I Intended To Use This Intro To Welcome You To - Pre-Hyperart Thomassons?
However - O how soon that word appears! - before I get there we need to go off at an explanatory tangent. You see, I'd annotated a Youtube blog posted by 'Tales From The Bottle' with the most ironic thumbnail ever. Art!
It's one of the most pointed things ever, which people were careful to explain in the Comments. The poster mentioned that these architectural follies tend to fall into two date ranges: 1740 or 1840, the latter of which I recognised as the era of the Potato Famine. The first one? Never heard of it before, so I did a bit of digging and O my is there ever a traumatic tale attached. Art!
Yes, it looks very picturesque, and it was in Ireland for all of one day. Having all the major and minor waterways freeze blocked marine traffic and killed off fish. The temperature fell to -20 ºC, killing livestock and ruining any crops not kept in insulated storage, as well as people in draughty homes. In summer there was a drought, which killed off planted crops and even more people. As many as 400,000 of 2.5 million population died. This, people, is a foretaste of what severe climate change can cause. You have been cautioned.
The authorities response was spotty and partially effective at best. Since the labouring class were most affected, one response from the wealthy or concerned was to pay them for labour as they constructed aforementioned architectural follies. Art!
Conolly's Folly
Built at Celbridge, County Kildare, in1741 by the verrrrry wealthy Conolly family, whom wanted, not needed, a rear entrance to their estate at Castletown House. It was erected at a cost of £400, which doesn't sound like much but would be at least £100,000 today. It still stands, fenced off to prevent anyone from chipping off a souvenir pineapple - there are two graven into the outer arches - or attempting to climb the obelisk, which tops out at 140 feet. Art!
Dublin got off relatively lightly compared to central and western Ireland, but was still raddled with famine, hence the above structure, erected 1742 by landowner John Malpas. Art!
To quote: "Last year being hard with the poor, the walls about these hills and this erected by John Mapas Esq June 1742". Yes, they got his name wrong on the inscription. The Witch's Hat is still there, having been renovated not so long ago, but the viewing platform and steps to it have long been removed for safety reasons. Art!
At Mullingar, Westmeath
Why is it called 'The Jealous Wall' and why does it look like a ruined monastery? Well, because not all architectural follies were built out of noble aspirations and charity, some had a much baser origin. Like this. TFTB claims this is Ireland's biggest folly, erected in 1760, so nothing to do with famine relief. The builder, Robert Rochfort, owned the splendidly-appointed Belvedere House, a remarkably swish abode in it's own right.
Here enter Robert's brother, George. The two, it is safe to say, did not get on well with each other. George, in a deliberate snub to his brother, had Tudenham Park House constructed to go one-up on bro. Art!
Robert - terrific name, by the way - wasn't having any of this, since he could see Tudenham Park House from Belvedere House.
So he had the Jealous Wall built, designed to resemble a derelict monastery, in order to block his brother's house from view. Art!
The killing joke here is that Belvedere House is still in occupation and a model estate, whereas Tudenham Park House is a decayed ruin. Art!
Also decayed and ruinous is 'The Bottle Tower' in Churchtown, Dublin, which is another work-for-wages project erected in 1742 by one Major Hall, to provide means for the mean that they not starve. The design is based on another folly on the Conolly's Castletown estate, 'The Wonderful Barn', this one being a scaled-down replica. Quite what it is replicating is unclear; suggestions have included a dovecote or an Indian rice-store, or, as the down-to-earth Dubliners would have it, a bottle. As is clearly visible, it's in very poor condition and hasn't been in occupation for over 150 years. A bit of a fixer-upper, one feels.
TFTB also mentions another famine folly, roads that go nowhere, or nowhere important. You couldn't build roads that would compete with existing ones, after all - that was practically Godless COMMUNISM! and not to be tolerated. So, I dug up a map of these make-work roads. Art!
Which possibly explains why Castlebar and Swinford aren't connected directly.
Conrad, whom is cynical and flinty-hearted, asserts that the creators of these schemes would have carried out the monstrosities of Swift's "A Modest Proposal*" if they believed they could have gotten away with it. Which is a whole other Intro for another day.
Wowsers, that was passing grim. Time to enlighten things.
For The Haul
Conrad recently ordered Volume 8 of 'The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914 - 1918', that being about the Australian Flying Corps in France and elsewhere. Not a first edition, but about £20 cheaper than same, and being sent from the land of Ocker itself. Your Humble Scribe confidently expected it to take a couple of months to arrive. Not so. Art!
Ignore the timestamp, it arrive on Friday, much to my surprise, and I've put off opening it until today and may put up an illo when I do. I bet you can hardly wait.
Conrad Performs A Public Service
As you should surely know by now, Your Humble Scribe is frequently annoyed by clickbait items on his news feed that boldly proclaim ' - better than 'Saving Private Ryan' which is seen as the touchstone for high-quality, and yet THEY AVOID NAMING THE FILM. So you have to click on their thumbnail to find out what it is. Art!
That's like comparing oranges to a 1200 cc nitromethane V-12, completely different things.
To answer your query, and keeping up with the Irish theme, it's "The Siege Of Jadotville", where an Irish UN garrison force held off a mercenary force in the Congo, outnumbered many times over. It was the beginning of Eire's support for global UN security operations, making them a verrrry experienced army indeed. There's another one to be done about them being the filling in the Lebanon sandwich between Israel and the Lebanese militias.
You're welcome.
What Happens On A Slow News Day?
Bored sub-editors get to ask stupid questions, answer stupid questions, and put the results up on their media pages as filler until anything newsworthy arrives. Case in point - Art!
This is not a question I have ever, ever asked myself and is so far from being relevant or important that I'm going to ignore it from now on. The silly season doubtless continues.
Further Of 'Dictatoritis' And Information Bubbles
You cannot have escaped seeing the awesome images on social media, and perhaps even the mainstream by now, displaying Barad Duh, Mordorvia's capital, under drone attack. Art!
Mount Doom has entered the chat
Remember when Putinpot was not told about the 'Moskva' being sunk for a week? And how the maps presented to him all have the front line many miles westward of where it actually is? Art!
It's also passing rare to be able to talk about the real, actual, not metaphorical elephants in the room
Finally -
'Best before 2021' merely means that they've matured and are even tastier for me to consume slathered with cream cheese and remaindered strawberries!
* Essentially, fatten-up and sell their children as food to the rich. One of the hardest-hitting satires ever written.
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