War Song of the Saracens

We are they who come faster than fate: we are they who ride early or late:
We storm at your ivory gate: Pale Kings of the Sunset, beware!
Not on silk nor in samet we lie, not in curtained solemnity die
Among women who chatter and cry, and children who mumble a prayer.
But we sleep by the ropes of the camp, and we rise with a shout, and we tramp
With the sun or the moon for a lamp, and the spray of the wind in our hair.

From the lands, where the elephants are, to the forts of Merou and Balghar,
Our steel we have brought and our star to shine on the ruins of Rum.
We have marched from the Indus to Spain, and by God we will go there again;
We have stood on the shore of the plain where the Waters of Destiny boom.
A mart of destruction we made at Jalula where men were afraid,
For death was a difficult trade, and the sword was a broker of doom;

And the Spear was a Desert Physician who cured not a few of ambition,
And drave not a few to perdition with medicine bitter and strong:
And the shield was a grief to the fool and as bright as a desolate pool,
And as straight as the rock of Stamboul when their cavalry thundered along:
For the coward was drowned with the brave when our battle sheered up like a wave,
And the dead to the desert we gave, and the glory to God in our song.

-- James Elroy Flecker #

My mother likes to quote the "mart of destruction" line whenever I leave my room in a tip.

The News

Good evening. I'm Ron Burgundy and here's whats happening in your world tonight. been happening with Will for the past six weeks.

Wednesday 20th June: Went to the barracks in Cardiff to go on the advance party for OTC summer camp. Due to a cockup and there still being a United States Army artillery unit in our accomodation, we didn't leave until...

Friday 22nd June: Arrived Knook Camp, Salisbury Plain. Unpacked kit ready for...

Saturday 23rd June: Summer Camp began. 1920's Gangster Social.

Sunday 24th June: Deployed 'into the field' in the evening. Everyone else by bus or army truck. Those being hardcore and doing Cambrian Patrol training/selection did it on foot, 12km in full gear, like real manly men. Wouldn't have been so bad if I didn't have the radio as well...

Monday 25th June: Lessons on military stuff, night navigation exercise.

Tuesday 26th June: More lessons, night patrol being ambushed and freezing in the light of far too many flares, etc etc. Also falling over Scott while re-orging and cutting my leg on the sights of his LSW. Oops.

Wednesday 27th June: More lessons. Saw paras drop onto the DZ a couple of hundred metres from our wood. Agreed to tell everyone else it was us in the photos we took. Departed for a new wood further away from the mockup village everyone else was living and learning how to fight in. Night time CTR (Close Target Reconnaissance) of the village. You drop a fireteam off in cover, then move in, leave a close support pair and recce with just the section commander and scout. I was in the close support, which was still pretty awesome, but the recce pair got into the HQ building (Bangalore Primary School) and sat in the room next door to the radio post listening to one of the staff brushing his teeth. Awesome. One of the other sections was ambushed just ahead of us on the way back and we counterattacked the ambushers. Later found out they pegged it for 2km still wearing all the fleeces, gloves, waterproofs etc they'd been lying waiting for us in. I'm sure that warmed the poor dears up wonderfully.

Thursday 28th June: Moved into the village. Watched demonstrations by various visiting units. Had annual photograph. Set up barriers and defences in Shrewton street. Prepared to defend it against the horde. Was found asleep on my feet standing next to my sleeping bag, still wearing webbing and holding my rifle, by the guy who was supposed to wake me for sentry duty.

Friday 29th June: The battle of Shrewton Street, where the few shall stand against the many and numbers count for nothing. No really, we were outnumbered at least 6-1 but had bottlenecked the street so well with wire that we were told to counterattack and die gloriously rather than let them take another hour to fight through it. Packed up and marched all the way back to camp. The disorganised main body (everyone else) took another two hours to get their act together and passed us in buses about 1km from the camp. Slackers. Had a BBQ in the evening. Ate a Basra Badger's weight in meat.

Saturday 30th June: Sports day, during which plenty of examples of the Cambrian shuffle (like limping, but with both legs) could be seen. In the evening was the formal dinner, at which I got excessively ratarsed, but at least wasn't the one who threw up all over the table and himself as the top table were just standing up to leave. That was my truly inspirational section commander.

Sunday 1st July: Was hungover.

