From Latin To Ruffian

Here Beginneth Your History Lesson

SIT BACK DOWN!  Don't worry, we shan't be doing the declension of a plu-perfect participle, this is more of a 'I bet you didn't know this' gloasting.

     Okay, so, back in the day - actually a couple of thousand years ago, give or take - you had Julius Caesar, who was the Very Top Dog in Rome (and this kind of disrespect would probably have gotten Conrad the punishment of being thrown alive into a pit of wild animals) -

(!))

     After he was - ah - 'gotten rid of', subsequent emperors took his name in order to curry cowering abject worship amongst the hoi-polloi.  The title "Caesar" became associated with being an imperial title, even crossing over the language barrier into other nations.  The Wilhemine Kaisers, for example, used a Teutonic variant of Caesar.  But hist!  What's this?  Which nation was the very embodiment of autocratic imperialism?  Russia!  What did their emperors call themselves? (NO! "Putin" is an anachronism, even if technically correct).  "Csars", which has somehow been transmogrified in the English-speaking world (the better kind of world, of course - obviously!) into "TSARS".

     WHICH SHOULD NOT BE PRESENT IN A CODEWORD!  Art!

O you're happy now, aren't you, Dimya?

     For Lo! this Intro has suddenly transmogrified itself into another ranting screed about Codewords.  Of course I got the solution above, but what about other, less widely-read puzzlers who lack the interest and background in Ruffian history that Conrad has?  The horror!  The horror!

"AUTO": A four-letter word with three vowels?  Hmmmm.  Nor is that all - Conrad considers this to be a PREFIX, not a word in itself.  Typing this at work so no recourse to my Collins Concise is possible, and teh Interwebz aren't objective enough.  Or <shudder> are they using colloquial South Canadian to refer to <gags> A CAR?

A Carr.  Close enough.

"KIBOSH": Egad!  What?  How obscure can you get?  Your Humble Scribe first came across this word in a Biggles short story, and subsequently never again.  BECAUSE IT IS OBSOLETE! DONE!  DEAD!  EXTIRPATED*!  Yes yes yes it might have been popular in the First Unpleasantness, which was OVER A CENTURY AGO!  Sheesh.  That Caps Lock key is getting a workout today.

     It means, lest you be unaware, to be thoroughly thwarted in an endeavour, nor is it clear exactly where it came from.  Gaelic?  Yiddish?  Novi Pazar?  Art!

Someone's getting kiboshed

     Motley!  Get in the swimming pool whilst this cement mixer empties a load in there, and we'll see if that puts you up the kibosh.

A Little More Picturesque

After all, Dimya is no oil painting, is he?  (This will probably upset him sufficiently to need tissues and hugs).  We are back to the BBC's promotion of award-winning and runner-up photographs with an historic theme, and today - let me just poke Art aware with this pitchfork -

Courtesy David Oxtaby

     This is the Shambles in York, and yes, shot like this it does look like a scene from Harry Potter.  At night-time, were you there in person, it would still look like a scene from Harry Potter.  Shops that date from the fourteenth century, should you wish to be better-informed.

The Food Of The Dogs

No!  Not a typo or spelling mistake.  For yes, we are back on the odious un-commodious catering in the era of Toxic Tasties, where the health of you, the consumer, was considerably less important than the retailers and manufacturers making a profit.  Ah for the Victorian era!  Next up we have: Ferric Ferrocyanide in Chinese tea.  Art!

Guaranteed to make you lose weight!

     Conrad cannot find precisely why this poison was added to tea, but would pretty much expect that it was for colouration purposes or to (possibly) add a smoky tang to Lapsang Souchong, meaning you could avoid the time-consuming smoking process and just poison people instead.

     One tangential item I've come across is the "Bradford lozenge scandal", where hokey health-lozenges were due to be adulterated with plaster of Paris, which is not great for your intestinal regimen, but isn't incredibly toxic.  What the pills were adulterated with was instead arsenic: yes, that INCREDIBLY TOXIC POISONOUS substance.  21 people died, and the culprits got off scot-free.

     We've used this picture before with no context.  Well, now you know.

Talking Of Death And Injustice -

CAUTION!  Even if the above was a trifle grim, what follows is grimmer, although it does end up going off in a direction you may not have expected, for Yes! we are back with more more "Tormentor".

Consciousness came suddenly to Louis, as he woke shivering with a start.  The dawn already showed faintly through the curtains, enabling him to see that he’d kicked the duvet completely off the bed. 

              ‘Christ!  No wonder I’m bloody freezing!’ he shivered, retrieving the cover and retiring back to bed for another half an hour until he felt more like a human being and less like an icicle.  Part of the coldness didn’t go away: the feeling that Jennifer was gone.  Gone.  Really and truly gone, never to return.  Not just missing, which left a smidgeon of hope, but gone.  Of course he didn’t know for sure, not for certain; that body on the ambulance trolley might have been some other hapless girl; dayglo bags like that were common items.  It wasn’t a convincing reassurance.

              A long and featureless day lay in prospect before him, without any distractions.  Work or study or any distractions at all.  He walked gingerly into the bathroom, favouring his injured foot, then went to change the plaster.  For a second he stared at the hollow-eyed man in the bathroom mirror.

              ‘Not a good night, eh?’

              The hollow-eyed man rubbed his disarrayed locks and carried on.

              Dumbfounded, he stared at the contents of the small medicine cabinet, which had all been taken from both shelves and crammed into a single corner of the cabinet.

              Did I do that?  Damn, that’ll teach me to mix whisky and sleeping tablets! 

              Eventually he pried the plasters loose from the cabinet and swapped his old one for a new one.  Wiser about the qualities of broken glass fragments in a deep-pile carpet, he put both socks and slippers on before going downstairs.

              He needn’t have bothered.  The glass had all been swept neatly up and dropped in the kitchen bin.

     Gosh, the perils of sleep-walking, hmmm?

Roel's Goals

Yes, we are back with Roel of the complicated Dutch surname, as he assesses different sword-and-chariot films, in this case one he's already given a thumbs-up in his previous ditch-digging dialogue depiction.  Art!

"Alexander".  Just so we're clear

     This is a fanciful depiction of the Battle of Hydaspes, where the Alexandrian army clashed with the Indians.  Why "Fanciful"? I hear you quibble.  O I thought you'd never ask!  Because Roel points out that this battle did NOT - Art?

      - take place in a forest.  It was fought on nice, level, un-encumbered ground, because that way Ol' Alex could use his cavalry, which is where he completely out-classed the Indians.  Art!

Pachyderm versus pointy sticks

     Accurate up to a point - Roel states that horses don't like animals they've not met before, which the Indian elephants most certainly were.  The film over-eggs the pudding about how unstoppable they were, because the Greeks most certainly stopped them; and if an elephant panics and runs, there is an equal chance it will plough through it's own lines.  Ooops.

     Otherwise tactics, weapons and formations all very good.  7/10.  Not bad at all!

     And with that, Vulnavia, we are most certainly done!

*  Stopping here before I go all Norwegian Blue on you.