A Salutary Tale . . .

     Bloodshed is the lyric of the mob and the mob had plenty to sing about when Madame Guillotine was erected in La Place de la Revolution. They executed their king, Louis XVI, in January 1793.  Hundreds of the military attended. What were they there for? To give the monarch a royal send off? To prevent the mob storming the scaffold and tearing him to pieces with their bare hands?  Snatching the royal head from his executioners and making off with it, still dripping?

    Since then the blade has sung to the sharpening stones many times. A good supply of victims have screamed, pleaded, begged, but have been forced down onto the bascule, slid forward, their ankles bound, their arms bound to their sides, their hands bound behind them, until, framed in the republican window, they have heard their last sound on this earth and their lives have flashed away.

    And who's turn is it now, this fine day in May 1794? 

    He pleads as he has pled since his arrest, but only for the life of his wife, Marie-Anne Pierrette. From the moment of his arrest he has known he will not be spared, but has begged that Marie-Anne be spared, that she shall not be declared guilty by association. No such guarantee has been given. He has not seen her in the months since his arrest. He does not know where she is. This is his grief as he steps forward, prostrates himself on the horrible sledge, accepts his fate. The crew do not speak to him. They don't care who he is. He's one of the régime, isn't he? Another corrupt and greedy bastard getting what he deserves.

    Should they care to ask they would discover his name is Antoine Lavoisier, but this will mean nothing to them.

    Let us examine the record of this criminal, this enemy of the Republic.

    He attended the College of Four Nations of the University of Paris.

    After graduating, and in no particular order, he -

    Devised a street lighting system for Paris.

    Drew plans for improving the ventilation of public buildings and prisons.

   Determined by experiment the precise amount of moisture to add to tobacco to better preserve its quality. 

   Verified by careful experiment that matter could not be created or destroyed in chemical processes but was converted in form - what we now call the Law of Conservation of Mass. This work demolished an earlier misunderstanding of combustion known as phlogiston theory.

   Showed - again by careful experiment - that substances always reacted together in fixed quantities by weight. Two parts of hydrogen burned with sixteen parts of oxygen to form eighteen parts of water. Chemists now call this 'stoichiometry'. It is a feature of all chemical reactions. Lavoisier has been called 'The Father of (modern) Chemistry.' 

   Showed that respiration in animals is a slow combustion process. This work explained why animals were warmer than their surroundings, laid the foundations of sport physiology and training methods that monitor oxygen take-up rates.

  Classified chemical elements (carbon, sulphur, hydrogen etc) and compounds (water, copper sulphate, nitric acid etc) under a system that was rapidly adopted throughout Europe.

    Sadly for him he was also a member of one of the régimes subsets, and even worse he was a tax-collector. He was accused of adulterating tobacco, tax fraud, shovelling money abroad to the enemies of La République and though he put up a robust defence for himself and 27 co-accused, the judge declared that 'the Republic has no need of scientists and chemists and the course of    justice must not be delayed.' 

    His wife, Marie-Anne Pierrette, fifteen years his junior - portraits show a woman of heartbreaking 'little girl' prettiness - helped him in his experiments, kept records, checked his calculations, made drawings of his experimental apparatus. No wonder he anguished over her fate.

    We know she survived. Eighteen months after his death his belongings were sent to her with a curt note. 'The the widow of Lavoisier, wrongly convicted.'

    Enlightenment thinkers such as Denis Diderot - he had to be very careful of what he said about La Révolution and the Catholic church - were horrified by his execution. The mathematician and astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange declared -

    'They cut off his head in a trice: in a hundred years we shall not see a better.'

    Vive La Révolution!

Can She Not See The Red Flags!

 It's a Scam, love!

Social media hosts many versions of the song "Soldier, soldier, won't you marry me?"   They are all Very Silly, but the Very Silliest can be found (sorry about the pesky ads) here . . .

And the scam starts in the very first verse

'Oh soldier, soldier, won't you marry me

with your musket, fife and drum?"

"Ah no, sweet maid, I cannot marry thee

For I have no hat to put on!'

