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January 25 - February 1, 2013
Mr. Spivens
Lol!! Mr. Spivens! Mr. Spivens is a dog! Lol!!!
It was late afternoon on November the fifteenth,
Coventry Cathedral was bombed on November 14, 1940, during the most devastating raid on Coventry in World War II
“Thirty-six,” Carruthers said at random.
He must have, at least, been coached to give a number rather than a name.
“He’s my brother-in-law,” Carruthers improvised. “Egbert.”
Lol!!! This guy can really think on his feet!!!
“I never heard of any Post Thirty-six,” the verger said suspiciously. “The AFS posts in Coventry only go up to Seventeen.”
Oops!
“A special detachment sent up to help out.”
This guy is GOOD!
I said hastily, “The Queen sent us.”
The verger’s tin helmet came off, and he came to attention, his shovel like a staff. “Her Majesty?” I placed my ARP helmet over my heart. “She said she couldn’t look Coventry in the face till she’d done something to help. ‘Their beautiful, beautiful cathedral,’ she said to us. ‘You must go up to Coventry straightaway and offer them whatever help you can.’ ” “She would,” the verger said, shaking his bald head reverently. “She would. ‘Their beautiful, beautiful cathedral.’ It sounds just like her.” I nodded solemnly at the verger, winked at Carruthers, and went back to my digging.
"It sounds just like her." Lol!!
Tell him Her Majesty saved Queen Victoria’s Bible when Buckingham Palace was bombed. Carried it out in her arms like a baby.” “She did?” Carruthers said. “No,” I said, “but it’ll keep him from asking why you’re wearing a bomb squad helmet.
For her ne’er-do-well brother-in-law, perhaps?
In 1940 George VI was king and his wife (the queen) was Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, thus 'the queen's ne'er-do-well brother-in-law' was Edward VIII
And what if Dookie was her maid instead? Or a nickname for one of the princesses?
lol!!!
To North Africa. El Alamein.
First battle of El-Alamein: 1 - 27 July 1942. Second battle of El-Alamein:8 November 1942
and there was the sound of a scuffle.
My goodness!
But there wasn’t any Coventry Cathedral. St. Michael’s Church hadn’t been made a bishopric till 1908.
I assumed that Dawson was his valet. Then again, it might be his pet raccoon.
Ahead lay the college boathouses and the green-arched mouth of the Cherwell, and beyond that the gray tower of Magdalen and the long sweep of the Thames. The sky overhead was a gauzy blue, and, ahead, piled white clouds caught the sun. Near the far bank there were water lilies, and between them the water was a deep, clear brown, like the Waterhouse nymph’s eyes.
My favorite don was Claude Jenkins, whose house was so messy it was sometimes impossible to open the front door, and who had arrived late for a meeting and apologized by saying, “My housekeeper has just died, but I’ve propped her up on a kitchen chair, and she’ll be all right till I return.”
We pulled rapidly away from Professor Peddick, who had stooped to peer at something on the ground through his pince-nez. The box of flies fell out of his pocket and skittered halfway down the bank. He bent farther and reached for it.
decorated with a sign that read “No spitting,”
The bit about “the mouldering heap” seemed to confirm Baine’s theory, but neither Terence nor Tossie noticed,
the tiniest action can assume importance all out of proportion to its size. Consequences multiply and cascade, and anything—a missed telephone call, a match struck during a blackout, a dropped piece of paper, a single moment—can have empire-tottering effects. The Archduke Ferdinand’s chauffeur makes a wrong turn onto Franz-Josef Street and starts a world war. Abraham Lincoln’s bodyguard steps outside for a smoke and destroys a peace. Hitler leaves orders not to be disturbed because he has a migraine and finds out about the D-Day invasion eighteen hours too late. A lieutenant fails to mark a
...more
but look at Drouét. He hadn’t been anybody either, an illiterate French peasant who normally would never have made it into the history books. Except that Louis the Sixteenth, escaping from France with Marie Antoinette, leaned out the window of his carriage to ask Drouét directions, and then, in one of those minor actions that change the course of history, tipped him a banknote. With his picture on it. And Drouét tore ahead through the forest to raise a force to stop the carriage, and failing that, dragged a cart out of a barn and across the road to block their way.
Cyril began to take on the demeanor of a Bataan Death March participant;
Lol!!
presently the boat appeared, nosing around the end of the island, Professor Peddick’s sleeves billowing like black sails as he rowed.
