Well chaps - it seems like a life time since I've been on the old bush telegraph communing with you all. Long enough to fight a few small wars and re-enact the battle of Trafalgar several times over, and for Old Colonel Gin-Soaked (of the eponymous Gordon's Highland Regiment) to take an extended holiday. What's afoot you may ask?
(Answer: it's the thing on the end of your leg and - we have several battalions of foot-soldiers currently awaiting breakfast, which is being provided this week by our new sponsor - Arny's Bunion Corporation - suppliers of footwear to the gentry..... and several small mercenary outfits, thank you for asking)
Anyway. The Catering Corps has lost its Commander owing to an unfortunate incident involving several stale sandwiches and a side of beef (you thought beef didn't take sides didn't you, but let me assure you, that where there are more than two sides, someone is bound to have a beef).
Which brings me to my latest skirmish. A sad tale of a Volunteer corps pitted against an ever ebullient CO against whom they recklessly declared intentions towards hostilities. It was a bloody battle and there are fears relating to collateral damage, but - like many conflicts - it had been simmering away on the margins of the theatre of battle for several years. Several bookshelves, thirteen publishers and three authors were held hostage for
eighteen months in a series of complex manoeuvres, salvos were fired (both literary and literal), before relations broke down and all-out war was - somewhat inevitably - declared. The Volunteer Corps were clearly outgunned, and comprehensively overrun and five of its leaders fell on their swords, and retreated to camp to lick their wounds and contemplate their next move. I suspect this will involve setting up a charity bookshop dedicated to selling - exclusively - the works of the great literary heroine - Madame Cynthia Payne. Why the woman was never rewarded for Services to the Gentry or made a Regimental Mascot, I will never know, but that's War......and Peace for you eh?
(Answer: it's the thing on the end of your leg and - we have several battalions of foot-soldiers currently awaiting breakfast, which is being provided this week by our new sponsor - Arny's Bunion Corporation - suppliers of footwear to the gentry..... and several small mercenary outfits, thank you for asking)
Anyway. The Catering Corps has lost its Commander owing to an unfortunate incident involving several stale sandwiches and a side of beef (you thought beef didn't take sides didn't you, but let me assure you, that where there are more than two sides, someone is bound to have a beef).
Which brings me to my latest skirmish. A sad tale of a Volunteer corps pitted against an ever ebullient CO against whom they recklessly declared intentions towards hostilities. It was a bloody battle and there are fears relating to collateral damage, but - like many conflicts - it had been simmering away on the margins of the theatre of battle for several years. Several bookshelves, thirteen publishers and three authors were held hostage for
