Ha!
I like that title, that's a pompous, presuming title that requires oodles of explanation, and Dog Buns! are you going to get it.
You see, after taking up Alan Moorehead's 'African Trilogy' and jumping ahead to 'September In Persia' for the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Persia, described here at length, I went back to the beginning and started re-reading from Page 1. I know, I know, very boring and conventional, except it's how you read a book. Art!
An evocative picture of Matilda II tanks on the move, because I wanted a more interesting illo than a hissing piece of kitchen kit.
ANYWAY I came to an account by Al of the aftermath of the battle of Nibeiwa, a battle only military history nerds and wargamers have ever heard of. It quite pithily summed up the futility and waste inherent in warfare, especially of warfare waged by dictatorships - no watch over the coffers, you see.
ANYWAY AGAIN time to wheel out the definitions.
'ESPRESSO': "Coffee made by forcing boiling water or steam through ground coffee beans; an apparatus for making coffee this way.' From the Italian for 'Pressed'. Art!
1940 vintage espresso
SHIBBOLETH: 'A custom that acts as a stumbling block to join a particular profession' and in this case the profession would be that of armed soldiery. Conrad may be reaching a bit with this one. So what, I like the sound of this word*.
NADIR: 'The lowest point' and in this case we're being metaphorical, not astronomical, which is where this Arab word comes from.
Now that everyone is up to speed in today's title, let us proceed. Art!
A little preamble. Perfidious Albion - being you know, perfidious - attacked the big Italian camp at Nibeiwa, but from the western side, where there were no minefields or defensive works, whilst a small demonstration to the west startled the garrison into wakefulness. The tanks you see above, which Al always referred to as 'the infantry tanks' as he seems to have forgotten their name, were utterly unbothered by Italian anti-tank and artillery fire. The whole thing was over in 30 minutes. Art!
Stick a pin in this
Al and his war correspondent chums got to Nibeiwa not long after the battle had ended and the surviving Italian garrison sent off as PoWs. He gives a long and detailed description of the abandoned kit and caboodle they found, and if I was into cheating the Word Count I'd just copy and paste it all. But no! I have standards, and won't violate either of them. Except for a bit.
"We ..... ate from stores of bottled cherries and greengages; great tins of frozen ham and anchovies; bread that had somehow been baked here in the desert; wines from Frascati and Falerno and Chianti -"
Now look at that map above. All of this food and drink had been brought across the Mediterranean from Italy to their ports in occupied Libya, then sent out by truck and delivered to the garrisoned bases inside Egypt. Art!
Whilst the Western Desert Force made do with over-chlorinated water delivered from artesian wells and oases in tankers, the Italians, Al noted, imported bottled 'Recoaro' water from Italy. Only the best for Il Duce's masses! The cost and logistical burden of importing bottled water from across the Med must have been staggering, but as I said, dictators don't appreciate their accountants butting in. Al's sniffy scorn comes across in his ' - had been carted out to them in hundreds of cases across a thousand miles of sea and desert by ship and car and mule team.'
Now for the nadir. "The British coming into the camp could scarcely believe their eyes when they saw that each man had his own little 'espresso' coffee percolator in which he brewed his special cup after meals".
Art!
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Why does this matter? Well, for one thing, we are talking about an Italian army of 240,000 men, so just picture the amount of space required for individual espresso machines, not to mention the coffee beans in either whole or ground format. Getting a cup of coffee is not a military necessity - but shipping enough Breda 20 mm anti-aircraft cannon and the ammunition for them is.
Conrad, and Al, are both of the opinion that the Regio Esercito (Italian for 'Italian Army') was doing it's best to transform the desert into a facsimile of Italy, amid enormous expenditure in money and materials. And, as above, it was swept away in 30 minutes. You work with the desert, you don't try to overcome it, because it has been there long before you and will be there long after you've gone. Like BOOJUM!
Next!
Onto Number Five in the Metro list of 10 zombie films to watch before or after '28 Years Later', which work colleague Emma has been to see and was not impressed with. Conrad may descend to cast his ocular units over a non-spoiler review, just to get a sense of whether to bother with it or not. Art!
Hmmm, French. The protagonist seems to be a zonked-out party-goer (an euphemism for 'snorts drugs like a human hoover'), who may be experiencing a zombie apocalypse or might just be suffering as his brains melt and ooze out of his ears. Or something. A big point was it all being shot in either one shot or one take, which implies that it occurs in real time, and can civilisation really collapse in 90 minutes? The trailer is all 3-second jump cuts, so you can't tell what's going on, which may be the point. Said Conrad the cynic.
Here's One Conrad Can Get Behind
Nothing to do with films, rather it's about - well, if Art will put down his bowl of coal -
In case you are unfortunate not to hail from the Allotment of Eden, then you may not understand that as a driver, YOU DO NOT ENTER THE BOX if your lane or exit is not clear. The only exception is a right turn where oncoming traffic prevents your movement.
Conrad expected the Comments to be a litany of hatred against Manchester Council. Wrong! Most Have Your Sayers were very, very critical of the stupid, entitled and offensive bumbletucks who clog up the junctions by ignoring the rules. Art!
Papa Don't Preach
15:50
They're there for a reason and hard to miss, hence their colour.
If you flout the rules then expect to pay for it
Love that crack about the colour, and every word true.
This Amused Me
I saw this Youtube short, and here's the bit that tickled my patently horrid sense of humour. Art!
This is a platoon of Ghurkas marching in a parade in the streets of Woodbridge, and you can instantly spot the British lieutenant in charge of them, as he towers above his troops. However - that word again! - note the NCOs immediately in front and to starboard of him, because where his chest is bereft of medals, they have a
You Lightweight
In a good way. If you've been reading BOOJUM! for any length of time, you're surely aware of the boundary-breaking James Webb Space Telescope, which was sent aloft and successfully deployed, as a quantum-level improvement on the gallant old Hubble Space Telescope.
The JWST operates in splendid isolation; unlike Hubble, it's orbit is far beyond any convenient Shuttle rendezvous, so it must make do with what technology it has, and it came up with a foozie, which is like a doozie except more so. Art!
The not-very-captivating 'CC#1' is the location and image of an extrasolar planet, TWA 7, which Webby has been able to distinguish by filtering out the local sun. This solar system is 110 light years from Earth, practically neighbours, and is only (!) 6 million years old, making it an infant in astronomical terms.
What's different here is that this is the first time a planet of only (!) the mass of Saturn has been directly imaged, because before it's always been implied via astronomical data, not the planet's image per se.
Taking ACTUAL photographs of planets 110 light years away was not on my bingo card for 2025.
Finally -
Conrad is doing the Loooooong Schedule this week, where one works a loooong Monday, a looong Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and a short Friday, ending at 14:00. This schedule looks like going toes-up, as it leaves the business too short of staff when phone lines crackle innumerably on Friday from 15:00 onwards. Well, it was great whilst it lasted.
* It's Hebrew for 'Ear of Grain' and was used by the Biblical Gileadites as a test, because their sworn foes the Ephraimites couldn't pronounce 'Sh' properly. Shades of 'Palianitsya'!
** Edited out. A word best used only sparingly.
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