And what does she do? If you can't guess, listen to the song, (linked above.)

I submit this response to the Poets and Storytellers United Friday prompt, where we are asked for our own take on a poem, or song.  Scams or one sort and another have been around long enough - and this timely warning has been around for at least as long - and still the poor souls, the lost and the lonely, the left-on-the-shelfers, male and female, keep falling for them.  

  So I say again   

IT'S A SCAM.

The soldier is not who you think he is - at least, I hope he isn't.  So don't go raiding your Grandpa's wardrobe so some buffoon can dress up to look Very Silly at the old man's expense while you retire disillusioned and broken hearted and appalled at the sheer effrontery and underhandedness of our military or do I mean of our pop idols  . . . and why don't I shut up at least till next Friday?

(Voices off).   "Good Idea, Doctor.  Shut up!"

SCRABBLE

Playing the "12-Tile" variant of the game(*), I drew (in alphabetical order) 

E I K L M N O O R S T V

(*) Using the longer 'rack' invented by Montgomery Spoonbill, and applying the 3-words per turn rule which is the norm in countries with 27 or more (sometimes many, many more) letters in their alphabets.  Worth a visit. They are all south of the Equator as you would expect.

I was playing against myself (Harbinger's 'Solo' Rules).  As soon as I saw these letters, three words sprang to mind but, as often happens under Harbinger, were instantly forgotten.

So, working from left to right (English system), I made - first

LIKE MOON RVST      The judge disqualified RVST as not being a real word (c'mon! It's RUST. Well, nearly) and told me he didn't LIKE the way I was MOONing around. Awarded a Harbinger Score of ZERO and a Yellow Card.  Said I must try harder.  OK, what next?

  

MORE VOLT SINK      Three real words at last!  YEAH!  Harbinger score 377, a Fibonacci number!   

LINK ROTS MOVE.    Better. Makes sense, but not a lot.  Harbinger Score 128, or 2^7 if you're binary.    

KIT LOVES NORM.     All the letters in a sensible order. A little story, too!  Best wishes to both. 

RON MOVES KILT.     Another little story. 

MOVE TORN SILK     Why?  You might well ask.

MORONS LIKE TV    Now I'm really on fire!  Making a social comment, too.100 Bonus points.

ROOM V TINKLES.    Better see what Room 5 wants.  (Harbinger permits Roman numerals in lieu of the actual words, so . . . )

LIV MORE KNOTS.    Fiftyfour more knots, geddit?

And make what do you will of the following.

MONK LIST OVER. 

OK, MINT LOVERS 

KLIMT ROVES ON  

TONS MILK OVER

SILK ROOM VENT

SILKEN TV ROOM

Then, out of nowhere, my first three words came back to me!  Without wasting a moment, I rearranged the tiles.  I laid the words out on the Scrabble board.  They looked familiar.  I'd seen them somewhere before . . . . 

STORM  INK  LOVE 

 . . .  scoring 351

And leaving me just 18 words to explain where this nonsense came from. It came from HERE

FETISH

Give me a girl with garlic on her breath!

Fragrance of warmer air and jugs of wine.

Oh, such a one I'd love half way to death!

Not all the way, I could not spare the time

from thinking of her mediterranean hair,

falling about her shoulders and the wood-

en chopping board, the cloves of garlic there

blithe to be squidged to make her lips taste good.

Sometimes she'll munch mouthfuls of allium raw –

pungent disulphides plating pearly teeth,

promising scented lungfuls and much more.

Ah now I live and breathe, while underneath

the cooker-hood the pasta rolls and boils

as drops of garlic essence she drips in.

Not too much in case the penne spoils

nor so little her perfumed burps seem thin.

As aniseed is to the hunting hound

so hints of garlic urge my manly pride

and when she smoothes the garlic butter round

her person - she can run but she can’t hide.

Keep, if you please, your "Midnight" and "Chanel,"

witches' brews that all real ladies scorn.

Let me inhale the aroma I love well -

garlic sweet as sunlight each new dawn.

Rosemary at Poets&Storytellers United asks us to reflect on perfumes, fragrance, natural or manmade.

