Things that make you :)

[Sidecar Racer]

 

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[PhilJ W]

[PhilJ W]

My Partner Farted And Made The Air Quality Level "Very Poor"

Edited May 16 by PhilJ W

[KeithMacdonald]

21 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Worst year in English history, and the second worst in Welsh.

 

What was first worst in Welsh? A bad day at Cardiff Arms Park?

[franciswilliamwebb]

Did you see the northern lights?

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c04348v8r9eo

 

[Steamport Southport]

21 minutes ago, KeithMacdonald said:

 

What was first worst in Welsh? A bad day at Cardiff Arms Park?

 

Every day when they wake up and realise they are still in Wales!

 

Someone who has lived there....

[Sidecar Racer]

1 hour ago, franciswilliamwebb said:

Did you see the northern lights?

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c04348v8r9eo

 

 

 Normal for Norfolk then .      😂

[The Johnster]

2 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

 

What was first worst in Welsh? A bad day at Cardiff Arms Park?

 

Otherwise known as 'a normal day at Cardiff Arms Park' lately.  No, the worst day in Welsh history was when Hengist and Horsa had a chat to Gwytheryn (Vortigern).  We're Celts, happiest when there's something to grumble about, but that was a bit much!  There may have been Welsh who were glad that Godwinson got an eyeful at Hastings, he was hated here even by diwl Saes standards, and for good reason, but the illusion was soon shattered...

[KeithMacdonald]

I blame Vortigern for a lot of things.

 

Especially him kick-starting the whole "Anglo-Saxon" nonsense by inviting a few mercenaries over from the mainland of Europe. What could possibly go wrong? Apart from their turn at being the Overlords Of The English, taking over from the Romans after "Brexit 410AD"

 

https://grael.uk/brexit410

 

[KeithMacdonald]

5 hours ago, The Johnster said:

There may have been Welsh who were glad that Godwinson got an eyeful at Hastings, he was hated here even by diwl Saes standards

 

Harold Godwinson was probably still cursing his Uncle Edward (Edward the Confessor) for getting rid of "The Thingmen". It wasn't the name of some proto-rock band, like The Troggs or The Quarrymen, so what was it then?

 

Quote

The Thingmen (also known as Þingalið (pronounced [ˈθiŋalið], literally "assembly retinue") was a standing army in the service of the Kings of England during the period 1013-51, financed by direct taxation.

 

Oh, was it a regular army made up of Britons? Err, no, it wasn't.

 

Quote

It consisted mostly of men of Scandinavian descent and it had an initial strength of 3,000 housecarls and a fleet of 40 ships. Harold's half-brother Harthacnut, who succeeded him in 1040 and arrived with a fleet from Denmark, dramatically increased the tax burden to pay for 60 or 62 ships in the first year of his rule in England, but reduced this force to 32 ships in 1041. This tax increase provoked violent unrest. Under Edward the Confessor, who came to the throne in 1042, the standing force was further reduced and by 1050 he was employing only 14 ships. In that year 9 of these were dismissed and in 1051 the remaining force was disbanded and the heregeld was abolished.

 

Oh dear. Has a familiar ring doesn't it? The peasants are revolting about the taxes. Ungrateful for all the things we (the Saxon Overlords) provide for them. Perhaps there are too many things. Aha, that's the answer, get rid of some of the Things we don't need anymore. It's not like we're going to be invaded again is it? 

 

Fifteen years later, Harold Godwinson must have cursed that fateful decision. An elite brigade of special forces / merceneries, and a navy as well, might have been very useful in 1066 (and all that).

 

Any uncanny parallels with the current state of the current English Navy are entirely coincidental.

 

[The Johnster]

1 hour ago, KeithMacdonald said:

I blame Vortigern for a lot of things.

 

Me too.  Gildas was scathing in his assessement of the man; greedy, power-hungry, unprincipled, a rapist, murderer, and enthusiastic committer of , a warlord in a world of warlords but bad enough to attract comment and the ultimate condemnation from Gildas; he singled him out by name.  Has to be said that the Romano-British nobility, left to their own devices after the Empire pulled out, could have organised an effective defence against the Saxons and history would have been different.  Instead they succumbed to infighting as they tried each to fill the power vacuum on his own, and ended up fracturing it within a generation, warlordism being the result.  In that world of made and broken alliances and casual treachery, Gwytheryn stood out and was remarked on.

