OneGuyFromBarlick

Spooky. Ben MacIntyre wrote a very detailed article on The Jackal and the attempt to kill General de Gaulle in last Saturday's Times. Apparently Forsyth's book has been found in the possession of a number assassins and attempted assassins and there's a complex web of fact and fiction.

Tripps wrote: ↑31 Jul 2021, 11:23 Later, Charles Calthrop arrives home from vacation to find British police raiding his flat. He demands to know what is happening and is brought to the police post for questioning. It is subsequently established that Calthrop was indeed on a holiday. Both the film and the novel end with the same comment by British authorities, when their suspect, Charles Calthrop, arrives home from vacation, alive: "If the Jackal wasn't Calthrop, then who the hell was he?" [/size][/i]

The clever way to do it is to pay a subcontract - possibly to a terminally ill person so that their family will be provided for, to act as a firing stooge in an adjacent room, while setting up the correct hit above/below or to either side.

Stanley wrote: ↑31 Jul 2021, 03:39 or 'by sailing through it on purpose'. Using the word purposely (which the spell checker allows) allows the meaning to be ambiguous, we are not sure if the course is the subject and purposeful or the action of being there having a purpose. I don't like it, it lacks clarity.

that might have been the idea, using language in a way that denies the strong intent of the action.

Surveillance attracted my attention this morning so I looked it up.
"early 19th century: from French, from sur- ‘over’ + veiller ‘watch’ (from Latin vigilare ‘keep watch’)."

1. Odd that 'veil' means to cover up or conceal - quite the opposite to surveillance.

From Old French veler, voiller (12c.), from Latin velare "to cover,

Oh dear - related to Voile - we'll be making a dress soon.

2. Must record that I've seen the phrase 'tow the line' used three times since yesterday. You'd have thought with the Olympics being on and all those athletes 'toeing the line' someone would have spotted where it comes from?

I've not seen 'tow the line' David but it doesn't surprise me.
Veil from Voile..... My late mate and wine merchant John Martinez once set me a puzzle connected to a very expensive bottle of wine, a Beychevelle Grand Vin 1961.



I still have the bottle. The puzzle was to find the origin of the name. The answer is that the French Grand Admiral owned the Beychevelle estate which was on the coast and it was standard practice whenever a French ship of the line passed the estate they saluted by dipping the topsails. The order was 'Baisser les voiles' which was corrupted over time to Beychevelle. A nice little known fact to remember if you are in a wine buff's conversation.....

Stanley wrote: ↑07 Aug 2021, 02:51 A nice little known fact to remember if you are in a wine buff's conversation.....

I shall - I shall. . . .

Where else would you get a post like that? Worth the price of admission on its own.

Now I find it's still available and this is worth noting

Legends start by being based on facts, and then evolve, becoming embellished over time, and repeated retelling.
They invite us to dream, transporting us for a moment, as they stir up powerful emotions deep within us.
Like a fine wine…


More research is needed. . .

PS - Wow - looks out of my league. This Chateau Beychevelleis the cheaper option, delivered in two years time. I'll stick with Aldi I think.

And notice it was a magnum. Here's the story....
One of the unavoidable concomitants of getting old is that the longer you cling to the perch, the more of your friends you lose. Sending Christmas cards each year can result in some sad messages that almost all start “I’m sorry to have to tell you…..” I could make this the beginning of a long chapter but don’t worry, I just want to tell you about one, Juan Jose Martinez-Perez, Usually known as John Martinez, wine merchant of Ilkley. I first met John when I was living with Mary Hunter at Addingham and we immediately took to each other. This doesn’t mean we became bosom friends, it means that we both found someone we respected that we could argue with! Christine tells me that she thinks that part of the reason why we argued so much was that we were so alike. If that’s so I take it as a compliment. I don’t know whether John ever learned anything from me but I certainly learned from him. I took notice of everything he said about wine to the point where I could discuss a wine with someone without making a fool of myself. John was a year younger than me and died suddenly in 2006. Christine his wife told me and there was suddenly another hole in my life.
John’s family had left Spain when his father Antonio was forced to go into exile after the fall of the Republic because he had fought against the fascist regime of Franco and the generals. This meant that we had a good start because we had very similar politics. I’ve recently read Antony Beevor’s book on the Spanish Civil War and really missed being able to give John a call and talk to him about it because much of the history was news to me.
You won’t be surprised to know there are one or two stories. My birthday is the 14th of February, Mary’s was the 15th and Chris’s is the 19th so one year I rang John and suggested we have a dressed up evening and take our ladies out for a posh meal. He suggested the Pool Court restaurant which in those days was actually in the village of Pool near Harewood. John supplied their wines and he said that they wouldn’t mind if we took our own because he had a Magnum of 1964 Chateau Beychevelle which he had been saving for a special occasion after being given it for doing a lecture on wine. There was a condition, we had to research the wine and be able to tell him all about it on the evening. I did some digging and found that the estate used to belong to the Grand Admiral of France and passing ships would baissez les voiles, dip their topsails in salute. This was the basis for the new name for the estate given to it by the admiral. I don’t know what the bottle was worth but have an idea it was above my pay scale! It certainly got the attention of the restaurant manager and his sommelier. In fact they got so excited they didn’t ask us what we wanted for dinner, they told us we had to have fillet steak! I have to tell you that the wine was a bit of a disappointment, we all agreed it was good but didn’t quite have the edge it should have done.
Have you ever had a meal at one of those tables where the floral display in the centre is so big you have to keep leaning to one side to see your opposite number? We were treated to one and at the end of the meal I reached under it and pulled out the glass of Beychevelle I had secreted there when nobody was looking. I gave it to John and he tasted it. His eyes lit up and he passed the glass round the table, we all tasted it. It was a different wine, all it had lacked was another three hours to breathe. John made some derogatory remark about wagon drivers and wine but then launched into a lecture about the dangers of only having one bottle of a vintage. You needed to have enough to be able to experiment to see what brought it to its peak.
I remember once calling in at the Old Vicarage and he brought out an extremely dirty bottle with no label. He had bought the contents of a wine-cellar in Silsden which had flooded and all the labels washed off. He knew from the shape of the bottle it was a Beaujolais and suspected he could guess at the village. We sat there and drank it. The first glass was straight from the bottle after a quick blast in the microwave! John said that this worked just as well as anything else. The next glass was after decanting the remainder from the bottle through a coffee filter and the last glass was about an hour later after it had breathed some more. The point of all this was that he was teaching me, each glass tasted different and the last was the best of all. That’s the way to learn about wine!
One last story, John was a strong Rotarian and arranged one year for Enoch Powell to give a lecture. I didn’t like his politics but loved the way his brain worked. I got the chance to speak to Mr Powell after the lecture and I asked him if it was true that he still wanted to be Viceroy of India. He smiled and said “Well done! Yes, all the power and none of the responsibility. The finest post ever devised by man!” John said afterwards that there were advantages to having an amateur historian for a friend. I don’t think he knew that Enoch had once said this about India. A good man and I miss him, I am still talking to Christine so that’s all right! Sadly one of John’s sons, Julian, died suddenly aged 45 in 2008, far too young and in a way I’m glad that John was spared that blow. My loss is nothing compared to Christine and Robert’s but life can be very hard. Funnily enough I feel a twinge of guilt because I’m still here. They tell me this is common in survivors of accidents and wars and I suppose it’s the same thing. Life’s a campaign and up to now I have survived, I wonder on what criteria?