I'm sure you will find efforts worthier then mine HERE.

How Do They Do It? -

- the virtuoso pianists, violinists and other  -ists who take the stage, bow, glance at the conductor and launch into 30 or 40 minutes worth of  concerto, with no printed music in sight.  Beethoven's 5th piano concerto  - the 'Emperor' - keeps the soloist busy for 38 minutes - about par for the course.  It's an astonishing feat of memory. But memory of what, exactly?  Partly 'muscle memory,' where your arms/hands/fingers know where to go next;  partly 'score memory,' where you 'see' the printed music unrolling in your imagination; partly 'sound memory,' where you 'hear' what's coming next and play it.

Whatever, it's an amazing. almost eerie ability . . . that occasionally goes wrong!

I wish the following little story was true, but it seems 'too good to be true' somehow.

The Russian pianist and composer Sergei Rachmaninov was accompanying a violinist in a performance of somebody-or-others sonata for violin and piano.  Two virtuosi who, whilst combining superbly as musicians, did not get on with each other particularly well off stage.  The violinist was playing from memory; Rachmaninov, at the piano, was playing from score.  The violinist sensed his memory was about to let him down; he was losing his place in the music. Disaster!  Still playing, but getting closer to, as you might say, his collapse point, he edged toward the piano and, in a rest passage, indicated the score with the tip of his bow and muttered to Rachmaninov 'Where are we?'

Rachmaninov leered, and said 'We're in the Carnegie Hall.'

Read a medley of responses to the Poets and Storytellers' prompt here. 

YOU DON'T KNOW WHETHER -

To Laugh or Cry.

The world is on fire, and if not in fire it's under 2 metres of water, and if it's had the good fortune to avoid fire and flood it's being blown away by hurricane force winds, tornados and typhoons.   Climate scientists tell us that these extreme weather events are at least in part caused by Mankind - individually brilliant, collectively stupid - abusing planet Earth, our one and only PERSONAL LIFE SUPPORT SYTEM. Read that bit again. Climate sceptics - exemplified by USA's favourite half-wit (you know who I mean) deny humankind's role in global warming, maintaining that climate change is 'fake news' and/or 'a hoax,' while all over the world political leaders trumpet 'zero carbon by 20something' once day and do their green-washing the next - JUST CARRY ON GRANTING DRILLING LICENSES.  

Now here's the funny thing.  MOST PEOPLE agree that there is a problem.  'Ooo, it were terrible!  We was burned out of our 'oliday 'otel.'  'Me car were floatin' down the street.' 'Granny and Granddad were buried in a mud-slide.'  'Blew the roof of me conservatory, so it did.'  'You'd enjoy Greece more is it weren't so bloody hot.'  BUT HOW MANY PEOPLE do you know who have changed the way they treat their PLISS in the interest of an earth fit for their grandchildren to live in?  No, once they've settled the insurance claim they resume flitting round and round the world for fun in aircraft.  They buy a replacement motor twice the size they really need  - SUV's are posh builders' vans. They buy an outfit for their Saturday Night Out and bin it on Monday. They cool themselves down by cranking up their air-cond - and how many people understand that AC makes matters worse.

Before starting this rant I did my washing-up. (Don't have a dishwasher . . . too polluting) Rinsing a saucepan, I thought, 'That used more pure, clean water than lots of little kids in the world get to drink in a week.  Doesn't that make you want to cry?

I watch Hawaii, Portugal, Greece, Canada going up in smoke and am reminded of a line from a Peter, Paul and Mary song. back in the seventies -

'GOD SAID A FIRE NOT A FLOOD NEXT TIME . . .'

This doom-and-gloom inspired by Magaly's prompt on Poets and Storytellers

ANYONE NOTICED . . .

 . . .  how many 'psychological thrillers with a gut wrenching twist' (*)  feature a female character, usually a police person, who has been blessed with 'red hair and green eyes.'  So many that, IMHO, the red-haired, green-eyed heroine has become a cliché.