Monday 2nd to Wednesday 4th July: Section Competition over 3 days. In the order we did them: Navigation; Stands (observation, casualty evacuation, command tasks including driving a Landrover blindfolded); March and Shoot. Cambrian sections, being the elite (and half the size of everyone else's) didn't count in the official rankings, but unofficially we came second of the three Cambrian sections, which beat the rest easily. We also had the fastest time in the march and shoot by nearly a minute (18:53 to 19:40 from 2 Section, 21+ from 1 Section and 23+ from the best of the main body). Our shooting was crap though.

Thursday 5th July: Corps visits: I went to the Royal Armoured Corps, played on a tank gunner arcade simulator with 5 other guys, had a curry buffet lunch and rode in a Challenger 2. Very civilised. Was stuck on guard duty while the band of the Royal Welsh beat the retreat (including a suite from Last of the Mohicans) at sunset, which was quite cool.

Friday 6th July: Had the final parade with promotions, awards etc. Found out I was chosen as best first year from Cardiff Company, although the guy from Aber got it overall along with a huge cup. A worrying lack of judgement from my superiors anyway! Packed up and prepared for the evening's entertainment: skits. Got pumped up on a lethal mixture of neat spirits in a massive vodka bottle being passed around while we skulked around the back of the mess in costume, before performing a special Cambrian version of the 300 in a uniform of helmets, webbing, bedsheet cloaks, flipflops and sock-stuffed boxers, wielding cardboard shields and broomstick handles. Fortunately I got to wear my black rowing techtop underneath, in order to double up as a Sergeant Major/black clad Immortal. The other skits, done by normal company divisions (Aber, Bangor, Cardiff and finally Swansea) were around 5 or 10 minutes. Ours was 13 in the one read through rehearsal and a staggering, cross dressing, bulge flaunting nigh on half hour in performance. Wasn't it lovely, boys and girls?!

Saturday 7th July: Coach back to Cardiff, Pizza Hut, Die Hard 4.0, slept in the barracks.

Sunday 8th to Friday 13th July: Adventure training in Pembrokeshire. Kitesurfing, walking, climbing, land yachting, clay pigeon shooting and kayaking. Also tried wakeboarding instead of kitesurfing when the wind was too light. I was crap, but had great fun steering the Gemini rib (an inflatable tube on each side of a flat board, with an engine on the back) while the instructor did a demonstration, on the basis that I'd "steered boats before". Yeah... canal boats and a dinghy in Scotland that goes about 10 knots (nautical miles per hour, a bit faster than mph). The Gemini does up to 46 knots. Schweeet.

Saturday 14th July: Got back at 1.30am, stayed up til about 5 emptying my camera onto my laptop, faffing on Facebook etc and went paintballing for Jim's birthday at too early o'clock. Will T claimed the credit for letting them know it was Jim's birthday, so he got the honourary 'best man' positition - joining Jim and a stag weekend pair in dresses, being told they were invulnerable and were out of the last game only when they couldn't take the pain anymore. Having admired their bruises and driven home we broke into my house for my swimming stuff by lifting Jim up to the open bathroom window. Chez Jim for swimming and more admiring of bruises, then I fell asleep while the others played Wii.

Sunday 15th to Friday 20th July: Mountain Leader Training in Snowdonia (while based on Anglesey). Walked up several mountains including Snowdon. Ended up spending Friday night at a random party in a house full of OTC people that we (myself and Gaz, also from Cardiff, also on the MLT course) saw from the pub in Bangor we were meeting his Pembrokeshire dalliance in on Tuesday night. Recipe for a good party: a giant space hopper, persuading a random girl to go buy sambuca from the offie up the road, shooting the empties with airguns in the alley behind the house, trying to handcuff people to the bannister, going out to a pound a pint (on a FRIDAY) dive, going back to a pub behind the house that someone's friend was meant to have closed up hours ago, falling asleep in a chair, going back to the house and climbing in the kitchen window in order to fall asleep on the sofa with a Finding Nemo turtle cushion for a pillow. Amazingly I managed to get up in the morning for...

Saturday 21st June to Thursday 26th July: Coillighillie. Got on the train at 8am, got off the bus that replaced the train to Strathcarron from Inverness due to rockfalls on the track at 8.30pm, having joined up with Tamsin who'd got a flight to Inverness. Bangor - Crewe - Glasgow - Perth - Inverness - (Achnasheen) - Strathcarron. Five changes of train plus a bonus one onto the bus at Achnasheen. Crazy. Did the Coillieghillie boat-rowing seal-spotting sandcastle-building hill-climbing Potter-reading thing. Returned on Thursday to make sure Sarah had time to prepare for flying out on holiday on the Saturday.

