Familiarity

I emerge out of a dull dark quiet time, seeing the words waiting patiently to be awoken. I watch them uncoil themselves and stretch out their syllables ready for me.

We have been apart too long and they are nervous, wondering what will have changed between us. We are no longer scared of each other, though, not these days. We have grown familiar with each other, learnt each other’s strange ways.

We will grow together again as the days pass, our mutual wariness and nervousness will fade as the night fades away at the dawn.

Together we will go on out into the new day.

[See here for an explanation of these posts labelled as Fragments]

The Contrivances - A History (Part Two)

[Friday Bonus – A Tales Of The Unexpurgated Post]

(See here for Part One)

[Part Two - Medieval to Tudor Period]

Geoffrey Chaucer himself gives us evidence about which contrivances were most in use during the medieval period, when in his Canterbury Tales, the Pardoner reveals his Hand-cranked Crested Grebe to the rest of the pilgrims during a stopover in an Inn on the road to Canterbury. Of course, by this time, artisans had mastered the tricky process of attaching pedals to a mute swan, and also found ways of over-clocking the candle-powered badger - first invented by Alfred the Great - to enable it to operate for a full 24-hour day without needing rewinding.

During the Wars of the Roses, as well as the Battles of the Quality Street, a bellows-powered weasel was put to use by both sides in the conflict, with notoriously devastating consequences during the second battle of St. Albans when the Lancastrians used such a weasel to completely perplex the opposing side’s soldiery.

However, it wasn’t until just after the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII, that the first gunpowder–driven contrivances arrived on the scene with the first gunpowder rabbits appearing on the battlefields of Europe. Of course, as these were used with devastating effect by the protestant armies, it wasn’t long before the papacy denounced them as witchcraft, promising excommunication for any catholic found with even gunpowder and rabbits in the same contrivance-cobbler’s shed.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, her navy’s devastating use of gunpowder fire-seagulls during its battle with the Spanish Armada prevented an invasion of these Isles. Not much changed in England, thereafter, until the days of the English Civil War, which will be covered in: Part Three (From The English Civil War To The Victorians)

Out Of The Mists Of Dreaming

 

She came not out of the golden skies of the mornings, but out of the heavy mists that haunted our dreams. She was there first as a heavier darker shadow amongst shadows until she stepped out barefoot on the dew-sodden grass. She wore a thin blue dress that clung to her body, dark with moisture around the bottom and halfway up her legs. She stepped forward as the mists curled away from her and waked towards us without a trace of fear or hesitation. She knew already that we could not harm her, that she would be the one and we would follow, even though, as yet, we did not even know her name, or even if she needed one.

She stopped a few feet in front of us and just waited. Behind me, I could hear the rest of our party as they, slowly, one by one, knelt in the dew-heavy grass. Soon she and I were the only ones standing. She just looked into my eyes, as though she had all the time in the world, and I had none. I could feel my knees bending before I had realised I was even going to kneel. I, who would never kneel to any man, there in the cold wet grass; I knelt to this nameless woman. But I knew it was right, for as I knelt and she took one more pace forward the mists swirled away and the sun shone down on all of us.

 

[See here for an explanation of these posts labelled as Fragments]

The End Of Teenspeak

Yesterday, a leading teenage website Innit announced it had detected a new trend amongst its audience.

Trendi Downwithtthekids (45), one of the editors of the website, said:

It looks as though teens have decided to give up trying to use Teen-speak. What, with all the pressures on teenagers these days, and all they have to fill their time, such as video games, phones, texting, social networks and so forth, they don’t have the time to describe it in the new ways formerly typical of the teenage experience. It looks as though none of them can be bothered to think up new words to describe stuff, let alone use a word in an alternative or even contradictory sense to its usual meaning as teenagers have been doing since… well, since teenagers fist appeared ion the scene in the 1950s.

Since even before the invention of ‘cool’ to mean something good or worthwhile teens have been trying to use language as a way of group bonding and to prevent adults from knowing what it is they are getting up to. However, these days with the majority of adults refusing to even acknowledge that they themselves are no longer teenagers, the adults are constantly eroding teenager’s attempts to create a distinct identity of their own.