With this in mind I did some research and discovered that . . .  Less(**) than 2% of the world's population have 'green eyes,' with aren't green anyway.  They are brown eyes deficient in melatonin. There is no 'green' pigment.  The 'green' tint is produced by internal reflection in the cornea.   Just thought you'd like to know that.  Start a punch-up by commenting below - particularly if you have green eyes and have never featured in an Amazon thriller.

(*) Translation.  'Psychological' means it's about people. 'Thriller' means it usually isn't.  'Gut wrenching' can be substituted by (pick where you like): hair raising, ear splitting, eye popping, jaw dropping, mind boggling, heart stopping, stomach turning, knee trembling, foot tapping, toe curling . . . and that's just for starters.

(**)  'Less' or 'Fewer'?  Which would you vote for?

This post posted in response to Rommy's intriguing prompt on Poets and Storytellers United

MISSING -

 - from their home in Abergele, N.Wales, Mrs. Ada Trellis and her husband Caddoc.

Neighbours say they were a quiet - well, normally, though from time to time the sounds of extreme marital concord interrupted the clash of cooking utensils were heard late into the North Wales night (noson gogledd Cymru) - couple who kept themselves to themselves, Mrs.Trellis in her kitchen and Caddoc in his garden shed, where he would spend many happy hours potting out Ladies Mantle or playing his saxophone. 

Despite a massive police presence and a finger-tip search of their house and grounds (and shed(sied ardd)) - no trace of the lovebirds has come to light, leaving the police scratching their heads (heddlu yn crafu pennau)

Nor have they posted on the following blogs: -

      hellishfencing.blogspot.com

      atrellisfencing.blogspot.com

where for several years they entertained blogfollowers with their matirmonial comings and goings.

Can you help?  HOW can you help?  Leave comments under this post. Remember, in all 'mispers(*)' cases, the smallest scrap of information could turn out to be of critical importance in the Wales-wide and room to be UK-wide search for the happy pair.  

Thank You.

(*) Police slang for (missing person) Geddit?

FANCY DRESS

 "Yes.  We understand that, Herbert.  And a chauffeur is a great costume.  Really great. Inventive. Imaginative. And the black glasses make you look really, really spooky."

"So"

"t's just that . . . well . . . we didn't expect you'd bring the car."

"Everyone else has."

"True. But their cars are to get them home afterwards.  Yours is part of your costume."

"I'll leave it on the drive.  Or what about the porch?  I could park it on the porch and just stand beside it. More authentic, a chauffeur with a car, holding the rear door open for Madam."

"But there are folk backed up behind you, Herbert.  Couldn't you have come in a taxi?"

"It's an Austin Princess! Ninety sixty one.  It wouldn't fit in a taxi."

"Herbert!  Just get it out of here."

"All right.  Keep your hair on.  Can I give you a lift somewhere?" 

Posted in response to Carrie's prompt showing a Classic British car and the owner's driver.

ADVICE FOR DUCKLINGS

 '

Now listen, you three . . .

If it looks like a Beatle and walks like a Beatle and sings like a Beatle

IT'S A BEATLE,  Geddit?

A response to Carrie's Sunday Muse #159

HEIGHTS

"This isn't Bronté country!!  I think I'm lost." 

"I can hear someone coming - Is that you, Heathcliffe?"

Posted in response to Carrie's picture for Sunday Muse #158 

JUST MY LUCK!

First day of Spring.  I think it's OK to stick my head above the parapet and say 'Hallo trees. Hallo sky' -     and what's the first thing I see?

A road-roller

Heading this way!

Post prompted by Carrie's picture for Sunday Muse #157

I'm Puzzled

Which of these gentlemen is the organ-grinder, and which the monkey?

The prompt at Sunday Muse #83 set me thinking . . .


'Be a good fellow, Watson, and pass me my magnifying glass.  Thank you. Now sit quite still.'

(Short silence during which Holmes examines Watson's face closely.)

'Well, Holmes?  What does the great detective see?'

'Surprising what the glass reveals, Watson.  Ever since Leeuwenhoek described beasties flailing around in the water we drink and so on . . . things have turned out to not be quite what they seem.'