Meetings are notoriously pivotal in the complex chaotic course of history. Lord Nelson and Emma Hamilton. Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Crick and Watson. John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
She had white on her hindquarters as well, with rather the effect of pantaloons.
How much of an effect on history can an animal have? A big one. Look at Alexander the Great’s horse Bucephalus, and “the little gentleman in the black fur coat” who’d killed King William the Third when his horse stepped in the mole’s front door. And Richard the Third standing on the field at Bosworth and shouting, “My kingdom for a horse!” Look at Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. And Dick Whittington’s cat.
“If King Harold had had swans on his side, England would still be Saxon.”
The weather had affected how many turning points of history, starting with the heavenly wind, the kamikaze that had destroyed the Kublai Khan’s fleet when it tried to invade Japan in the thirteenth century.
Gales had scattered the Spanish Armada, a blizzard had determined the outcome of the battle of Towton, fog had diverted the Lusitania into the path of a German U-boat, and a low-pressure front over the forest of Ardennes had nearly lost the Battle of the Bulge for the Allies in World War II.
The Luftwaffe’s raid on Coventry had been successful because of cold, clear weather a...
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The United States President William Henry Harrison had caught cold standing in the rain at his inauguration and died of pneumonia a month later. Peter the Great had caught cold while sighting a ship and died within a week. And not just colds. Henry the Fifth had died of dysentery, and as a result the English lost everything they’d gained at Agincourt. The undefeatable Alexander the Great was defeated by malaria, and the face of the whole continent of Asia changed. To say nothing of the Black Death.
It had rained at Waterloo, turning the roads to an impossible muck and bogging down the artillery. It had rained at Crécy, soaking the archers’ bowstrings. It had rained at Agincourt.
“Don’t look back! Watch where you’re going!” Terence shouted, which struck me as a bit unfair. “One hand over the other. Keep the trim. No, no, no!” he shouted, gesticulating with the bread in one hand and the milk bottle in the other. “Get forward. Open your knees. Keep her head out. Remember your seat.”
“Open your knees,” and was rewarded by Terence shouting, “No, no, no! Bring your knees together!
David’s slingshot or Fleming’s moldy petri dish or the barrel full of jumble sale odds and ends Abraham Lincoln had bought for a dollar.
The barrel had held a complete edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries, which Lincoln could never have afforded to buy. They had made it possible for him to become a lawyer.
“Traffic was responsible for Napoleon’s losing the battle of Waterloo,” he said. “The artillery wagons became stuck in the mud, blocking the roads, and the infantry could not make its way past them. How often history turns on such trivial things, a blocked road, a delayed corps of infantry, orders gone astray.”
And he’ll find Tossie holding hands with Mr. Cabbagesoup or Coalscuttle or whatever his name is.
‘The history of the world is but the biography of great men,’
“As bad as the Titanic,” I said, and then remembered it hadn’t sunk yet, but no one was listening.
Terence gazed out at the dark water. “She’s gone,” he said, exactly like Lady Astor had,
She nuzzled dearum Juju.
Colonel Mering seemed to speak in a sort of shorthand, leaving off the subjects of his sentences. I wondered if they got somehow lost in his bushy mustache. “Hysteria,” he said. “Gets women all worked up.”
“Terribly sorry about that. Didn’t mean to frighten you like that,” Terence, who seemed to have caught the habit of chopping off subjects from Colonel Mering, said.
“Terence St. Trewes, at your service,” Terence said and doffed his boater, which unfortunately still had a good deal of water in the brim. It sent a shower over Mrs. Mering.
Lee’s accidentally dropped plans for Antietam, and the Zimmerman telegram, and Napoleon’s illegible orders to General Ney at Waterloo.
Hitler’s migraine on D-Day. And the Charge of the Light Brigade.
Lord Raglan, standing on a hill, saw the Russians trying to retreat with captured Turkish artillery and ordered Lord Lucan to stop them. Lord Lucan, not on a hill and possibly suffering from Difficulty in Distinguishing Sounds, didn’t catch the word “Turkish,” couldn’t see any artillery except the Russian cannons pointed straight at him, and ordered Lord Cardigan and his men to charge straight at them. With predictable results.
One has not lived until one has carried a sixty-pound dog down a sweeping flight of stairs at half-past V in the morning.
