So what does The Admiralty lose next -- rum, sodomy, or the lash?

As if my week hasn't been bad enough, my friend JAGSC has just invited my attention to the end of ship building for Her Majesty's Royal Navy in  Portsmouth. A very long era ends, from Henry VIII's fighting carrack Mary Rose to the aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth, due for sea trials year after next.

That's a lot of imperial scurvy and lime juice punctuated by routine entertainment with the cat-o-nine-tails and the occasional stiff-upper-lip extravaganza known as flogging around the fleet. Too, it is said that Portsmouth  developed the first  practical yard arm which could bear the weight of an insolent Jack Tar and half a stone of stout hempen line.

I mourn the end of most traditions, but as the direct descendant of an Irish-American who shot at Redcoats 1776-1783, I suppose I should feel smug about this one. Final victory of a sort and all that. Maybe.

The Royal Navy isn't what it used to be, but up through the middle decades of the 20th Century it helped serve a personal purpose for the likes of me.

The socialist goodthinks who, post-Churchill, captured British politics retained an urge to sail around and wag their (now empty) cannons at commies and wogs. That gave Yanks like me an excuse to put on bell bottoms and dixie cups and go to the Oriental seas, loaded to pull Albion's nuts out of the fires again.

It wasn't a terribly bad way to come of age. As Mr. Kipling explained, "...the things that you learn from the yellow and brown  ...".

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I'm humming some Oscar Brand here, but already having offended about everyone I can think of, I won't compound my sins by typing out his lyrics.

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JAGSC remarks that Lord Nelson may somewhere be mounting a "spirited" protest. :)

Cottonwood boles at 20 paces

Just a place holder here. I'm fully occupied reducing logs to firewood. The splitter works like a dream, even if it looks hardly at all like a product from The Sharper Image.

I'm pleased to have it, but I fear the wood will not burn so brightly. It will lack the seasoning sweat, the hand-splitter vulgarities hurled at knots and school marms, the indefinable charm of nature put to good use without the intervening stink of gas and oil. Still, as I say, it's a good thing to own for a man approaching the years of his maturity.

I'll be back before long, and among the first orders of business I intend to challenge Rand Paul to a duel.

A place to unload

I generally avoid posting my most sincere, deep-seated, passionate and personal  feelings on the Internet. In the first place, they're private. In the second, almost no one gives a crap.

I make an exception this morning beause I am powerless to hold it in. To wit:

I really hate installing a new toilet.

The Gore of the Season to ye, Mate

The Smugleye-on-Lake village zoning inspector dropped by to make sure I wasn't making wind without a permit or something.  New Dog Libby took exception to his manner. One thing led to another.