O Frabjous Day!

Yes That's From Lewis Carroll

I forget which poem it's from, possibly "Jabberwocky", and the reason I am rubbing my hands with glee is because I'm a terrible person, who positively wallows in schadenfreude.  Which, as we all know, is the malicious enjoyment of other people's misery.  Why am I so enthused today?  Because The Manchester United ballfoot team have sacked their 'Manager' - let me know if I get too technical for you - Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, hereafter OGS*.  Art!

Five-fingered salute?

     Here Conrad has to rely on other, far-better informed people about OGS, who was previously a player at TMU and is, by all accounts, a thoroughly decent chap - tho' being a Nork one cannot expect any less.  There was, inevitably, a perfect storm of comments on the BBC's news item about this when they opened it up for Comments.  Art!

   The webpage hasn't been closed yet, so expect that total to rise.  I have had a quick skim through the highest-rated comments and a few themes have emerged: that of OGS being a legend when playing for his 'club', a jolly nice chap just not up to such a prestigious position; he knew he was rubbish and should have resigned; the management above him are useless; the players below him are useless (and overpaid prima donnas too worried about their hairdos to bother playing when on the pitch).  I don't currently have 40 minutes set aside to read all the Comments, because at one second per post that's how long it would take to get through them.  Perhaps tonight over a glass of schnapps and toasted crumpet.

     The ballfoot game - a gift that keeps on giving!

A ballfoot

Roel's Role

Yes! we are back with Roel With The Dutch Surname, who is probably the most personable Ancient Studies lecturer in the whole world, and whose courses are also probably massively over-subscribed thanks to his Youtube channel work for 'Insider', to which I now refer.  This is his second set of 10 analyses of film and television that claim to show warfare in the pre-gunpowder era.  Art!

   Let me guess - he's both a king AND an outlaw?  Egad!  What will those scriptwriters come up with next?  A Lion who is also a King?  An Eye who is pals with a King?  A Vietnamese guerilla fighter who is also a King**?

     ANYWAY "I don't want to labour the point -" says Roel, but -

     "Dig ditches.  Dig many ditches.  When you've finished digging one ditch, dig another."

     DITCHES THE ANSWER B

     

Ditch exemplified

     As Roel points out, horses will not try to jump a great long gap in the landscape, not when they're carrying a knight in full armour and being armour-plated themselves.  This means you canalise an attack to where you want it to go, not where the enemy intends, and you can minimise the number of defenders behind a ditch.  Art!

Thumbs up from Roel!

     Ol' Roel also notes that the outcome of this battle chimes well with what we know of the real life historical encounter, which was chosen by the canny French because it was surrounded by marshes - cavalry cannot operate in a swamp - and allowed only a few of the English to attack at a time, completely negating their numerical superiority.  Art!

     It's not perfect: as I noticed myself, the infantry have too much armour, because wretched peasant stubble-hoppers like them couldn't afford it, and the cavalry don't have enough, because a war-horse was an expensive big-ticket item you needed to protect.

     Overall 7/10.  Well done.

Conrad's Mind Wanders

It always does.  At times it wonders, too.  Okay, remember Spinlaunch and their kinetically-driven rocket system?  The one that accelerated the rocket up to 5,000 r.p.m. and got a test missile to reach four miles high?  Art!

     Your Humble Scribe, because he has a morbid imagination, wondered if it would be possible to have this structure on a rotating base, and have the launch tube be able to tilt by 450? 

     For why?  Well, because then you'd have a pretty cool anti-satellite weapon, wouldn't you?  If you track orbits accurately enough all you'd need to accelerate would be a dirty great rock.  And you could then torment the Ruffians by commiserating with their sad loss to a meteor.  Heh.

Speaking Of "Torment" -

Okay, I promise I'll not post any more 'Tormentor' in this evening's post, deal?  All the same, nobody has complained about it, which (in my mind anyway) is exactly the same as asking for more.  So here it is.

His previous disciplinary meeting came shortly after getting to within two inches of a chattering female student in his class and shouting at her to “shut up you mental midget!”, followed by “best decision you’ve made today and don’t come back” when she fled the room in tears.

‘I don’t suffer fools.  And life’s too short to bother beating about the bush.’

‘Louis – oh, I give up.  No, there’s no disciplinary here, not even an informal one.’

‘Then why am I here?’

Rowell steepled his fingers, a sure sign that he was going to lecture.  Sure enough, he did.

‘Are you familiar with Detention and Training Orders?  They’re the sentences that get meted out to juvenile criminals, ones under twenty-five.  Normally the little horrors get released after half their sentence is served, with the promise that they go back and serve the rest if they re-offend.  Our local authority, God bless it’s left-wing liberal conscience, prevailed upon the local magistrates to include compulsory literacy and numeracy lessons in the DTO’s for recently released prisoners.’

He stopped to let this sink in. 

‘What for!’

‘Apparently there’s a significant correlation between offending and poor literacy and numeracy.  Get rid of the latter and you stop the former.  Or in ivory-cloud cuckooland you do.’

Louis felt a touch of apprehension coming on.  Rowell unsteepled his hands and rubbed the back of his neck with them.

 ‘Last year half of the class were back inside by Christmas.  Those that were left made Maude Mitchell’s life miserable - she’s on long-term sick at present – and when I asked Claude if he’d take over, he threatened to resign on the spot.’  Rowell focussed on Louis.  ‘So I want you to take over the class.’

‘One of the reasons I’m in Further Education is because the students want to be here.  It’s why I left secondary teaching.  Who wants to teach a bunch of thugs who don’t want to be here?’

Rowell nodded.

‘Good question.  The thing is, your name came up two or three times when I asked who could cope with thirty brain-dead petty criminals.’

‘Me!  Me?’

     Your Modest Artisan took care to do his research and a DTO was real at the time, though they may have gone the way of the dodo by now.  And yes, I used to deal with teenaged criminals when I worked at Connexions.  Definitely not the sharpest tools in the box

Finally -

I enjoyed that goulash I made last week for my weekly lunch, though the potatoes were only just done and either needed leaving out altogether or substituted with baby ones cut in half.  Perhaps dumplings?  I've got another recipe lined up for later this afternoon, and shall check out a few on teh Interwebz as well to see if my afternoon constitutional into Babylon-lite (Royton if we're being formal) needs to result in any more purchases.  Art!

     Time for a trot!

*  See?  See how I don't ALWAYS bump up the word count?

**  King Kong.  You know, fromt 'Viet Cong'.  A bit before your time.