 

Gildas was more or less a standard Brythonic saint, monastic and a christian hardliner, threatening hellfire on anyone he didn't like the look of, which was pretty much everyone.  Gwytheryn had, apparently, no redeeming qualities as a leader, not even success in battle until Hengist and Horsa provided it for him, and that opened the floodgates.  The Britons were outnumbered within a few decades and lost their previous hold on the island of Britain between Strathclyde and the English Channel (which name shows just how much they were eliminated by the new order).  A possible Arthur might have stemmed the tide for a generation or so, but the Britons, even those descended from Scythian cavalry, had no answer to the shield-wall and the seax, which remained undefeated until 1066 and William the Bastard's heavy armoured cavalry. 

 

The Britons were evenutally pushed back to remnants in what is now Wales and Cornwall, where they still are or at least what remains of their culture still is, because the geography of these hilly and (in those days) heavily wooded areas favours hit & run guerilla tactics from small groups of archers; had it not been so, the Britons would have ceased to exist.  And all of that can be laid directly at Gwytheryn's door, though it has to be said that if you read Gildas, not many of the others were much better.  Universally despised even by that despicable bunch, he fled his original territory of Kent and holed up in Gwynedd, in the valley of the stream that still bears his name. Nant Gwytheryn, where eventually he was run to earth and killed by none other than Uther Pendragon according to some versions of the story; we are getting into misty mythical mist territory now.  Nobody missed him.  By that time the Saxons had a secure foothold and had been joined by their Angle and Jutish cousins; as far as we were concerned the island was lost.  It remains so.

 

The arrival of the Bastard in 1066 was eventually to result in our losing the ability to govern the few bits that were left to us. 

[The Johnster]

31 minutes ago, KeithMacdonald said:

Oh, was it a regular army made up of Britons? Err, no, it wasn't.

 

Most certainly not; the British were hiding in their mountains beyond Offa's Dyke and hoping that Godwinson was not about to embark on another murderous attack to it's west.  Not saying that we didn't do a bit of reaving ourselves, but as Lord of Wessex Godwinson turned the southern Marches into a bloodfest.  I think what you meant, Kieth, is that it wasn't a regular army made up of Englishmen... 

 

At Senlac, Godwinson still had the house-ceorls, sworn by blood-oath to defend him to the death, which they duly and honourably did.  Their destruction probably put paid to any hope of effective English resistance to the Normans, they were a highly skilled and competent elite force to be reckoned with. 

 

The Bastard planned his invasion well, and brought a group of knights from Britanny and the western borders of Normandy with him,  These were familiar with the Breton tongue, probably still understandable without too much difficulty by the Welsh in those days, and he promptly set them up in castles along the Dyke or near it as Marcher Lords, with rights to impose taxes and raise armies without the King's permission in order to defend the border, the March.  This worked reasonably well, but over time quite often backfired against the Anglo-Norman crown as these semi-independents joined in the warlord game with the Welsh, sometimes against the crown, or provoked the Welsh to the extent that the crown had to impose justice on the Welsh side against them.  But it was all over bar the shouting by the turn of the 1300s. 

 

There was a lot more shouting during that century by Hugh Despenser, Roger Mortimer, and Isabella, though, and some in the 1400s by Owain Glyndwr and the Scudamores.

Edited May 16 by The Johnster

[KeithMacdonald]

8 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

The Bastard planned his invasion well, and brought a group of knights from Britanny and the western borders of Normandy with him ...

 

... which must have some irony, as so many in Brittany had ancestors from Britain. Maybe William sold it to them as a chance to return to their ancestral home lands?

 

Thanks to a team at the University of Maine (UM) in Orono we now know that:

 

Quote

a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere early in 536. Two other massive eruptions followed, in 540 and 547. The repeated blows, followed by plague, plunged Europe into economic stagnation that lasted until 640

 

This actually makes sense of The Wasteland, which is a vaguely mentioned (and little explored) part of Arthurian myth. In the legends, Britain has become a wasteland where nothing much can grow and people are ill and dying.

