, because if there's a water-trough there and he's thirsty, he'll drink. 

 Or does this aphorism apply to standing water sources in the countryside?  Because again, if Dobbin knows there's a pond at the bottom of Ten Acre Field*, he'll trot down and quench his thirst.  What he'd not be very keen on is if some interfering Hom. Sap. comes along, gets hold of his bridle and drags him over to either trough or pond.

Horse for "I've already HAD a drink."

     This is probably over-thinking the adage, which is pretty much how we operate around here.  If Conrad can take a perfectly innocent, simple and straightforward everyday object/person/saying, and turn it into an entanglement of illogic, then his day is complete.
     For Lo! we are back on the Official History of the Gallipoli campaign, which you must have missed, since I've been keeping it on the back burner.  It is arguable that things had gone irreversibly toes-up back in February of 1915, long before any landings took place, when the Royal Navy began to bombard selected spots on the Gallipoli peninsula.  It doesn't take a genius to see that Perfidious Albion might be considering a landing there.

British tourists come ashore

     Before anything had been planned, the Military Secretary to the British government sent them a prescient and detailed letter outlining a series of Very Important Questions, which I think we shall try to paraphrase, or this Intro will be two blog posts in length:

"1)  How many troops to be used?

2)  What supply arrangements are there for boats and tugs?

3)  What of pontoons and landing piers?

4)  How will water and provisions be supplied?

5)  How will hospitals be arranged - on land, at sea, or both?

Both, actually

6)  Will this be a surprise landing or is trench warfare expected?

7)  What siege guns are available?  How much ammunition will they have?  How will both be landed?

8)  Can naval gunfire properly support an attack and deal with hostile enemy batteries?

Global warming not an issue in 1915

9)  What are the logistical arrangements for ammunition supply generally?

10)  How are supplies to be transported overland when there are very few roads?"

To which was added the telling coda "Unless details such as these ... are fully thought out before the landings take place, it is conceivable that a serious disaster may occur." (emphasis mine).

     Guess what?  These questions were completely ignored for the most part until the fleet was assembled at Mudros.  When they were (very briefly) raised at an earlier meeting of the War Cabinet, Lord Kitchener growled that the men on the spot should do the planning, and because the politicians were scared of K of K (to be honest, everyone was scared of K of K) that was the end of the matter.  Ooops.

One of the consequences

     I think we can see where this is going.  I have just reached that point in the narrative where the landings are about to take place - finally! - after 162 pages.  
     Motley, please eat this two-pound bag of salt and we'll see if that allows you to be led to those puddles over there.

Cool and quenching, hmmmm?

Talking Of Naming Names -

Conrad, as a small youth, used to enjoy watching a television program back when there were only three channels, broadcast on Friday evening, called "The Virginian".  It was a western, running from 1962 until 1971, notching up 249 episodes, so somebody out there liked it.  Art!

The Viginian at back port

     Unlike Baby Yoda, or The King of a Hundred Knights (see yesteryon's blog), we never got to learn what The Virginian's name was.  Not ever.  Conrad remembers a newspaper letter remarking on this, waiting for another character to call him Jim or Steve or Eustace or Flapdoodle-Dandy-Sugar; it never happened.  This is because the series was loosely based on a book published in 1902 titled "The Virginian" where the character's name is never revealed, either.

     James Drury, the actor playing TV, was also in "The Adventures of Briscoe County Junior".  Just so you know.

I Hope You Appreciate This

Your Humble Scribe has just spent a good 10 minutes trawling the internet and IMDB's Trivia page for "The Blues Brothers" in order to put to bed a rumour that concerns John Landis and Donald Sutherland.  The rumour was that Don had appeared in a string of films that John had directed.  Art!

     "National Lampoon" and "Animal House" were two films he definitely appeared in, yet folks float a rumour that he was briefly seen on a billboard in "The Blues Brothers".

     "Is this true, Conrad, O thou touchstone of truth, veracity and Imperial measurements?" I hear you call.  Pausing only to salute your recognition that Pounds, inches and shillings are all the world needs to solve it's problems, I can answer definitively - kind of.  Art?

     If you examine those credits closely at lower starboard you can see Don's name there.  His name only - his likeness never appeared.  Given the rather B-movie vibe of "See You Next Wednesday" this undoubtedly a good thing.

Finally - 

I was going to go on about "Operation Ariel" at one point in today's blog (actually done the night before but you get my drift), and then thought that we'd had enough of military operations for one day.  How about "Auto-da-fe"? instead?

     This was a formal indictment of alleged heretics under the Spanish, Portuguese and Mexican Inquisitions, the term itself coming from the Portuguese for "Act of Faith".  Trials were held in secret, with the accused never knowing who had given testimony against them, and at the end of the whole horrid affair all parties would be marched off to a place of burning.  Some were acquitted, others had their sentence confirmed but suspended, and others would be given the human rotisserie treatment - because the church was forbidden to spill blood.

     It's also the title of a much more interesting story about sentient cars being killed for sport in the arena, by moto-matadors, written by that master of prose Roger Zelazny.  Infinitely more preferable!

     And with that, Vulnavia, we are definitely done.

*  I don't know and don't care what this is in metric.  Acres is what it is here.