Friday 27th July: Went to Freeport and dragged Tamsin to Transformers.

Saturday 28th July: Packed Tamsin off home. Started reading Harry Potter again from the first book. Continued from where I started just before summer camp, conquering Europe on Medieval Total War (the original, of course).

Sunday 29th July: Went to The Simpsons Movie with Will.

Wednesday 1st August: Started on the great project: Clearing my room of lingering toys, school folders, old clothes, worn out shoes and assorted other mathoms.

Thursday 2nd August: Felt proud for using the word mathom.

And that's the news. You stay classy, San Diego. I'm Ron Burgundy.

The Order of Service

So... Saw off my Granny today. Cremation with family followed by memorial service at the parish church, then far too many sandwiches back at the house. Random occurence of the day: since she's married to one of my Granny's cousins the recently retired head of MI5 was there.

I ended up pondering, outside the church and later on, what would I want at my own funeral. I'd definitely put a wishlist in my will before going to Iraq or some other sandy holiday destination. Morbid fun all round, until Sarah decided that the poem I'd need read at my funeral would be...

Jabberwocky

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Jim and/or Will could do it in fine style. They could even get in some roleplay, one being the beamish boy. Apart from that awesomeness, there's a more sober and obvious choice:

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Hymns:

• Guide me, O thou great Redeemer


• O God, our help in ages past


• He who would valiant be


• I vow to thee, my country

Somewhere there should be room for this too:

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to."

Alumni Felstedienses

The Wikipedia article on Felsted School lists among the notable Old Felstedians one General Sir Richard Dannatt (b. 1950), British soldier and Chief of the General Staff (2006-).

In other words, the head of the British Army. A real gem for Major Christmas... he may even have been the one who inspected the biennial parade the year after I left and presented Sarah with a birthday cake.

"I Grill with George"

This grill is automatic
It's systematic
It's hydromatic
Why it's a George Foreman!

My mum was moaning in the holidays about how she thought I wasn't eating enough proper meat. Apparently the occasional offerings of the Fortune House (free prawn crackers if you spend over £10) or even Mr Hong's Three Jolly Luck Takeaway Fish Bar are insufficient, as are sausages, even Lidl's finest spiced Bratwurst. I have therefore taken the revolutionary step of buying "a George", mostly because I saw it was half price in Tesco Extra when I was on my way to buy yet more weight discs. I also purchased a selection of grillable looking things (pork and chicken) that were on half price in the food section. Let the culinary laissez-faire commence.

Pillage

Major Christmas spoils: A couple of shirts, a pair of walking boots, 15 novels, a tome on bridges with pretty pictures, a huge painting by my sister that she was very offended to hear me describe as looking like pieces of pizza and a head torch.

I went shopping today to acquire something else for me on my parents behalf:


I also picked up a rather fine rugby shirt. Hurrah for sales.


Well, you know how I love putting up pictures of my shopping...

What News from the West?

"I'm going to sexually molest your dog" #

What a legend. That one's definitely coming out the next time I want to insult someone.

In recent news: I'm home, at last, having survived a final week including a Rowing Christmas Ball and a "family" outing to Bounce. Both involved wine and thus naturally somewhat drunken, but I managed to come through with minimal memory loss and no major head injuries. Score!

The best bit of Thursday night was playing drunken sardines til 6am. I was unfindable when I got up into the loft. Go me. Paul swore he heard something but they searched they top floor and when he suggested the loft, I was passed off as "a rat". Lol. Better than that, though, was me, Matt and Moz lined up on the windowsill of the front groundfloor room (Matt's) hanging out of the window to minimise the bulge we were making in the curtains and waving drunkenly at the guy cycling past the end of the road.

Obits

Quote of the Moment:
"I love doing sequels" - Arnie on re-election as the Governator of California.



A couple of old-timers weren't so lucky. The legendary Desert Orchid and the awesome footwarming party-pillow that was Ben have both gone beyond the sunset.

J'ai besoin de l'internet

...or indeed a decent grasp of French grammar. Shame.

24hr uni computer rooms are the way forward. My room is almost pimped to the max, right down to fairy lights around the bay window, and just lacks my vast collection of predominantly LOTR posters to put the "ting" in the tweeters. Innit. Foolish parents left them at home. Honestly, some people are just so disorganised.

Recently I've Been (Hopelessly Reaching...)

