No! That Is Not A Typo
I know what you're erroneously criticising about, because you leap to assumptions and extrapolate, when you should be analysing assertions and interpolating. Also, it is a capital mistake to theorise without data, as a certain deerstalker-hat wearer used to ruefully admit.
Conrad is using 'Fore' in the sense of an event preceding later events, which is because I'm typing this Intro up on Tuesday evening for Friday's blog, an example of forward planning if ever there was. Art!
Now, we are going to be making an aside here. YES ALREADY! Normally Conrad and the blog ladle opprobium and invective upon Mordorvia BUT one thing they did well during the Sinister Union era was -
Sherlock Holmes. Yes, really. Art!
"Tscherloka Kholmsa I Doktora Vatsona"
ANYWAY now that I have forewarned you - do you see O you do - let us crack on with all matters 'Four' as derived from my 'Brewer's* Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable' and my 'Collins Concise English Dictionary', as well as my fervent flotsam-flooded mind. Nor will this be a simple recapitulation as some of their entries are the very definition of dull.
FOUR-O-CLOCK: Also known as 'Marvel of Peru', a tropical nyctaginaceous plant th
Does it talk? Make a cup of tea? Dance? No? then it's not marvellous
See what I mean? Deadly dull. Next!
FOUR-STROKE: No, nothing to do with Donnie Dorko's performance on the greens, although unkinder folks might wonder if it might refer to how many cerebrovascular accidents he's had so far which have ANYWAY it means, and how very ho-hum the definition is, an internal combustion engine where the piston makes four strokes for every single time a combustion takes place.
Still dullsville but it does mention combustion, which is better than a bunch of petals. Art!
Original four-stroker
THE FOUR SONS OF AYMON: This is more like it! and further evidence that France, even before it was France, was extremely provincial and difficult to govern. In the background, 'Aymon of Dordogne' was one of the provincials who forcibly resisted the reign of Charlemagne, about which there were many romances written. Imagine Sir Robin Hood with a Gascon accent and a baguette. Art!
Let's be clear: these were not illiterate serfs whose most deadly weapon was a pointy stick; they were knights on horseback, to wit: Renaud, Alard, Guichard and Richard. Unusually, their horse Bayard also gets a mention, as it is both magical and huge, always a winning combination in a steed. Their widespread presence in songs, poetry and other romances is evidence that the French love an underdog, especially one that challenges authority. Excuse me, Authority.
FOUR LAST THINGS: From times when piety and religion mattered more than Instagram rankings and mortgage rates. This quadruplet was: Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell. Perhaps 'Heaven OR Hell' would be most apt, as this seems to be the Process Outline for End Of Life. Art!
In the 22nd century, a resource-scarcity environment, there is also a Fifth Last Thing, where citizens contribute to the continuity of city life by being recycled. Don't sneer, it will come.
THE FOUR SEAS: I am delighted to introduce this Britanno-centric item, as we are told it refers to the 4 seas that surround This Sceptred Isle to the north, south, east and west. Not that I'd call the English Channel a 'sea', technically, as it's only 26 PROUD IMPERIAL miles wide. Art!
Not dull at all, as our island nation has defied invasion from Continental ne'erdowells for about a thousand years, thanks to the Four Seas.
FOUR-LETTER MAN:
No, Art, no! Can you not tell the difference between an - O never mind <sounds of Tazer in background>.
This is a compound of 'FOUR-LETTER WORD' and an extremely unpleasant person - the title is a misnomer, it can be a woman as well (isn't equality wonderful). The FLW is an euphemism for a swear, usually to do with sex or bodily functions, frequently represented by a series of asterisks, as we manifest here on the blog (as in "Dog Buns s************z f******* ***!" yes yes yes I know those aren't four letters long, sue me). Thus a FLM is one whom can be described by a FLW, which is where we came in.
There are lots and lots more subjects dealing with FOUR, and I bet you can hardly wait.
Jolly Folly
SIT BACK DOWN! I shall only be covering a single folly in this item, and no, it's nothing to do with Painshill Park, which we have thoroughly exhausted as a topic. Art!
Say howdyedo to Freston Tower, a red-brick folly constructed in the sixteenth century, so rather early as a folly, which tended to be late sixteenth century onwards into the heyday of the eighteenth century. Put up in 1568, it has been refurbished and you can now book it as holiday accommodation should you so wish. View of the River Orwell comes free of charge, and you can see various boats and yachts moored at low tide in the background. Art!
The oak interior of a bedroom. Note the vertical guardrail to help climb the verrrry steep staircase.
Rather less of a folly nowadays than it used to be, which is not a phrase you expect to hear about one of these 'conspicuous expenditure' buildings.
The More Things Change -
Several years ago Conrad took out a subscription to 'The Daily Beast' because they had chapter and verse on a Four-Letter Man called Matt Gaetz, a South Canadian politician who, morally, a bag of excrement. Matty ended up becoming the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation, and he was so confident of being exonerated that he immediately quit his Senate seat and completely abandoned politics. He now hosts a show on the One America Network, which is quite a fall from grace and power. Art!
I'd call what follows more schadenfreude than politics, which is my excuse.
Well well well, whom do we have here but The Nasty Little Man, Nigel Farrago, whom is also in hot water with a Commons Select Committee, who are taking a verrrrry close look at the £5 million pounds he got from a criminally-convicted crypto-trader. Which he did not declare. Which he won't clarify about. Which he gets very, very, very angry about if the press question him on. So! he has resigned his Parliamentary seat at Clacton and is going to go for a re-election. Art!
This stops the clock on the PSC - until he gets re-elected, then they begin again. Tick tock, Farrago.
"21 Days In Normandy" By Angelo Caravaggio
Your Humble Scribe is on the last chapter of this work, so will only give a precis of the previous two that dealt with Operations 'Totalise' and 'Tractable', which were the efforts of the Canuckistanian 4th Armoured Division to close the exit route from the Falaise Pocket in mid-August 1944. Art!
They're under II Corps.
Boy o boy, does Ol' Angelo's description of Totalise and Tractable illustrate two profound factors: lack of room to manoeuvre and the fog of war.
The lack of room was down to Kitching's superior, Lt. General Simonds, commanding II Canadian Corps, who insisted on an 800 yard frontage for the entire 4th Armoured Division, rather than the 1,600 yards Kitching wanted. Which, inevitably, caused immense traffic jams and congestion that slowed progress to a crawl. Art!
This kind of scrum, with added dust and enemy fire
As for the fog of war, it's the usual mistakes about where units ended up, a lack of or mistaken information being passed up, down or across the chain of command, and senior commanders being injured and taken out of the chain itself, which happened so often it seems like bad luck and lightning striking multiple times in the same place.
More You What?
Conrad thinks that the news channel sees me as a talented amateur mechanic, able to strip and reassemble a Porsche engine blindfold with only a stick of celery and a tin of Brylkreem. Art!
I have NO IDEA what these are or what they do and don't feel any the poorer for not knowing.
Finally -
Going out with another Biercism.
"Rent, n: An outrage, imposed by blood-sucking vampires on virtuous sons of toil'.
* There's a funny story about that ......
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