You Would Not Be Forgiven For Assuming I Meant One Of These -
Art!
'These' being musicals, which as any fule kno are worse than Kryptonite to Conrad, who HATES ALL MUSICALS. Note also that the promoter knew full well the value of having underclad young ladies on a poster, all the better to lure the audience in, the fearsome exploiters of pre-clickbait bait.
ANYWAY what we are looking at today are not arrays of young ladies wearing skimpy costumes and prancing about, but architectural matters that earn their title from the Old French 'Folie', meaning 'Madness'. More specifically, according to my 'Concise Collins English Dictionary', as per architecture 'a building in the form of a castle, temple, etcetera, built to satisfy a fancy or conceit, often of an eccentric kind.' Also known as 'Having more money than sense'.
Wentworth Woodhouse Estate has no fewer than three follies upon it, the second of which went up in 1746, in celebration at the defeat of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion, at the command of the 1st Marquess of Rockingham. Art!
Looking a tad rough nowadays. I guess pro-government anti-Jacobite architecture is a bit niche for renovation funding.
Art!
What you're looking at here is the base of 'Keppel's Column', with puny human in shot to give a sense of scale. This is one of the follies present on the Wentworth House Estate, and if Art will do the honours -
115 feet tall
The folly was erected in 1773, by the 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, in order to celebrate the acquittal of Admiral Keppel, who had been court-martialled over the Battle of Ushant (where British and French fleets clashed to no end result, the Admiralty not being happy at a mere draw). Whoopee for the Admiral and the Marquess, a big notice in 'The Times' would have been quicker and cheaper. Art!
This is the earliest folly at Wentworth, the relatively modest and understated 'Needle's Eye', put up in 1722 for no other reason than to look pyramidal and attractive, as pyramids were redolent of the exotic Orient. Which is fair enough, if you have more money than sense.
Moving on from Wenty, we move to Stourhead. Art!
Glory in the appearance of the 'Temple of Apollo', which one would associate with Hellenic regions, not Stourhead, which kind of lacks the clear blue skies and sun sun sun. Constructed in 1765 by one Henry Flitcroft for Henry Hoare, the owner. Flitty also constructed two other 'temples', of Ceres and Hercules, this trio of follies being dedicated to, and as a result of, The Grand Tour. This was a journey made across the cities of Europe by young gentlemen, to improve and broaden their minds, not a bad thing in my mind, even if does create follies.
Before we go any further, an aside. Hey, I did wait! Art
In the eighteenth century, landed gentry, influenced by The Grand Tour, sought to reconfigure their estates by adapting them to embrace natural lines rather than artificial, rigid ones. Thus they had rolling downs, glades, water features and - drum roll and trumpets - architectural features copying classical remnants and ruins across the Continent. See above for an illustration of same. Art!
Here's a more sweeping vista, dreamed up by the landscaper Capability Brown. No follies visible. Sorry.
ANYWAY AGAIN let us now sojourn to Painhill Park, created over decades by the owner Charles Hamilton, whom was influenced by Continental landscapes, but sought his own interpretation. PATIENCE! we are coming to the follies. Art!
This is the Gothic Temple, a structure actually made of wood that has been plastered over to give the impression of stone, and also added an element of indestructibility, otherwise two hundred and fifty years of erosion and weather would have done it in. Art!
No, you cannot trust your glazzies. Yes, this is the 'Ruined Abbey', and it looks done in, except that's how it was designed back in 1773. One imagines the trust keeping the Park in trim has to spend energy, time and money keeping the Abbey looking as decrepit as it's supposed to be and it must jib, rather, that an artificial ruin is being kept ruinous. One of life's little ironies. Art!
Surprise surprise, the lake is another folly, that was created from the most unlovely of precursors - a gravel pit. The shoreline meanders meaningfully and retaining walls prevent the nearby River Mole from intruding. There were additional islands present in the Serpentine Lake, added after Hamilton sold the estate, which were subsequently removed. You can see the Gothic Temple making a subtle appearance at upper port but thanks to Word Count I'm not going to go into any details about the Chinese 5-Arch Bridge.
And I think that's enough of architectural follies for one Intro, we will definitely be coming back to this at a later date. I bet you can hardly wait.
SAVE Me
No, nothing about 'Smallville'. I am referring to Donold Judas Trump's blatant attempt to disbar voters from the 2026 mid-terms, in hopes of keeping the Wizard Lizard Gizzard party from being wiped out in November's mid-terms. One bizarre reason is that non-resident aliens from abroad are voting for the Ice Cream Bandit party. Art!
The chap in glasses here is Ali Velshi, talking head on 'MS Now', the mere name of which is enough to cause MAGAts to spontaneously combust out of sheer rage. He states an example of how absurd the assertions BOOH has been making are, in that Utah has two million registered voters. Got that? There has been exactly ONE non-citizen registration in the state of Utah, with exactly NIL non-citizens voting. Given that there are 204 millions South Canadians registered to vote, that means at most 102 non-citizens who will possibly vote. Art!
"I WANT MY PUDDING!"
Look at BOOH shaking his tiny hands in hate! You're not going to be SAVEd, matey. It's like sending out search parties to round up the invisible purple unicorns.
A Literal Blast From The Past
Another image from the 'Cape Canaveral Space Museum' Youtube channel, this one with a tad more info that that last one of the USAF Moon booster. Art!
I used my brains and a bit of extrapolation to work out the number here as '6555th', which immediately came up with the Test Group title when Googled. You can date them by the presence of the Shuttle and a Titan III. They were involved in missile development from 1950 onwards, including such luminary names as the BOMARC and Snark, both of which we've covered here at BOOJUM! as well as heavy-lift launch vehicles - the Titan III as an example - and military shuttle launches. Long gone now, they got 'deactivated' in 1990.
Back To "The Expanse"
I first read these novels as they were published at least 8 years ago and counting, and never bothered to parse exactly what the titles meant, dismissing them as the titular equivalent of a soundbite.
Except - the titles do have a direct relevance to the story arc and the volume they sit upon.
CAUTION HERE BE SPOILERS!
SPOILERS, JIM LAD!
SPOILERS I TELL 'EE!
Pausing only to apologise for the outbreak of Pirate <a moment's silence for the ghost of Robert Newton, please> look at the first title - 'Leviathan Wakes'. There is indeed a metaphorical Leviathan getting loose across the Solar System: the hideously dangerous alien protomolecule. Art!
Horrors - 15 years old!
The volume I've just finished is 'Caliban's War' and there's certainly interplanetary war between Earth and Mars, but once again there is a 'Caliban' present, in person. that being protomolecule-engineered children turned into monsters. Caliban appears in Shakespeare as the semi-human offspring of a witch and a demon, which realllllly fits well for The Expanse. Art!
Volume 3 is 'Abbadon's Gate' and guess what? The protomolecule artefact girdling Venus takes off and becomes an interstellar gateway to Somewhere Else. Not sure whom Abbadon is. <digs a bit> ah, I see - 'The angel of the bottomless pit' or a metaphor for Hades. It'll all end in tears.
Finally -
Really, one has to wonder what on earth the algorithms are thinking when one gets an item like this in the feed. Art!