One completely disheartened teenager, said:

It’s just no good bothering these days. As soon as we come up with a new word for something, or find a new use for an old word, it is all over the web within an hour or two, and there are articles about it in the newspapers the next day about how they are already preparing the dictionary entry for their next editions. I mean, y’know, that is well… er… innit… er…. I mean, it is just so dispiriting. That is, if you can see my point of view?

Weasel Appreciation Day

It all began on the morning before Weasel Appreciation Day. There we were, the whole team - including our Goal Inquisitor, Stan Toastbutterer - were cleaning the studs on our Weasel Appreciation boots, ready for the big day, when suddenly Stan Toastbutterer said, "It looks like rain."

Oh, how we laughed as we traditionally beat him about the traditional head, face and neck with our traditional badger racquets and weasel cues. Of course, as everyone knows, Weasel Appreciation Day would have to be called off if there was even the merest hint of rain in the air.

The traditional Weasel Appreciation Day costumes simply cannot stand up to the slightest bit of drizzle, and some of the rituals, despite the use of studded boots, can be very tricky to perform on a muddy pitch. Everyone remembers what happened when the traditional ceremonial penalty shoot-out between the Apostates and the Heretics took place in 1963, despite a rainstorm earlier that day, when several penalties went wide or over the bar before last orders had been called, and the Apostates Centre-Choirboy, Skidmark Acidbreath, severely twisted his surplice, putting him out of Evensong for the rest of the season. Less well-know is the sudden downpour that happened in 1983 when the Lord High Sausage Taster was accidentally basted in his own ritual gravy due to the volume of the rainfall making the diving board very slippy indeed.

Many people have remarked on the fact that a country chiefly famous for its drizzle does seem to have an inordinate fondness for outdoor pursuits that have to stop because of the rain, such as cricket, tennis, picnics, dogging and - of course - Weasel Appreciation Day itself. Others, however, myself included, put this down to the traditional sheer bloody-mindedness that has made the Briton traditionally such a pain in the arse to everyone else, both throughout history and throughout the world.

The March Towards World Domination

Of course, back then no-one knew the dangers of getting too close to the Hamsters of Doom. We had our weasel racquets, obviously, and we wore the shin-pads. However, it was never enough; especially - as was the fashion at the time - we adopted the stance of a reality-bewildered social worker at the very first sign of a putative encounter with any semi-domesticated rodent.

Back then, though, pop music had not quite become the self-parodying nostalgia-fest that it has since become. People could then talk of the rise of popular culture without feeling that sense of betrayal now engendered by any contact with the current overly rapacious and highly-cynical entertainment industry.

So, while we were slowly being entertained to death, the Hamsters of Doom had already begun their march towards world domination and their attack upon the commanding heights of human cultural achievement that we were so eagerly rushing to abandon.

Almost inevitably, those that first became Disciples of the Hamsters of Doom were looked upon with scorn and derision by the rest of us for their diet of sunflower seeds and their strange passion for sawdust floor coverings. But soon - first, in London, of course - the giant exercise wheels began to appear.

Sponsorship in Sport

 

[As a Special Friday Bonus – another of my old favourites*]

Of course, back in those days we had to provide our own sheep. There was none of this corporate sponsorship, not in those early days. Only the other day I saw some one whose wellies had been sponsored by PlungenPuke Sheep-dips. Bloody good wellies they were too, designed so that once the sheep had her back legs in them there was no way she could wiggle free.

I wish I'd had a pair like that, back when I was young enough to get up to the top of Torfellbank hill when all the young ewes used to gather up there.

Anyway, I blame the television money. As soon as they get hold of a sport, the money pours in. That brings more money in and before you know it, the sheep have adverts for banks and suchlike dyed into their fleeces. 'Do to this sheep exactly what our bank has been doing to you all these years.' I remember that one.

There's drugs as well. So many shepherds these days are on Viagra, it makes going into the dressing room like trying to walk through a turnstile.

(As I said this one is quite old – another one of my earliest – see here for example. Note: the link to the actual article is broken. I’ll get around to fixing it when I redo the webpage sometime in the near* future.)

*near future – as in quite possibly never.