Meanwhile, back at the selective narrative, grandpa AGB takes time out from nationalism, misogyny, homophobia, cruelty, racism and singing It's a Long Way to Tipperary to overpower his deadly treadly.
Meanwhile, back at the war, Grandpa AGB and the company barber redefine "over the top".
Meanwhile, at The Somme, Grandpa AGB can't contain his excitement at the prospect of yet another Essendon Collingwood match.
Two hundred years ago to this very day (about tea time), a weedy little bugger who couldn't clap his hands together or really use binoculars won one of the biggest history-changing battles in um...history.
And he did it through the subtle and cunning tactic of charging headlong into the larger enemy fleet, breaking up their line of battle and turning the engagement into a bunch of head-butting, snarling, ball-kicking, splinter-ripping, bone-smashing, cursing and stabbing, hot lead and cold steel melees. It was a very very nasty and bloody shitfight. The sand they spread below decks to sop up the blood quickly turned into sticky red clay.
But when the smoke finally cleared, when the blood, bone and flesh was washed off the decks and when the screaming and swearing wound down, Boney was left with only five seaworthy vessels out of the 33 big blustering ships of the line he sent in to take down the Royal Navy. Once again the invasion of England had to be postponed. (Drake and Downing look up from the back nine at Rye and nod.)
And the Brits were left with the slight, wispy blond, rather fey and very crippled son of a country parson, one Horatio Nelson, dying from a musket-ball shattered chest in the Captain's cabin of HMS Victory - dying just as he became the absolute dead set legend who completely and utterly won one of the all time great battles ever. And he did so by being far more bold and nasty with it than his opposite numbers could imagine. Not bad for a cunning, charismatic, ambitious and ruthless Norfolk lad.
Yes, today's Trafalgar Day. Hurrah! Hurrah!
Since it's impractical to light a bonfire on a blog, I offer instead some RN communications sent in somewhat of the same spirit as Nelson's "Engage the enemy more closely" ....
RN sub signal to surface fleet CO during the Munich Crisis after eyeing up a large, low in the water and slow German freighter passing nearby – "Request permission to start the war".
Signal to RN ship in December 1941 - "Commence hostilities with Japan."
Response - "Request permission to finish breakfast first."RN sub to surface escort - "In case of attack by heavy surface vessels I will attempt to stay on the surface"
Surface escort - "So will I."Admiralty signal - "Norwegian coast defence ships Eidsvold and Norge may be in German hands. You alone can judge whether in these circumstances attack should be made. We shall support whatever decision you take."
Lone RN destroyer's response - "Am going in."From the memoirs of Capt Jack Broome RN, WWII convoy commander:
"On this occasion he rounded off the meal chewing up the Army Padre's spectacles."Message painted by the RN on captured German torpedo: "I missed you. A. Hitler".
Extract from RN Fitness Report - "I object to the fact that this Medical Officer has used my ship to carry his genitals from port to port, and the other members of the Wardroom to carry him from bar to bar."
Dolphin (submarine) Code signal No. 119 – "Whilst I have the necessary fuel, skill and experience for the task you suggest, I do not hunger for glory. Please feel free to give it to someone else. I won't be upset."
And although this one's from a US Admiral, it has very much the Nelsonian touch - "The war with Japan will end at 1200 of 15th August. It is likely that kamikazes will attack the fleet after this time as a final fling. Any ex-enemy aircraft attacking the fleet is to be shot down in a friendly manner."
RN escort frigate signal to wandering WWII convoy in mid-Atlantic fog - "Join me. Where am I?"
So why not light a bonfire on Trafalgar Day anyway? Or at least a flaming zambucca or a good cigar. Fire it up for the seagoing hoons and commissioned pirates that blasted the shit out of the other poor bloody bastards so you wouldn't have to read this post in French, Spanish, German or French.
Boynton whipped up lasagna Friday night. All cheese, meat, vegetables, pasta and with just the right amount of crispy burntness. No old lard, either. Delish, it was.
The word lasagna comes from the Greek lasanon for chamber pot. Not a particularly tempting thought, is it. "A piss-pot of pasta, please." Doesn't exactly make the mouth water; pass water, more like. But I knew that before dinner, and still wasn't put off bogging in.
It's said lasagne was introduced to England by Richard II. So despite dudding the peasants, sucking up to the Irish and being forced into a forlorn abdication, he's at least got lasagne* going for him. Ironic, really, since he was eventually sent to Pontefract Castle where he was starved to death.
* He also invented the handkerchief. Well, he probably invented the word hankerchief; no doubt snotty rags had been around for some time.
"Prevention is better than curie."
What's up, Duck? The word quack comes from the Dutch word quacksalver, which translates literally as chatter salve; someone who skites about the effectiveness of their cures.
Such quacky bombast accompanied the introduction of Radithor, a medicinal version of Radium much favoured as a miracle cure-all in the early part of the 20th century. It was said to cure cancer, baldness, impotence, eczema, constipation, you name it. William Bailey, Radithor's inventor, employed no degree of sarcasm (initially, anyway) when he promoted his wonder elixir as "a cure for the living dead".
Naturally, as is the way of these things, disturbing reports started to surface. Possibly the most well known was the watchmaker ladies who would straighten brush tips on their lips as they applied luminous, but radium filled, paint to watch faces. In the mid-twenties these gals began reporting symptoms such as bone decay, jaw abscesses and their teeth were falling out. The upside, though, was luminous snot. Quite the party trick, apparently. "Turn the lights orf, someone. Dotty's going to blow a shiny wad! Huzzah!"
Then there was rakish millionaire Eben Byers who between 1927 and 1930, drank 1,400 bottles of Radithor; ostensibly because he had a sore arm. He died in 1932 not long after his jaw fell off and he had spent his last months sucking apple-sauce through straws.
Thus Radithor went the way of other great medical breakthrou ... downs. Phrenology used the shape of your head to supposedly determined your character; you know, whether or not you'd be able to grasp the difference between calculus and a spoon. Radionics claimed that radio waves could diagnose any disease from a single drop of blood. And Metallic Tractors - no, not what Pop Larkin jumps on when it's time to get the cider in - was a process whereby people were hooked up to electricity and given shocks to cure asthma, cataracts, mumps, cancer and ... well, pretty much everything. As it happens, I'm an expert in electrickery, so if you want to give metallic traction a whirl, pop around here and I'll hook you up to my car battery. For a fee.
There is a school of thought, though, that suggests the application of small doses fo radium isn't entirely bogus.
A 30-year follow-up of 1,155 low-dose radium dial painters showing that they had significantly fewer cancers than the general population and also lived much longer. Most people are also unaware of long-term studies showing that Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors with a low exposure to nuclear radiation are now healthier and living longer than controls who resided in unaffected Japanese cities. About a million patients are treated annually with low-dose radiation at Russian hospitals and this is now also officially endorsed in Japan, presumably because it is cost effective as well as safe. Radiation hormesis may have a tough road to hoe in the United States, but it has strong and growing scientific support.
Incidentally, Marie Curie was the one who discovered Radium. When she died of leukaemia in 1934, she had great chunks of several fingers missing.
