We Have To Move On From 'Bill' In My 'Brewer's'
Although 'Silly' does not come easily to Your Humble Scribe, who is more along the lines of 'Inflexible Humourless Pedant' rather than 'Silly'.
At this point, we here at BOOJUM!'s editorial offices (my Sekrit Layr) need to decide which of 'Brewer's' or 'Collins' we refer to. Art!
It has at least 10 legs
Well, here we are, because 'Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars' wasn't scary enough, so say Hello! to 'Ziggy Stardust And The Cannibalistic Mutant Monster Spiders From Mars'. I wonder if Ziggy know what it looming over his shoulder.
Well spotted if you realise none of this is to do with 'Billy'. There is an incredibly attenuated connection here, because Conrad was chasing up what he thought was a song title - "Silly Billy". By some obscure Seventies group like Pilot or Blood Sweat & Tears, I fondly imagined.
But no! It turned out to be by The Sweet, an early Seventies glam-rock band I loathed beyond all human understanding, and the correct title was 'Little Willy'. Art!
Yes, this International Chicken Refuge is Kaiser Bill, as we have already traduced under the 'BILL' title. His other unflattering Anglo-Saxon nickname was 'Little Bill', because the English love nothing more than to undercut the pompous, and which is close enough to The Sweet's lyrics to wonder if they weren't being all satirical sixty years too late.
Excuse me whilst I have a quick whiff of Sensible Gas.
OKAY! Let us resume with 'BILLY' which my 'Collins' defines as "A metal can or pot for boiling water, etc, over a campfire." Art!
As sung about in 'Waltzing Matilda'
As noted here and in 'Brewer's', this 'Billy' is probably derived from the Scottish 'Billy-pot', a catering implement used for cooking food, as the Celtic haute cuisine regimen is known and respected globally.
BILLY CLUB: Originally, this was South Canadian slang for a police officer's baton, only to be used if he had run out of bullets faced a small unarmed child to beat out a tattoo to start a music video acknowledge that the British term 'truncheon' was a better fit. Art!
This is Billy Club, bassist from The Dickies, and I am guessing that is not the name his parent's blessed him with. Why would they, when they have 'Colt Revolver', 'Steel Rims' or 'Rock Face'.
BILLY-BOY: That's the wonder of 'Brewer's', you come across all sorts of arcana that is novel and entertaining. Or at least novel. For example, in this instance you expected Billy Bunter or similar. Not so! Art?
BILLY GOAT: A male goat and thus unable to contest the pronoun choice. Their pronounced tuft of fur on their chin is the source of 'goatee' for the beard that hipsters liked to think, with zero evidence, was cool. Art!
BILLY BUNTER: A fat or greedy person. Named after the fat, greedy schoolboy who infests the halls of Greyfriars school, and whom is known to utter the phrase 'Yaroooh' as a species of hunting cry (it says here). A creation of the incredibly prolific 'Frank Richards', the pen-name of Charles Hamilton, who is the embodiment of Work Ethic. Art!
BILLY BUDD: Something to do with a musical? Actually no, I needed to go Google-fu on this and discovered that it's an unfinished novella by Herman Melville, which the critics loved when it was published in 1924. 'Billy Budd' is the central character, a seaman sentenced to hang for what seems like manslaughter. Boy, what a buzzkill of a book. Art!
BILLY WHIZZ: Entirely the opposite of Billy Bunter, this Billy is a character from the pages of the 'Beano' when it was still around in page form. He is greyhound built, can run at up to 120 m.p.h. PROUD IMPERIAL MEASUREMENTS THERE and has a peculiar haircut that consists of a buzz-cut and two antennae. Art!
This is the original Billy's design as created in 1964. Ignore any others that were gimmicked up decades later to make him appeal more to 'the youth'.
That's enough of Billy for the moment, there are more to come, most of which seem to be actual proper people, which is a bit dull. Pep it up a bit, 'Brewer's'!
Further To Railway Networks
Yes, Conrad is yarking on about trains and railways again, and the Second Unpleasantness in North Africa from 1940 onwards, where 'twas the Fascist regime of Mussolini versus the plucky Brits*. One of the outstanding logistical advantages the British had was their enormous base area in the Nile Delta, which had accumulated over decades, especially with regard to railways. Building a railway is a slow and expensive business. Art!
This map, an apologetically slightly blurred one, shows the railways leading into and out of what the legend says is the 'Egyptian base area'. Anything required to be sent further south into Egypt or on to Palestine can be moved swiftly by rail or river - luxuries not afforded to Mussolini's minions. As has been observed by pundits elsewhere, this is the consequence of campaigning overseas for several centuries; establish your logistics first!
Proof That Conrad Thinks Differently
I took a screenshot from Youtube's opening page. Art!
Mention of 'CDL' brought up my instant recollection of this - Art!
Thus it is proven.
Further Yarking About Barking
Metaphorical barking, that is. Once again we are recounting the debilitating effect of aerial attack on a rail network, but not that of Britain. No, this is again about Mordorvia getting a proper malleting from it's neighbour, thanks to the 'Meduza' website for collating data. Please note that the Ruffians only admit problems with civilian rail traffic, because permitting the publication of their military freight getting messed with means a minion falling out of a window. Art!
This is Salsk railway station on 29th July, where the usual 'falling debris caused a grass fire that was quickly extinguished' lie didn't work, especially because two Ruffian sappers died whilst trying to remove explosive cargo. Doubtless the FSB will be after whoever took this photo. Art!
Station buildings at Frolovo railway station on fire on the 4th of August, where 220 civilian trains were delayed and the whole rail system was shut down for 8 hours. Quite effective considering it was only a garden shed that caught fire, apparently.
On July 19th power lines at Likhaya-Zamchalovo were hit and damaged, delaying 132 trains for up to 15 hours. A delay that long means it's quicker to walk! Bad news for a rail network where about 85% of both passengers and freight are on electrified rails.
Things will get worse. As 'Prune60' on Bluesky notes, Ruffian railway's freight tonnage shifted annually was already down 500,000 tons. These 'debris fires' are not helping any.
Enough about chemins de fer! Though we will definitely be coming back to them and you seem like you can hardly wait.
An Accusing Gaze
For want of anything better to do, I recently went through that portion of the Book Mountain that lurks under my work desk, and even threw one out (gasps of horror!). It was a 'Starry Wartz' Dorling-Kindersley edition that was really tatty and missing pages, when there were only 15 in the first place. Not much of a sacrifice.
ANYWAY Art!
Another charity bargain, this hasn't been opened since purchase, and since it was stored flat, the pages are now all stuck together. I'm going to have to split and separate them with a palette knife before even reading and deciding if it's worth keeping. To some, this would be a cruel and unusual punishment; to Conrad, a splendid diversion. I can do that and watch for Plot Points in 'The 100'.
At this point we are very much done!
* Plus their half-billion Imperial subjects.
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