Quote of the moment:
"You're never too old to assault a bouncy castle"

Scotland, part the first.

Schotlande, part deux.

Much fun was had by all, apart from when Vicky and I had huge power struggles due to her inability to admit she is completely incompetent at everything outdoors and should obey my instructions to the letter. So... maybe half the time!?

A Paintballing Oops.

Paintballing was aces. As Will T said, "If I do what Will says, I don't get shot". Wise words. I went a little power mad in the end, when I was leading my 6 strong sweepline from tree to tree with coordinate covering fire. Army geek and proud. The other team didn't score a single point all day and I even got a little "Player of the Day" plaque. Highlight of my life to date. That is except, of course, for my Royal Engineers familiarisation visit...

Running (10.2 on the bleep test, a mere bagatelle)
Swimming test at 6.30am
Rigid raiders (Royal Marine assault boats) jumping patrol craft wakes
Awesome complex drunken mess games in the Junior Officers dungeon
Naked bar (when the only light is in the drinks fridge and you're too drunk to see anyway, it seems like a good plan)
Naked arm wrestling (more fun than it sounds, the bar was in the way to keep it safe)
Bridge building
Command tasks (ooooh... fun :D)
Driving a truck the size of a house
Demolitions: blowing up a sandbag each with plastic explosive
Raft race: build it, paddle it around an island, strip it. We had the only raft that stayed intact (of 3) and 2 rowers calling 10 stroke pushes, and we overtook the leaders halfway around the island but ending up losing because we went around it the wrong way. Technicalities, honestly!

All in all, knackering and awesome. I'm now in Cardiff, staying in the S9 hotel until I can go into my own house on Wednesday. Went to bed at 4 after too much Total War, up at 7 to pack all my stuff to leave out for delivery next weekend via the family gathering in Chepstow, 7 hours door to door from South Lodge (Essex) to S9 due to a fire by the traintrack near Slough. I'm off to sing myself to sleep. Mcfly, naturally.

Dobriety

Quote of the moment:
"totlally dober" - Drunk Jo.

Impressive. She can even slur her typing.

I spent most of the day (under minimal duress) doing some destructive gardening, hacking at hedges and bramble covered verges, then building a huge bonfire. I was wearing my prized Walmart value boots and reeked of woodsmoke. It was almost like being back on camp, without the kids waving molten marshmallows near my hair.

Return of the Villi

Quote of the moment:
"Duh duh duh dun da-duh dun da-duh"

The burn strong on this one was. Pink, he was, hmmm? Peeling still, he is. More details later you will have.

Eat Ewoks.

Iced Gems

Quote of the moment:
"I'm too old for this shit" - Detective Sergeant Murtaugh.



Yesterday there was a clan gathering for my grandpa's 80th. Naturally I spent the day with those on my maturity level. It was great. There were even Iced Gems.

Cross Channel Confusion

Quote of the moment:
"I don't know how they understand each other!"

Vicky, talking about the thickly accented Spiral (Irish) and Glyn (Gog). A fair point. I didn't know either, so I left before I topped my record of 10 minutes of Big Brother a week.

On a more interesting topic, if I was still at uni rowing we might have struck a couple of bodies with the blades...

Allez Les Bleus

Quote of the moment:
A gentle breeze from Hushabye Mountain
Softly blows o’er Lullaby Bay
It fills the sails of boats that are waiting
Waiting to sail your worries away

Dream on, Zinedine... I was disappointed by his poor aim. Why headbutt the chest when he could have gone for the nose?

Had a joyous occurence on the way down to Kent yesterday. The fanbelt broke, the engine overheated and steam started pouring out from under the bonnet. Score!

Made it to Kent in the end, with parental assistance, just in time for the dinner/ball type occasion for the birthday of the headmaster's daughter, Francis. All was well until I switched to red wine, having finished (along with another, even more drunk Will) the table's supply of white. It wasn't so agreeable and accounted for the red hue of the vomit stains I was shown in the morning...

Apparently I was very "good value", despite managing to catch my trousers on something and rip them open across the arse. Sexy. Oh yes. I was put to bed by Sarah and the girl who had a joint party with the headmaster's son back at Easter and I'm told I was gone enough to be telling her I loved her, just like I was telling everyone the night the pavement attacked me. Oops.

Miss Sally Lockhart, I Presume?

