The Divine Nine

Yes, We Are Back On The Number Nine Again

SIT BACK DOWN!  This is interesting, and if you dispute it, say hello to the Remote Nuclear Tormentor.  Art!

Pretty sinister, hmmmm?

     If you recall our previous blog, when Vulcan was forcibly ejected from Olympus - they are pretty strict on library books being returned on time - it took him nine days to fall to Earth.  No word if he was wearing a spacesuit and had a supply of tanked air.

     This theme of nine days duration is echoed in the poem 'Paradise Lost' by Milton, which I can gleefully state I've never read nor intend to, ha!  It was published in 1667, the year when the Dutch Navy raided the Royal Navy in the Medway, giving it a right shoeing, which is a lot more interesting than Milton's moping.  Art!

     ANYWAY Milton waffles about the rebel angels being cast out of Heaven, 'Nine days they fell' which means they fell 26,000 miles, absolutely nothing compared to Vulcan, who would have fallen 360 million miles.

     Bridging the gap between Norse mythology and seventeenth century poetry, Milton also wrote 'Arcades', where he pondered on blatantly incorrect astronomical models.  You can't blame him too much, Newton was still ten years away from being born in 1643.  At the time he wrote 'Arcades' it was believed that there were nine spheres, which is obviously wide of the mark, as Jupiter alone has over 100 satellites*.  Art!

     ANYWAY ANYWAY in Scandinavian mythology there were nine worlds, namely Asgard, Midgard, Jotunheim, Vanaheim, Alfheim, Svartalheim, Helheim, Muspelheim and Niflheim.  You may recognise a couple of these being mentioned by Thor in Marvel films.  Niflheim, the realm of ice, sounds peachy and makes me a tad homesick, being an evil alien invader from an ice-world in the Centauri system.  Which is completely untrue if UNIT or Spectrum are listening.  Art!

     I saw them playing as the support to Eels, many years ago at the Bridgewater Hall.  Why are they here in this Intro?  O I thought you'd never ask!

     Because in English folklore, to be able to see fairies, one had to place nine grains of wheat on a four-leaved clover.  No mention of whether you're allowed to glue the grains to stop them falling off, or whether you had to carry this vegetable concoction around with you.  Besides which, what are the chances of you crossing paths with a fairy?  Art!

     My 'Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable' holds that nine knots made in black wool are a cure for a sprained ankle, which is quite bizarre, in that the best cure for a sprained ankle is to keep your weight off it, slather it with a poultice or ice, keep it bound up and elevated.  I can guarantee that all those people you see limping are also carrying a matted bit of wool in their back pocket.  Conrad himself has been known to resort to similar, that is to say, hair of the dog.  Art!

     

   

     As you ought to know by now, Conrad loathes him some Shakespeare, whom he considers to be a seventeenth-century hack elevated to ridiculous heights by contemporary critics.  Thank the dear lord aloft I didn't have to study his poetry or love sonnets, I would rather descend into the toxic acidic crushing atmosphere of Venus than endure such.

     ANYWAY AGAIN in 'MacBeth', which I studied a good 50 years ago, he has the Three Weird Sisters.  You couldn't get away with that today, they'd be the 'Three Differently-Mentalised and Horribly Discriminated Against Persons Of Different Religioisity' or similar.  Art!

Cooking a plutonium pudding?

     The Barf Of Avon has them boogying around their cooking vessel, declaiming 

"Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine, and thrice again to make up nine"

     Conrad is shocked that they're not working to a proper recipe with amounts and times and durations, you're never going to get anything edible from cooking like that. Don't forget, though, that The Barb Of Avon believed that, if you didn't invert your boiled egg and smash it in, that witches would steal it and traverse the seas in it.  Seventeenth century witches being small of stature, one presumes.  Art!

     The witches also lay a curse on another person, intoning -

""Weary sev'nnights, nine times nine / Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine"

      'Sevn'nights' is a week, in case you were wondering.  So, matey is going to be sleepless for about a year and a half, when a week or so is sufficient to send someone screaming round the bend.  Perhaps he should have taken his library book back on time?

Another WOE Moment

As in 'What On Earth', as we here at BOOMUM! do not descend to the NSFW versions that I will not even reference.  Art!

     Ah yes, how many times have I rolled out of bed in the morning, simply thirsting to purchase another Alexander Cupola, to add to my collection of cupolas.

     Exactly none.  News stream, your algorithm is broken.

  

We Are Going To Get Technical

SIT BACK DOWN!  This is interesting.

     We are once again returning to James Holland's 'Cassino '44', and the theme that Ol' James established early on, that he is going to absolutely lambast General Bernard Freyberg of the New Zealand Corps.  The criticism is fair enough. since the First and Second Battles of Cassino, planned under Freyberg, were costly failures.  Art!

     Why were these battles such failures?  Well, you can add Terrain and Weather to any explication, but Ol' James also admits an explanation at Page 431:

"Admittedly,  Freyberg  still  did  not  have  a  properly  functioning  corps  staff -"

     The 2nd New Zealand Infantry Division had been paired with the 4th Indian Infantry Division to create the New Zealand Corps.  Normally, in an organisation like this there would be a Corps staff, which would carry out: traffic control; road maintenance; logistics from railhead to divisions; communications between divisions; signal troops; control of medium artillery regiments; control of heavy artillery regiments; dedicated reconnaissance aircraft and other works.

     If there was no Corps staff, none of the above would be done either properly or competently.  I have been unable to find out why the New Zealand Corps did not have a proper HQ staff, apart from it being a temporary formation.  This doe snot cut ice, as corps were only ever semi-permanent organisations.  Art!

     I just dug this out of the Book Cave.  Can't find anything about 'staff work' in the index, so I might have to re-read the whole book.  O what a chore.  Having to read military history and make notes about it.

The File Of Tile

I didn't post the end fragments of 'Ripe's story about acoustic tiles, because we had most of the story and I like to leave a morsel to come back to.  Go look at 'Death On The Tile' to understand more comprehensively.  The short story is that his previous employers had bankrupted themselves two years after firing him.  Art!

     His current employers were able to purchase critical industrial kit at a fraction of the cost from the fire sale, and ATM even got the Walk Of Kudos through the now derelict and deserted factory where he had once worked. 

     His old employer tried to sue him a month after their counterfeit product had  been seized at the Port of Los Angeles citing "Maliciously witholding critical business information".  This was scotched by his lawyer proving that ATM had been fired and was in no way connected to the farrago going down about counterfeit product.  Lawsuit immediately dropped.  As ATM said, discovery would have embarrassed, humiliated and destroyed his previous employer in one.

Meanwhile In Mordorvia -

Massive malleting ensues.  I've already mentioned the oil refinery in Tuapse, Mordorvia, a resort city on the Black Sea.  The Kozaky have been hitting it for the past ten days, and Wowsers, have they been scragging it.  Art!

     Things are so incredibly bad that Putinpot himself has now begun to comment,  making bland statements about the local Governor having everything under control and it's really not that bad when you stand back and look at it  - yeah well  -

Finally -

That's quite enough.  Be on your way now!

*  Although some are not really spherical.