'Never mind Leeuwenhoek, whoever he is . . . '

'Was, Watson, was.  He died in 1723.'

'Before my time, Holmes.  What d'you see?'

'A little bridge over a stream which could be made of tears? Hard to tell.  Lots of little fir trees, some of them sprouting from your eyebrows - which could do with pruning, BTW.'

'Really, Holmes.  Amazing what your glass reveals at several times magnification.  I thought they were  . . . '

'Wait a minute, Watson. The bridge over the stream  . . . there's a female figure standing on it.  Strange.'

'Not strange at all, Holmes.  That's the young lady dermatologist who's treating me for zits . . .'
'Zits! You don't need a dermatologist, Watson.  You need a tree surgeon . . .'

What's This? What 's This?

'Stop! . . . This is getting Very Silly' has been elected to the pantheon of Glasgow's Top 40 Blogs!  I was not aware that this was about to happen and know nothing of the process whereby it came about. It may well be an example of Someone Moving in a Mysterious Way His Wonders to Perform. It certainly is WONDERFUL!  You can see the other 39 blogs that have been awarded the accolade HERE.  The other 39 blogs all have thousands of facebook, twitter and instagram followers.  What on earth do all those people do all day?  Do they sit scrolling their screens or walk about banging into other people scrolling their screens?  It's a wonder our streets aren't littered with fallen followers who whacked into some other screen-scrolling follower a bit too hard.  Maybe I should join in - abandon my firm conviction that Social Media is an almost unmitigated Social Evil, a Waster of Time, a Destroyer of Young Lives and Attention Spans, a Planetary Polluter, a Prime Cause of Overweight and Carbon Dioxide and is in a fair way to becoming Death the Destroyer of Worlds.  And don't say I didn't warn you.

But what do I know?  I'm just a sad old git who doesn't understand the modern world.

Comments please!

A Peep Into the Future

           In the context of environmental degradation you commonly hear it said that -

                                               "There is no Planet B"

                     The Doom Merchants are wrong!  Of course there's a Planet B.

              Earthlings . . . Planet B is the wreckage of Planet A

Snack Time

I've been AWOL for a while folks, but back now and rarin' to go.  Here's a response to the picture prompt at The Sunday Muse #69, where you will find serious responses.

The Witch was tasty. Made a nice starter.  The Wardrobe Mistress hid herself in the Wardrobe. It was hard work getting her out. Fact is, I had to eat the Wardrobe first. It was pretty indigestible, but left me with a nice collection of toothpicks.  Wardrobe Mistress was appetising as the main course with some brown sauce.  But now I'm feeling a bit full, so needing a lie down. Probably sleep till teatime then scoff all the stuff they'd left on the table when I interrupted their lunch.

Euro 2016! A Festival of Football!

In celebration of the Beautiful Game, I offer my readers, friends and fans these pictorial comments without further comment . . .

 .     FOOTBALL!

REAL FOOTBALL!

FANTASY FOOTBALL!

EXTREME FOOTBALL!

The group matches are completed.  All four representatives of the British Isles have made it through to the knock-out rounds.  Now the fighting really starts . . .

Later.   Referees ignore potentially lethal fouls, but it seems that simple bad manners can earn players an early bath.  Read about it here.   Toot, Toot!

What's Today

BBC Radio News has just now reminded me that today is officially Star Wars Day!!
How so?  Check your calendar, or even the date at the top of this posts, and . . .

"May the Fourth Be With You"

No joke.  A google search will confirm.  

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Europe! In or Out or What?

How will you vote in the upcoming United Kingdom European Union Referendum (June 23rd, 2016) to decide whether Britain remains in the European Union?   Not to bore you with a discussion of the issues, which 95% of the eligible voters - self included - don't fully understand, but to ask a simple question . . .   

Can I claim copyright of an alternative title for the Referendum?  I think it should be known as "The Belly Button Referendum."  "Why so?" I hear you cry. "What have belly buttons got to do with it?" Well, your voting paper will ask you to declare whether you are an "Innie" or an "Outie" - and you may find that some navel gazing will help you decide where to put your "X".  Or then again, you may not.  Just saying . . .

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