Okay, Okay, It's Not A Ballad
I had trouble coming up with a word beginning with the letter "B" that meant a tale or story, so "Ballad" it has to be.
I have moved on from Turkish gypsy folk tales and have now arrived at Romanian ones, except they spell it "Roumanian" because the source text is from 1899 when they spelled things differently then.
"Gypsy Folk Tales"
Here an aside - don't look askance or the Remote Nuclear Detonator will get a work-out - on the subject of Romanians and vampires. Conrad remembers a tale in the mid-Seventies concerning a Romanian village, where an old woman had died. She was widely regarded as having been a witch. Art!
A Romanian witch.
Possibly not what you expected?
Since she was a witch, she had to be staked through the heart, or the village risked her coming back as a vampire; as you can guess these villagers were prettttty superstitious, and understandably wanted to keep the red stuff inside their veins. Who was going to do the deed? Why none other than brave Anton, recently back from doing his national service. For some reason that escapes me, the staking had to be done at night, nor could Anton afford anything as exotic and Western as a torch. So - he goes and starts to hammer a stake into the witches heart - and before you ask, Romanian coffins are notoriously flimsy* - and to his undisguised horror, the witch comes to life and starts to drag him down -
Next morning his hair had turned white and he couldn't speak, which might have been down to an excess of Tuica. Art!
Romanian plum brandy**
The villagers figured it out: foolish Anton had managed to snag his own overcoat with the stake, and as he hammered it home, he got pulled closer to the coffin.
Enough prevaricating, bring on the story!
No. 5.--The Vampire
THERE was an old woman in a village. And grown-up maidens met and span, and made a 'bee.' 1 And the young sparks came and laid hold of the girls, and pulled them about and kissed them. But one girl had no sweetheart to lay hold of her and kiss her. And she was a strapping lass, the daughter of wealthy peasants; but three whole days no one came near her. And she looked at the big girls, her comrades. And no one troubled himself with her. Yet she was a pretty girl, a prettier was not to be found. Then came a fine young spark, and took her in his arms and kissed her, and stayed with her until cock-crow. And when the cock crowed at dawn he departed. The old woman saw he had cock's feet. 2 And she kept looking at the lad's feet, and she said, 'Nita, my lass, did you see anything?'
'I didn't notice.'
'Then didn't I see he had cock's feet?'
'Let be, mother, I didn't see it.'
And the girl went home and slept; and she arose and went off to the spinning, where many more girls were holding a 'bee.' And the young sparks came, and took each one his sweetheart. And they kissed them, and stayed a while, and went home. And the girl's handsome young
spark came and took her in his arms and kissed her and pulled her about, and stayed with her till midnight. And the cock began to crow. The young spark heard the cock crowing, and departed. What said the old woman who was in the hut, 'Nita, did you notice that he had horse's hoofs?'
'And if he had, I didn't see.'
Ah, so the 'old woman' is the girl's mother. No wonder she's looking out for her. Although daughter seems rather put out at the parental interference. Perhaps the 'young spark' merely has sophisticated footwear imported from Paris specially, and - okay, no, traditionally it's a sign of evil if a male happens to have non-human feet. One wonders how Nita failed to notice, because hooves make a very loud noise on a wooden floor, you know, and can strike sparks - literal ones this time - from a stone floor. Art!
Nita and her mates*
Well I guess we'd better waffle at length to up the word count, having fudged it with an extract.
'In The Dark'
Yeah, just like that hapless dork Anton. Er - no, what I meant to say was, as in the photography exhibition the BBC published on their webpages. Conrad hasn't cheated and looked at anything ahead of time, so what comes next will be as big a surprise to me as it is to you. Art!
 |
| Hmmmmm can you say 'Sinister'? |
Courtesy Stuart Macaulay. This is his refuge tent, for he was up north in Sweden, hunting the aurora borealis, amidst the bitter biting wind. You can see the Northern Lights behind The Tent Of Blood, and Conrad, being the big fat coward he is, would prefer frostbite than dwelling in that particular abode.
Whoah!
As Keanu Reeves might well say.
Here an aside. Yes, another! One of the reasons Keanu has never been short of work in Hollywood is because he is so outstandingly pleasant to work with, as compared to a lot of spoilt prima donnas who are around for a couple of years whilst bankable and are then dropped like a glowing coal when they stop bringing in the £££***.
ANYWAY I just wanted to thank all our Ruffian readers out there, because BOOJUM! is surprisingly popular there. Art!
Just pipping South Canada, who rock in with 129. Conrad still worried that no British Americans are reading the blog. Might have to put a Canuckistanian click-bait in here at some point.
All At Sea
"The Sea Of Sand" that is. If you are not familiar with fan-fiction, then this is one of the more serious examples. There is NO romance between The Doctor and whichever nubile young female companion is present. NONE! Glad we got that sorted. The author does not appear as a thinly-disguised 'Mary Sue' with powers only slightly less than The Doctor's. There is real bloodshed and people die. The ending may be happy, the journey there is definitely not.
Overhead, the wheezy siren
sounded again. The Doctor saw Lieutenant
Llewellyn straighten up, looking westwards to see exactly who was approaching.
‘That’s the all-clear,’ he explained. ‘Must be ours. Who can – oh, no, it’s that b***** shower!’
The Doctor’s acute vision, and his pocket telescope,
enabled him to view the oncoming column of vehicles at a distance of over two
miles away.
‘Interesting,’ he commented. Sarah looked between him and the young
officer, who wore a look of resigned exasperation.
‘Vickers Mark Six light tank, Bren Carrier, Chevrolet,
Sahariana, Ford CMP, Marmon-Harrington.
Quite the mechanical menagerie, wouldn’t you say?’ said the Time Lord,
as if reading the running order of a race-course.
Roger was climbing out of the shallow trench, tucking his
revolver back into it’s holster. Sarah
edged closer to the Doctor.
‘What on earth are you babbling about!’ she hissed. ‘It sounds like a list of aliens that UNIT
ought to be fighting.’
Within seconds Sarah didn’t need to ask questions about the
vehicles. They drove into Mersa Martuba
at full speed and skidded to gravel-spewing halts, throwing up clouds of dust. Raucous laughter sounded from the crews as
they jumped down to stretch their legs.
None of them wore standard uniforms, instead being clad in definitely
non-military denims, cordurouys, silk scarves, RAF blouses, peaked caps and gas
goggles. The only uniform item about
them was a chequered scarf tied around the upper left bicep. Several men got down to empty their bladders
against the vertical metalwork of the vehicles, only to suffer huge
embarrassment when Sarah called out a cheery “Hello!”.
 |
| Ford CMP in (grateful) Italian hands |
Finally -
Just to be clear, Your Humble Scribe is venturing into Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell (because the weather's been reasonably dry for quite a while) today, because his last pre-redundancy interview takes place and the managers wanted to see us face-to-face. Even though my Outlook appointment has it that it's a virtual meeting. I suppose I shall find out. And apparently I got a mention at one of the higher-level weekly meetings thanks to hitting 5 years at Sainsbury's as of 31/07/2022. I well remember that day, it was baking hot and I wore a suit, silly me. Art!
Conrad: a face not meant for smiling and a body not meant for suits.
* This may even be true. Sinister-era quality and all that.
** Worf correctly analysed this as "A WARRIOR'S DRINK!"
*** YES POUNDS it's my blog and we're sticking with Imperial.
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