 

Regardless of whether it was meteors or volcanoes, it seems Britain was no longer a healthy place to live in at the time. In the South West, especially Devon and Cornwall, this triggered a mass migration of Britons southwards across the Channel.
- from Dumnonia (Devon) to Domnonea
- from Kernow (Cornwall) to Cornouaille
Both of which eventually became part of Armorica (Brittany).

 

Quote

Domnonée retained close political links between the Brythonic (Celtic) territories in Britain (Wales, Cornwall, Devon), and the newly created Armorican Britain (Brittany), and it hosted many kings, princes, clerics and other leaders who came over from Celtic Britain. The sea was a unifying rather than divisive factor. In the traditions relating to the settlement of Brittany by the Bretons there are several kingdoms of this kind.

Ref : Wiki Domnonea

[billbedford]

8 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

At Senlac, Godwinson still had the house-ceorls, sworn by blood-oath to defend him to the death, which they duly and honourably did.  Their destruction probably put paid to any hope of effective English resistance to the Normans, they were a highly skilled and competent elite force to be reckoned with.

 

Not quite. Godwinson was advised not to take all his house-ceorls with him when he went to meet the Normans, but to leave a few in London with one of the English ealdormen or perhaps one of his brothers (not Tostig, obviously) so that if he were defeated a Senlac there would be someone to rally the country against the invaders. Being Harold, he never thought he would be defeated. 

 

BTW have you seen this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FHRTpEhaAs&pp=ygUTY2FtYnJpYW4gY2hyb25pY2xlcw%3D%3D

 

 

[KeithMacdonald]

I cannot confirm nor deny the shocking rumours that in 2025, The Johnster and I will be co-authors of a book called "The Unauthorised History Of Britain - an antidote to O'Level History"

 

In which we focus on the never-ending string of Overlords that have governed Britain for the last 2,000 years, while they (the Overlords) encouraged the story that the English (especially) are a pure, proud and independent race of people.

 

I confidently expect it to be much-rubbished by the orthodox historians, much as they did with Mike Harper's "The History of Britain Revealed: The Shocking Truth About the English Language".

 

It will (I'm told) have a chapter on the history of railways, including out-takes from the never-published Philomena Cunk on The History of Britain.

 

Episode 6: The History of The Railways

Philomena : So, who was it that invented the steam engine or why did he do it?

Historian: Most people say Watt.

Philomena : Alright, what was it that invented the steam engine or what was it that did it?

Historian : Err, no, it was a person called James Watt

Philomena : Oh ... and who what was it what put it on wheels?

Historian : Err, no, it wasn't Watt what did it, it was Trevithick

Philomena : Trevi Thick, why was he called that, was he stupid or something?

Historian : No, he was Richard Trevithick, a Cornish mining engineer. He did it in 1802. But Robert Stephenson build The Rocket in 1829.

Philomena : A Rocket? Was that how he got to Treasure Island?

Historian : What?

Philomena : No, not Watt, Stephenson, he had a Treasure Island.

Historian : Oh, you mean Robert Louis Stevenson. He wrote a book called Treasure Island, then he went to Samoa and lived there with Fanny.

Philomena : Fanny? Are you being rude or what?

Historian : What?

Philomena : Don't start that again!

 

Filming was paused at this point.

 

[Sidecar Racer]

11 minutes ago, KeithMacdonald said:

I cannot confirm nor deny the shocking rumours that in 2025, The Johnster and I will be co-authors of a book called "The Unauthorised History Of Britain - an antidote to O level history things that make you smile .

 

 Fixed it .

Edited May 16 by Sidecar Racer

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, KeithMacdonald said:

I cannot confirm nor deny the shocking rumours that in 2025, The Johnster and I will be co-authors of a book called "The Unauthorised History Of Britain - an antidote to O'Level History"

 

In which we focus on the never-ending string of Overlords that have governed Britain for the last 2,000 years, while they (the Overlords) encouraged the story that the English (especially) are a pure, proud and independent race of people.

