Monkeys Fist

You'll be alright, once the rats find it.

Here's an extract from the regimental diary for my Great Uncles battalion on the opening day of the Somme. "The 1st Battalion The Border Regiment then went over the top from our support line, and over our first line, the bridges over our front trench HAVING BEEN RANGED by the German machine gunners THE DAY PREVIOUSLY. We met with heavy losses, while crossing these bridges and passing through the lanes out in our wire. The men were absolutely magnificent, and formed up as ordered outside our wire, made a right incline, and advanced into No Mans Land AT A SLOW WALK, also AS ORDERED." They knew the day before that the German machine guns had been ranged precisely on the gaps in the wire that the men would need to pass through, but they not only ordered them through, but ordered them to do it at a slow walk. In his battalion, out of 830 men that went over the top at 7:30am, 640 were wiped out on the wires in just over 20 minutes. By 8am, they note that " the entire advance was at a standstill". This is July 1916, they'd had two years to adapt their tactics to account for the new "industrial" warfare. They didn't.

That's a powerful way to humanise the almost unfathomable numbers of men lost in the battle. Here's a pic I took last year of my kids at the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing. Over 72,000 men, their bodies never recovered. Of that 72,000, nearly 58,000 died on the first day of the battle, most within the first hour. Staggering.

Teuchter Twat.

I've only just realised Gove is a sweaty.

"Schuttup Schteve"?

Close.

The fuck's wrong with you?

Monthly meetings will be fun.

It's GoT. Don't do half measures.

Speaking as a confirmed anti-monarchist, I do think it's time Betty II stepped up to the plate and threw them all in The Tower, maybe let Phil the Greek slap them daft. In the context of the past week, it's a sensible option.

FYP

Blobstrop.

Shut up you thick, skinny wank.

Take a bow, gents.

You're both wrongIf he'd ran backwards, he'd have seen them coming, and he'd've been able to flip Ramsay the finger every time he missed. That's what I'd have done, anyway, maybe throw in a few cartwheels on the way.

ELO were tight as fuck The highlight for me, unsurprisingly, was the sexy soloist on Its A Living Thing, being all aloof, talented and with legs. I'm sure Jeff Lynne put her in the band purely for her exceptional staccato skills.

Now then....

He's half Turkish, what do you expect from a filthy himmigrationalist?

I've just spent what's been one of my worst days in a long time at the top end of Wensleydale, getting alternately rained on then eaten alive by clouds of midges, all whilst hanging off a disused, crumbling, leaky fucking railway viaduct. As I drove up the valley this morning, every single village I passed through, and most of the farms, were fucking plastered in Leave posters. Aye, the farmers, those ones who receive the heftiest chunks of EU money in the population ( outside of MEPs), were proudly voting to cut their own fucking throats. It was like driving through a deepening sea of stupidity.

Too fucking close for me.