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.

Mega Happy Turbo Joy Joy Fun!

glumbert.com - Dolphin massacre in Japan

Worthy cause, but the oh-so-sombre Joaquim Phoenix voiceover cracks me up.

Play Ball

More craziness. Someone who was "not European or American" - in other words, probably a Saudi prince - has bought an Airbus A380 for use as a PRIVATE JET. How awesome could that be? You could have a swimming pool in it!

I found out today I got my first choice Mountain Leader course, so I'm now booked for a solid month of Army stuff from tomorrow, with the exception of the 14th of July, on which I fully expect to go paintballing for Jim's birthday. Get it sorted.

Oh, and Salman Rushdie? Should have got the knighthood BECAUSE Pakistan, Iran etc thought he shouldn't. I loved this quote:

"The British monarch lives under this illusion that Britain is still a 19th Century superpower and that bestowing titles is something still deemed important." #

1. The honours aren't chosen by the monarch, but mostly by the government.
2. If bestowing titles isn't important, why are you worrying about it?
3. We have nukes, you don't. This makes us a superpower and you not. Further evidence is demonstrated by us and our dear colonial comrades effectively conquering Iraq in six weeks.

Someone's a little bit insecure...

Gnarly

What a dude. He could start a whole new extreme sport, much like train surfing.

He/She/It

The verb is indeed to wiki.

Late-Night Bemusement

More sheer genius.

The goverment wants to force predominantly white schools to 'twin' with 'ethnically-diverse schools' to stop racial segregation. Uhuh. Sure thing.

So they're going to force every single school in the countryside to bus their pupils into cities to gawk at the blicks? Genius. Or are they going to send out the black and asian kids so that the poor yokels can understand that they aren't so different after all? As for their white council estate dwelling urban cohabitants, kids hang around with whoever lives on their street and gang up on the next street over. It's their parents who try and place restrictions on them, and who move to segregated areas in the first place, but let's get real. This is not Derry or Sadr city.

If the government wanted to force proportional integration within city schools, fine by me. If they want to introduce the poor yokels to 'persons of colour' then make Trevor Phillips walk through every village in the country. (Preferably over hot coals, for being a cretin.)

A Chip off the Old Shoulder

What a load of balls.

1. The existence of private schools removes the burden of funding the education of 7% of the nations children. They're supposed to be penalised for this?


2. Private schools do not own their teachers. They cannot compell them to work extra hours in state schools. They cannot afford to remove them during timetabled lessons. Private school teachers already have to stay in school until 6 o'clock, teach on Saturdays, coach sports teams and run activities. Boarding house staff are never off duty.


3. "State school teachers had to teach more varied communities than their private school counterparts." Of course, private schools teach only white, upper middle class English children. How many pupils on average join a state senior school with barely any English? Yes, in some inner city immigrant communities it happens. But really, could most schools say they have french, german, spanish, czechoslovakian, polish, russian, chinese, korean or japanese students? What about ALL of them, plus jamaican, south african, american... In my U6th physics set of 11: Taiwanese, Japanese, Chinese, German.


4. Private schools have all these facilites state schools don't. Yes, private schools have lots of playing fields. So do equivalently situated state schools. In the country, fields are available. If local councils were prevented or didn't need to sell sports pitches off, more state schools would still have lots of sports pitches.


5. Private schools should take state school pupils on secondment. You mean like in the old scheme where talented pupils could win state funding to attend private school? The scheme that New Labour abolished?

It's just such a load of vague, posturing, unworkable, unjustified crap.

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."

The Cure

Apparently there could be a hormone treatment for baldness in the pipeline, but why worry when you can look like this?

I did, on emerging from the gym on Saturday. Bulging Vin Diesel/Jimmy-in-a-giggling-fit veins standing out on my overexposed head. Sexy.