 

I confidently expect it to be much-rubbished by the orthodox historians, much as they did with Mike Harper's "The History of Britain Revealed: The Shocking Truth About the English Language".

 

It will (I'm told) have a chapter on the history of railways, including out-takes from the never-published Philomena Cunk on The History of Britain.

 

Episode 6: The History of The Railways

Philomena : So, who was it that invented the steam engine or why did he do it?

Historian: Most people say Watt.

Philomena : Alright, what was it that invented the steam engine or what was it that did it?

Historian : Err, no, it was a person called James Watt

Philomena : Oh ... and who what was it what put it on wheels?

Historian : Err, no, it wasn't Watt what did it, it was Trevithick

Philomena : Trevi Thick, why was he called that, was he stupid or something?

Historian : No, he was Richard Trevithick, a Cornish mining engineer. He did it in 1802. But Robert Stephenson build The Rocket in 1829.

Philomena : A Rocket? Was that how he got to Treasure Island?

Historian : What?

Philomena : No, not Watt, Stephenson, he had a Treasure Island.

Historian : Oh, you mean Robert Louis Stevenson. He wrote a book called Treasure Island, then he went to Samoa and lived there with Fanny.

Philomena : Fanny? Are you being rude or what?

Historian : What?

Philomena : Don't start that again!

 

Filming was paused at this point.

 

 

Too sensible for a Cunk script, never mind, just send three and fourpence...

 

[KeithMacdonald]

19 minutes ago, Hroth said:

Too sensible for a Cunk script, never mind, just send three and fourpence...

 

Oh dear! That sets an ominous precedent; I was not expecting to have to pay people to read our book. I was hoping it would be the other way round.

[kevinlms]

14 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

I cannot confirm nor deny the shocking rumours that in 2025, The Johnster and I will be co-authors of a book called "The Unauthorised History Of Britain - an antidote to O'Level History"

 

In which we focus on the never-ending string of Overlords that have governed Britain for the last 2,000 years, while they (the Overlords) encouraged the story that the English (especially) are a pure, proud and independent race of people.

 

I confidently expect it to be much-rubbished by the orthodox historians, much as they did with Mike Harper's "The History of Britain Revealed: The Shocking Truth About the English Language".

 

It will (I'm told) have a chapter on the history of railways, including out-takes from the never-published Philomena Cunk on The History of Britain.

 

Episode 6: The History of The Railways

Philomena : So, who was it that invented the steam engine or why did he do it?

Historian: Most people say Watt.

Philomena : Alright, what was it that invented the steam engine or what was it that did it?

Historian : Err, no, it was a person called James Watt

Philomena : Oh ... and who what was it what put it on wheels?

Historian : Err, no, it wasn't Watt what did it, it was Trevithick

Philomena : Trevi Thick, why was he called that, was he stupid or something?

Historian : No, he was Richard Trevithick, a Cornish mining engineer. He did it in 1802. But Robert Stephenson build The Rocket in 1829.

Philomena : A Rocket? Was that how he got to Treasure Island?

Historian : What?

Philomena : No, not Watt, Stephenson, he had a Treasure Island.

Historian : Oh, you mean Robert Louis Stevenson. He wrote a book called Treasure Island, then he went to Samoa and lived there with Fanny.

Philomena : Fanny? Are you being rude or what?

Historian : What?

Philomena : Don't start that again!

 

Filming was paused at this point.

 

You forgot the lighthouses Robert Stephenson built, in his spare time!

 

Yes, I'm aware that it was Robert Stevenson, the civil engineer. Just adding to the confusion over names!

[Hroth]

14 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

You forgot the lighthouses Robert Stephenson built, in his spare time!

 

Yes, I'm aware that it was Robert Stevenson, the civil engineer. Just adding to the confusion over names!

 

Look for the book "The Lighthouse Stevensons", an interesting read.

 

And if it wasn't for his reaction against the family firm, RL Stevenson wouldn't have written Treasure Island...

 

[kevinlms]

22 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

Look for the book "The Lighthouse Stevensons", an interesting read.

 

And if it wasn't for his reaction against the family firm, RL Stevenson wouldn't have written Treasure Island...

 

There's an excellent documentary too.