As You Should Surely Know By Now
Conrad has an abiding interest/unhealthy obsession/worrying familiarity <delete where applicable> with the First Unpleasantness, so much so that he could probably write books about it. I even have some primary source material, namely the battalion war diary of the 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers, and it's sitting right next to me at present. I dare not pick it up or the next paragraph you see here will have taken 5 hours to compose. Art!
This is from mid-1916 onwards; not from the early stages of the Somme as the inefficient 'wire-cutters' have been removed from rifle muzzles. It's a communications trench, you can tell as it's not revetted and travels in a straight line, and they are fixing bayonets, so someone is in for a bad hair day -
ANYWAY I am referring back to "Have His Carcase" by Ol' Dot Sayers, where Lord Peter is making passing reference to barber-to-the-upper-crust Endicott. His sole son, narrates Petey, was killed in the salient.
Here we take a brief detour, in defiance of the Coincidence Hydra. Art!
However, I snap my fingers at the wretched multi-headed creature and it's filleting fangs of fear, since I have now donned my armoured underwear courtesy of Primark. Hah!
To anyone who served in the armed forces of Perfidious Albion in the First Unpleasantness, 'the salient' even without capitalisation meant only one place: the Ypres salient. This ghastly place has to be one of the most blood-soaked pieces of real estate on the planet, yes even including those meat-grinder battles the Teutons and Sinisters fought on the Eastern Front in the Second Unpleasantness. Because of it's shape - Art?
- up until autumn 1917 the Teutons held the higher ground and hence could see and fire into the British lines from north, south and east of the salient*.
HHC was published in 1932, when memories of this unlovely area would have been extremely vivid still, which means Ol' Dot and Petey don't think to give any explanations. Here we are nearly 90 years later and you young whippersnappers wouldn't have the slightest idea about what they mean. Well, read and remember this, gentle reader, so that when YOU are middle-aged and your genes impel you to seek out murder mysteries, you are not embarrassed by ignorance.
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| Dot, pondering murderous thoughts. Probably. |
Hack, Slash, Blood And Thunder. And Blunder.
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned already that the second volume of "Once And Future" landed on my doorstep Friday, and Conrad has already read through it once. Art!
For those unaware or who do not care, this series is about Brigitte and Duncan, grandmother and grandson respectively, who have to deal with an irruption of Britain's mythical past into the present. With guns. It's interesting to see the myth and folklore of This Sceptred Isle interfering with the present-day world, and for all that Brigitte is a pensioner, she's still a whole lot more deadly than Duncan, who is learning monster-killing on the job. However - Art!
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| Beowulf** is about to put his size 10 on that tripwire - |
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| Until he stops to ponder |
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| NOT at 900 to them |
I shan't tell you how it ends. Go buy the comic book if you want to know!
Fred Is Dead
But not forgotten, not so long as there are fans of that obscure Sixties sci-fi show "Starry Trek" still alive. I did mention him earlier today, in connection with an episode of that same show entitled "Arena", one of my favourites. In it you find James (Tiberius) Kirk battling a reptilian alien, the Gorn, both completely isolated from their starship crews on a planet that acts as both battlefield and arena. Art!
See? I'm not making it up
The story was lifted wholesale from one of the same title by Frederick Brown, a South Canadian author whose style defined pithiness and wit. Your Humble Scribe has read his short story, and remembers a fair bit about it. There are catapults, and fireballs, and clever little lizards with lots of legs. It also has a MUCH darker ending than the Starry Trek version, because that's the kind of saturnine bloke Fred was.
JTK will snog anything.
More Of IWM
We continue our earlier description of the various IWM venues scattered across the Pond Of Eden (yes, those blasted rains are back), and move on the the Churchill War Rooms. Art!
The blurb recommends that you, the tourist, spend at least two and a half hours in this underground bunker system. The only problem Conrad can see is that it also states you cannot bring rucksacks into the venue, due to the narrowness of the corridors and entrances. THIS IS UNPARDONABLE! for Your Humble Scribe would never venture to such a place without his trusty rucksack full of notebook, reading book, Lucozade, jelly babies, phone, prescription sunglasses, pens, spare medicine, i-pod, newspaper and gifts purchased already. Nor are there lockers. This will take a bit of looking into. Art!
The entrance. Capable of accommodating a rucksack, surely?
You know Conrad, a sucker for an underground bunker complex, all the more if it's to do with the Second Unpleasantness. One could probably fit a visit in here with a trip to IWM London, and drop any rucksacks off at a train station left-luggage site. Hmmm. You know, that might work. I shall have to work out how long it takes to go around the third IWM site in London, which is -
Maybe tomorrow.
Finally -
You probably recall Conrad whining and complaining about the size of the cover picture on his crossword jigsaw puzzle, before completing it, at which point the complaints became gloatings. Your Humble Scribe is now attempting to solve the crossword itself. Art!
It's a slow process because there's so many clues. Not only that, Conrad has to be careful about putting his clumsy great paws on the lettering, as it's been done with a whiteboard marker, so any contact will rub it off.
I thought you'd appreciate being brought up to date.
And now - tea! The meal not the drink. I did get stuff out and ready before beginning this screed; one hopes Jenny has not been taking an interest in it.
* I could write a 5,000 word monograph on the Third Ypres campaign, and if you are not good I will do so. In fact I may do so anyway, that's the kind of horrid I am.
** Yes, that Beowulf
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