Quote of the moment:
Live News.......Fifa in doubt over Portugal world cup win against England

It's alleged that one of the Portuguese football players failed a drugs test after the match. If this is confirmed as positive, under World Football Federation rules, paragraph 6 sub section 2e, Portugal will forfeit the quarter final match and England will play France in a Semi Final match played at a later date. (scroll down for the full transcript of this report).

...Carlsberg don't send emails, but if they did they would probably be the best emails in the world.

Cracking stuff. An interesting night tonight, at the end of year staff party. Apart from me, the only people under 30 were the headmaster's daughters, who were behind the "bar" table, and the oddjobbing year-after-uni-to-decide-what-to-do old boy, who was minding the music and chatting up the elder daughter. Reassuringly he has much less hair than me. The party was suprisingly ok, mostly because all the staff were drinking themselves back to my kind of mental age and I was staying there on Coke.



In entertainment news, hot on the heels of the possible massacre of His Dark Materials comes a BBC adaption of Philip Pullman's The Ruby in the Smoke. It should at least be kept British and the BBC expertise in Victorian drama is second to none, but Billie Piper? Not exactly the classiest choice. Sally's supposed to be the posh lady in the East End, not the eJimmy, of course, wants Emilia Fox, because he loves Emilia Fox. Fine for the later books, but Sally's supposed to start out aged 16. Then again, if they make all 4 straight off, then that'll balance out a bit. Personally I'd go for someone like Emilie de Ravin.

User Satisfaction

Quote of the moment:



There's nothing so bad about that... dumps can be a highly satisfying experience, especially when accompanied by quality literature. Today's highlight was actually, however, attempting to take the dogs for a walk around the school pitches and being mobbed by 9 year old girls all madly in love with the pair of them, especially Zulu (the 2 year old black labrador, as supposed to Ben, the 9-odd year old yellow labrador). I ended up refereeing a game of piggy-in-the-middle with complicated political overtones, which were only explained to me afterwards by my mother. There was me blithely thinking they were all getting on fine!

The Will Show

Quote of the moment:
"The thing is, a person's life is like a TV show. I was the star of The Will Show. And The Will Show wasn't an ensemble drama. Guests came and went, but I was the regular. It came down to me and me alone."

- Hugh Grant (Will), About a Boy.

My dearly beloved little sister carried on the family tradition by getting hammered, blanking the middle part of the school summer ball and at some point in this blank, losing her phone. Perhaps I can blame my own escapades on my genes?

Now I must get on with dividing my day into units of half an hour to keep myself occupied. Tis a good plan. Going shopping for Nick Hornby books would take up at least 3 units...

Sweet Dreams Are Made of This

Quote of the moment:
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
In 77 and 69 revolution was in the air
I was born too late and to a world that doesn't care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

- Sandi Thom, I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker, otherwise known as the Podgy song. Done another rejig of the links list... that and Tiggerland are my favourites. Y'know... Tiggerland... the film, with Colin Farrell as Christopher Robin, leading his toys through training for Vietnam...

Coming back to the real world for one of those annoying random point updates:

I put my sister on the train to her OTC camp on Friday. Unfortunately, Broadstairs being a minor station and stop time seemingly being minimised, by the time I got on and dropped her stuff that I was carrying, it'd already started moving. Not only was I minus a wallet, I'd walked into the (small rural) station in bare feet. Fortunately the trip back from Margate was short enough for the conductor not to reach me.

Portugal vs Holland this evening was the worst refereed World Cup game ever. 16 yellow cards, 4 reds, numerous pushings, shovings and arguments. I loved it, why aren't they all like that?!

Finally, hence the title, I had an absolutely awesome dream this morning. I was escaping from a gang in a Hong-Kong-esque city, ended up in a canal, swam a raft out past some patrol boats, through the harbour, out to a random island, up a river into the island into a kind of canal/directed river flow, past some huts very reminiscient of Apocalypse Now, got passed over by some helicopters (sadly failing to play Ride of the Valkyries), ditched my raft, was wading up the river/canal when I heard someone pushing through the trees beside me, so I ducked in under an overhanging willow-type tree and then their phone went off... which was my phone alarm waking me up. Perhaps pizza last night added to my fertile imagination (all of it was beautifully rendered, though not entirely original... some heavy Lost/Apocalypse Now/Platoon/Farcry referencing) so I shall have to purchase some cheese and see what tomorrow night brings. I refer you back to...

Strike One

Quote of the moment:
“The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequence.” - Winston Churchill.

Retaking first year. Oops. Rents took it suprisingly well though.