The Archers

Gentle Reader, We Have A Theme!

These kinds of blogs used to be a lot more common on BOOJUM! a good few years ago, when the Word Count might reach 750 at most on a good day.  Today, with the Count hitting at least 1,200, it's a lot more speculative as to whether we're going to manage that with our Theme alone.  Let us press boldly onward, and see where we end up.  Art!

     Behold the archers.  Also the pikemen and knights.  This is a depiction of the Battle of Crécy, fought in France during August 1346, the backstory of which sounds like an epic adventure story yet which is completely factual.  The archers you see are English (and Welsh) longbowmen, and their performance in this battle and subsequent campaigns in France proved that the English (and Welsh) longbow had arrived as a battlefield weapon of primary importance.  Art!

Not very accurate

     In the first illustration you can see the 'chevaux de frise' that the archers have set in front of themselves, as protection against cavalry.  Their targets are not located twenty yards away, but more like two hundred, and sheer mass confusion prevented them from getting any closer.  Their ready-use arrows are stuck point-first into the ground, and it would be up to assistants to get bundles of arrows from their supply train to re-arm when the ready-use runs short.  What's unrealistic is the amount of mail armour worn by these archers, and by their being armed with swords; English (and Welsh) archers typically carried a dagger called a 'Misericorde' which was a lot cheaper and handier than a sword.  They would - if gore offends you DO NOT CONTINUE! - sneak out of their lines and into the lines of fallen French steeds and cavaliers, and dispatch them with a dagger thrust through their helmet eyepieces, or under the armpit.  The luckier ones would be hauled away alive for ransom.  Art!

Re-enactment, not cameras in 1346

     Lest you wonder why the French didn't just copy the longbow and reply in kind, that's because it took years of practice to acquire the upper-body strength to use the longbow successfully, quite beside the ability to judge things like windage, elevation, how fast the target was travelling, precipitation and the curvature of the Earth.

"The Archers"

Conrad remembers this being on at home of a Sunday, where there was an omnibus version of the previous week's radio instalments played all at once.  I also remember a recent military memoir where the author, supposedly hard as nails, instantly recognised the theme tune as it played from a radio in a crowded hangar.  He alleged that, whenever you got a large number of soldiers gathered in a single space, at least one of them would be listening to "The Archers".  Art!

     Set in the fictional town of Ambridge and surrounding environs, it has been continuously broadcast for over SEVENTY years, is the most popular non-news program on Radio Four, and has five million regular listeners.  It did have nine million in the early Fifties, before television became widespread.  Art!

Theme tune for piano

     That means almost 20% of the UK's population at that time were listening to it, an audience share that broadcasters nowadays would both kill and give up their firstborn for.  I cannot promise that the contemporary version does not exhibit sex and violence (because, whisper who dares, it's not my cup of tea) but it sounds so undeniably British that it may very well be on our Citizenship test.

Archer

This one is the complete opposite of bucolic farmers and their families, it being a  Self-Propelled Anti-Tank Gun of Second Unpleasantness vintage.  I shall use a set of photos from Chamberlain and Ellis' "British and American Tanks of World War II".  Art!

     This cross-section shows just how impressively large the 17-pounder anti-tank gun was; even with the breech up at the other end of the vehicle, it still overhangs the hull.  The tank hull used here is that of the Valentine, which was deemed to be big enough (barely) to accommodate the weapon and to be present in large enough numbers to be adapted.  Art!

     That's an unadulterated Valentine sporting a turret.  For the Archer said turret was removed completely, and an open-topped compartment was built up over the front of the hull, facing backwards.  The gun itself pointed backwards, over the engine deck, and could only traverse 11º right or left, and +15º up or -7º down.  Art!

     They produced over 600 of these supposedly 'interim' vehicles, because they actually worked well in practice when used in the anti-tank battalions of British armoured divisions on the Continent.  Having the gun pointing to the rear proved less of a handicap than expected, since it was normally used in an ambush role, where it would shoot and scoot, with being able to drive off straight away also helping survivability.

     Conrad thinks that an Archer appears in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene in "The English Patient".  Don't quote me, though.

"Archer"

More broadcast fun, in this case the cartoon series, which Conrad loved, because he's a terrible person, which we all knew already.  Art!

Sterling Archer himself

     "Archer" is a parody of all those James Bond and affiliated wannabe films and television shows from the Sixties onwards.  The titular character, Archer, is cast in the mould of Our James, being extremely capable at all the deeds of derring-do that determine a killer agent.  He is also, personality-wise, an utter bottomhole with no redeeming features.  The organisation he works for was titled I.S.I.S. which has aged like milk, and Conrad's unsure if they retconned their way out of that.  Art!

The cast, Sterling in a cunning disguise.  You didn't recognise him in a loud shirt, did you?

     The show features swearing, drug use, sexual references and violence, so is definitely Adult Advisory.  It's also highly entertaining to see Archer endlessly put his foot into his mouth and see how he tries to resolve matters in his own favour.

     "Archer" ran for 14 seasons and gained a clutch of awards, so the creators did something right.

Sagittarius

Which happens to be Latin (hack spit) for "Archer", in case you were unaware.  You probably know this name via astrology signs, that load of hokum that always has a disclaimer printed in the press when it appears.  Art!

     Why a centaur?  I dunno.  Since they are naked, one can understand that this is a male centaur, or the local Woman's Voluntary Society would protest.

     ANYWAY it seems that the centaur here represents Chiron, held by all to be the wisest and most learned of all centaurs, which may not mean much as I don't see any IQ rankings of centaurs in classical mythology.  Chiron was the tutor of Achilles in archery, it says here, but didn't have the foresight to tell him to wear Toetector boots in combat.

     Nearly at Count!

We're Peachy

Conrad just needs a bit more archer inspiration to hit the 1,200 word total and then we can go back to our regular unfocussed nonsense.  Art!

     This, ladies and gentlemen and those unsure, is "Archers Peach Schnapps" and I've put up four of them so that we can state that "The Archers" plural is correct.  That's all I know about it and since I did the weekly shop earlier today I won't have a chance to try any until, oooooh, tomorrow at the earliest.  I do need to venture into Lesser Sodom to get more margarine, which is excuse enough.

Finally -

Art!

    Close enough to be able to say goodbye to.