Between Virgin And BT

[poliphilo]

We're in the process of transferring our phone and broadband from Virgin to BT. The BT engineers were here three mornings on the run. The transaction is still not complete. The BT guys say (or hint) that it's because the Virgin guys are being petty. Our internet connection is down this morning (for whatever reason) and I'm hooked up to Sam next door's broadband. (Thank you, Sam.)

I walked up to Tesco this morning. The streets are as icy as they were two days ago. The woman ahead of me at Tesco Express hoiked her wire basket onto the counter and a bottle of German wine jumped out and smashed on the floor. Poor kid.

I was reading Great War poetry yesterday afternoon- not the better stuff, but the sadly insufficient stuff about chivalry and sacrifice and how lovely the Sussex countryside is and how the Kaiser is going to be punished by God. It's remarkable how ill-prepared the versifying classes were for dealing not only with modern warfare, but with the modern world. If you took these poems literally you might suppose that England at the time of the Great War was a nation of shepherds and ploughmen- and that the soldiers they turned into wore armour and fought with swords and lances. 

Comments

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'd be very interested in reading that. The jingoistic stuff doesn't seem to get pubilshed any more (probably with good reason).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The collection I was surfing is here
http://www.bartleby.com/266/index1.html

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"Ah, bombing is a Briton's game!"

Unbelievable.

There's even a section entitled "Oxford". What has Oxford got to do with anything!

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

In fairness, much of the women's poetry appeared, from the representative sample, to be equally execrable - this quality augmented the fact that there was no battle for them to direct some of their pent-up energies.