Well that went well didn't it - and just started with a casual reference to the word surveillance.

You'll not be surprsed to hear that I don't think any wine is worth that sort of money. This is my limit, Primitivo di Manduria and then only when they reduce it by 25 % which happens regularly. Brexit seems to have had no effect (yet?) which will disappoint many.

My advisor is Tony from the Italian barbers who comes from Puglia, and knows about such things.

"You'll not be surprised to hear that I don't think any wine is worth that sort of money.
Neither do I David, we only got the chance because it was a gift to John. The best part I thought was the reaction of the head waiter and the Chef. You'd have thought they were dealing with the Holy Grail!
Another problem I have in the language department is people who use 'kind of'. Please can we have a counter movement to stop it?

Andrew Neil used the word ' ultracrepidarian' today.

That won't have fazed those on here who have been keeping up - will it?

I've heard it before but had forgotten the meaning David.... so I looked it up. Useful word.

Stanley wrote: ↑11 Aug 2021, 03:57 I've heard it before but had forgotten the meaning David.... so I looked it up. Useful word.

Probably because I often call myself one of those!

I noticed this BBC headline this morning...
`UK job vacancies at record high as wages tick up'
Why not use the shorter `rise'. Journalists and editors in the past were always trained to use the shortest word. And if they didn't want `rise' then `pick up' would have been a more familiar term.

Rise and pick up indicate that things were down and people may just ask why they were down. Far better to have a 'tick' which is known as good and 'tick up' is even better. More Express and Daily Mail speak, its OK to mention Covid. but B....t is forboden unless it includes those nasty EU people.

Yes it's on by ban list together with 'kind of'.

Quagmire tugged on my sleeve....
Recorded since 1579, from quag +‎ mire. The sense “perilous, mixed up and troubled situation” has been recorded since 1775. Alternatively, the word may apparently be a variation of the earlier quakemire, from quake + mire
Alternatively....
"As the OED offers, however, quag might be a variant of a different word: quab, a “marsh” or “bog.” Appearing in the early 1400s, this quab is reconstructed in the Old English *cwabba, which itself might just mean “to quake.” Like quake, the origin of *cwabba is unknown, but it also might be echoic. Here, the blend is a bubbling and gurgling sound effect, fitting for a swamp. English has had other quabs: the word has named, if on an obscure and rare basis, certain kinds of fish as well as sea cucumbers. Historical linguistics note connections to slimy critters (e.g., toads) in other Indo-European languages, suggesting, as the OED does, a root in “something slimy, flabby, or quivering,” certainly not out of place in swamplands."

I think it tugged other sleeves as well. . . . lovely phrase

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



I like Sherlock's Grimpen Mire too.

Used the term 'Felly Lads' where did that come from. ?

A felly is the outer rim of a wheel but it can also mean fierce or cruel, peŕhaps even a shortened form of fellow. In what context did you use it?

Mad guess - Newbiggin ?

Never heard it in Newbigin and I've spent a lot of time there.
. It was one of Dad's sayings eg: they thought they were 'Felly lads'. ie: part grown up, acting tough. thinking they were somebody especially if they'd had a bit of booze.

It sounded vaguely North East - made me think of Jez Lowe, and knowing of your connection with Newbiggin - I just took a punt.

New to me Ken....

Cattle ailments....
Slow fever is KETOSIS (Acetonaemia) A disease of ruminants which is the result of a failure to metabolise carbohydrate and volatile fatty acids, and characterised by high blood ketone and low blood glucose levels, and which is seen mainly in high producing dairy cattle in the first two months of lactation.
Milk Fever in Cattle. Milk fever is caused by a temporary blood calcium deficiency (also known as hypocalcaemia) which usually occurs around the time of calving and is one of the most common metabolic disorder in dairy cattle.