As You Should Surely Know
IF you were diligently reading the blog last night, then you know Conrad ended with a tangential reference to a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Kubla Kahn", and I'd like to begin today's post with a couplet from same.
I know, I know, Your Humble Scribe normally loathes poetry, it being the literal equivalent of a parsnip and pineapple pizza <gags>. I like to keep you guessing, however, and one thing you cannot deny is how capricious I am.
Now, before the applied pedantry begins, Conrad distinctly remembers reading a novel called "Down To A Sunless Sea" back in the Eighties, whose author I cannot remember. Allow me a little quick Google-fu - aha. Art!
So now we know. I wouldn't hurry out to get a copy from Abebooks, it's a very depressing read and everybody dies at the end, although nearly everybody dies at the beginning. Now we know where the title comes from, Vulnavia. Incidentally, there were rumours of a film 6 years ago, which has come to naught.
And now another aside. "Xanadu". Conrad seems to recall Rush having a song like this, with lyrics stolen borrowed from Coleridge. Hang on a moment -
Okay, they didn't just lift them whole. That would have been bad. Naughty Rush! Art?
Also featuring The Tubes, whose "White Punks On Dope" is more properly representative of their oeuvre.
Where were we? O yes - that couplet. Conrad is no architect yet he has a basic knowledge of physics and construction, and has to seriously question the wisdom of Ol' Kubby, since design, technology and materials science at his time (thirteenth century, timekeepers) were not up to the task of creating a large free-standing dome. Art!
It HAS a dome. It is NOT "A Dome".
You know Conrad: achingly precise in his definitions, and he expects other people to be equally strict. Now, take that line about Alph running "through caverns measureless to man", which you'd never get away with nowadays and besides women tend to be smaller and slimmer than men, meaning they can more easily explore narrow underground passages. One then has to ask how they know these caverns are "measureless". After all, being an underground cavern-measurer must be an awful job; cold, dark, damp and with the eerie suspicion that something is creeping ever-closer in the darkness ...
BOO!
The temptation must be to pack it in after a few horrid weeks exploring: "O we'll just tell Ol' Kubby they go on for ever, it's not like he's going to come down and check, is it?". Which begs the question of how they know this river ends in a "sunless sea"? Clearly they haven't followed the river all the way to it's terminus or they'd have measurements for those caverns ("One thousand six hundred and twenty two parasangs"). Plus, an underground sea, with no way for it's waters to evapourate or otherwise diminish, will inevitably back-fill and cause disastrous flooding. Coleridge; splendid poet, rather less adept at hydrological analysis. Art!
Down to a quite sunny sea, actually
That's a matte shot, in case you were wondering, and even if you weren't. Ten brownie points if you know what happens next.
Okay, motley, we're off for a trip to Whitescar Caves!
Not for the claustrophobic
Finally -
No, only kidding. I didn't expect that four-line couplet to generate so much hot air. But, with no editor we can do things on the fly*.
"Field Of Fire" By Jack Swaab
Since I have finished re-reading "The Martian" I am now back to the book above, which has quite as much about writing and receiving letters, buying perfume and eating as it does matters military. Mail, in both the First and Second Unpleasantnesses, was an incredible boost to morale, at a time when everyone wrote to each other. Art, if you post a picture of armour, then the Tazer cannon comes out.
To underline the next bit
I have arrived at December 1944 in Jack's notes, and from what he writes, you can understand why armies in Europe didn't campaign in winter. It rains ALL THE TIME. Everywhere floods, and what's not flooded is muddy, muddy to the point of bogging down everything not on tracks. Soldiery are wet, cold, dirty and miserable, their rations are often cold and disease is prevalent.
General Mud, aided and abetted by General Rain
And this is the twentieth century! Just imagine what state a medieval army would have been in. Zoinks. Doesn't bear thinking about: "Anothr twentie menne dyed of th. bloodie flux last night; hurld theire boddies in a pitte and back to th. siege."
Finally -
Yes, for real this time. Hey, I still have to finish annotating "Field Guns In France" as there's about 7 pages left to do, not to mention more episodes of "Callan" and "Fireball XL-5" to watch - er - the latter for - ah - research! Yeah, yeah, research, that's it. I shan't tell you the Youtube channel they're on, as the more people who know, the greater the chance of a leak or Youtube or ITV or whomsoever marching their lawyers in.
That building in the background rotates, for some reason
And with that, Vulnavia, we are done!
* Hmmm, that sounds strangely familiar.
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