Ah, Walkies With Edna
Since Your Humble Scribe is not travelling into Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell (dry weather today!) via public transport, he uses the opportunity to take Edna for a trot as a substitute when it comes to thinking deep thoughts. Or dark thoughts. Thus it proved to be yesteryon, as we passed Cherry Grove and the word "Philodendron" suddenly popped into my head. If this were anyone else's blog then you'd have a septic joke about an Irishman <here> BUT! of course this is BOOJUM! and we do things differently here. Art!
The Comsat Angels live in 1982
I know it's not a philodendron and I don't care.
Because you can never have too much Comsats in your life. O go on, have a philodendron. Art!
So. A pot plant, hmmm? Your Humble Scribe was parsing the name, because as we already know, "Philo" is Greek for "Lover of -", with the exception of Philo Vance. "Dendron" puzzled me for a few moments. Hair? Weasels? The Sanjak's annual pistachio harvest?
"Dendrochronology" came back from my inner mental depths, which is the scientific study of tree rings, so - Trees!
'Lover of trees'. Right. Quite what a green plant in a pot has to do with loving trees is rather beyond me, since a philodendron bears no resemblance to a tree. Unless you happen to live in the Land Of The Giants*. Did they ever end up naming the land in the LOTG? Apparently not (I went and checked). A bit of clumsiness on the part of the scriptwriters if you ask me ("Help, help, we're trapped in a land of giants!" "A land of giants! How terrifying! Where is it? What is it?" "Er -")
Spot the Triffid
In fact, until I looked it up ten minutes ago, I'd no idea if such a thing as a philodendron existed, and it might well have been as mythical as the Upas Tree. Art!
The Upas tree. Deadlier than a Triffid if not as mobile.
Motley, would you like an apple**?
Conrad - Still Happily Unhappy
For Lo! we are back on the subject of Codewords, and I have some ire to expunge, because one can only vent so much at any one time before the readers either get bored or scared. Rarely both***. Anyway, let us have at the knavish varlets! Or - was it valetish knaves? I'll get back to you on that.
"ENZYMATIC": O really! Aside from bundling two of the rarer letters together (I don't have to explain which, do I?), how often have you read this word, unless you were studying A level Biology? Conrad safely bets you've never used it in conversation, either. It is, of course, the adjectival form of 'enzyme'. WHAT ARE WE ALL NOW STUDYING ADVANCED LEVEL BIOLOGY! I doubt we can find a fitting picture, but let's cattle-prod Art into wakefulness and have him try. Art!
Francis Bacon's "Explosion In A Paint Factory"
Or, an enzyme.
"PROSODY": ??? You what? Is this an obscure Greek term referring to a kind of religious dance with music? A Bavarian porter best drunk whilst eating bratwurst? The legal definition of a ballfoot game hooligan?
<consults Collins Concise>
My guess at a Greek dithyramb wasn't too far off: "The study of poetic metre and the art of versification"
WHAT, ARE WE ALL NOW CLASSICAL GREEK TERPSICHOREANS NOW?!
<swears quietly yet vehemently>
"COYPU": Also known as the 'nutria', and if you have a phobia about rats, this is not the kind of rodent you'd like to encounter as you amble along the water meadows. It resembles a rat, which you'd expect, as it's a rodent. Unlike a rat, it can reach two feet in length and weigh over 20 pounds. Art!
CAUTION! Can destroy riverbanks
The Rains Came
I refer, of course - obviously! - to the actors Douglas and Claude. Douglas' voice you may recognise as that of HAL, in the futurological documentary "2001 A Space Odyssey", that being - no, hang on, it's not real, is it? Sorry, old age is creeping up on me. Art!
What happened to the other 8,999?
ANYWAY I wanted to comment on the latter Rains, Claude. He was born in 1889, and enjoyed a fruitful career on the stage here in Blighty and then across the Pond in South Canada. When the First Unpleasantness broke out, as with David Niven in the Second Unpleasantness, he hared it back to This Sceptred Isle and joined the London Scottish Regiment. You didn't need to be either a Cockney nor a Scot to join them, although a certain ruthless prosecution of warfare certainly helped. He served alongside other actors, notably a rather hard nut called Basil Rathbone -
Basil, thinking deep dark thoughts
as well as Ronald Colman, Cecil Hardwicke and Herbert Marshall, all big names in the theatre and film into the Forties. Art!
In late 1916, at the fag-end of the Somme campaign, Claude was badly affected in a gas attack, suffering partial blindness and inhalation injuries, leading to his service on the staff rather than the front-line, which probably helped him survive until the war's end.
We'll come back to Ol' Claude (sorry, lack the creativity to shorten it further) as he had a long career after 1918, O yes indeed. I bet you can hardly wait.
Some Canuckistanians going to dole out sweetness and light. And Mills bombs.
Okay, I don't like to leave you with less than four articles, so -
Amstrong-Whitworth Argosy
Yes, I know we covered this yesteryon. However, just reflect that the RAF now flies the Typhoon, a piece of aerial science-fiction made solid, and 75 years ago it was also flying the Typhoon, a piece of aerial artillery that struck fear into the Teuton heart. Names, you see, get re-used. Art!
This was a passenger biplane of the Twenties, designed and intended to supplant earlier smaller two-engined models, since it had THREE! for an increase of fifty per cent. They used to ply the route from London to Paris and made a thing about being luxury aircraft, which is a fair point, as you needed a lot of moolah to be able to hop on and flitter across the Channel. Taken out of service in 1936 as more modern aircraft came into the picture. Art!
Finally -
Your Humble Scribe has been scribbling away at the solutions to that giant crossword jigsaw puzzle, and now only has some sixty left to complete. This sounds like a lot, but consider that there were well over two hundred to fill in when I started. In fact, once I've finished creating these words of wit, wisdom and wonder, I shall be off to the crossword again.
Pip pip old chap!
* It's possible.
** From the Manchineel tree. Tee hee!
*** Insert joke about "The Driller Killer" here
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