No, no, I'm not running in it, good grief, I'd have trouble getting past the start line let alone the finish line! And anyway, I'm not talking athletics here, I leave that sort of thing to the 'hearties', no, tomorrow I'm a 'swot' and I'm off to london to see four Shakespeare plays in two days. I shall probably come back on Monday speaking in perfect iambic pentameters.
Hower, to keep you amused I thought you might enjoy this extract from a delightful and fascinating book, Tales from the Rifle Brigade by the late Sir John Kincaid in which he describes his service in Spain and Portugal under the leadership of the grand old 'Duke of Boot', himself. Kincaid has a dry line in wit:
Be it known then, that I was one of a crowd of skirmishers who were enabling the French ones to carry the news of their own defeat through a thick wood, at an infantry canter, when I found myself all at once within a few yards of one of their regiments in line, which opened such a fire that had I not, rifleman like, taken instant advantage of the cover of a good fir tree, my name would have unquestionably been transmitted to posterity by that night's gazette. And, however opposed it may be to the usual system of drill, I will maintain, from that day's experience, that the cleverest method of teaching a recruit to stand to attention, is to place him behind a tree and fire balls at him; as, had our late worthy disciplinarian, Sir David Dundas, himself, been looking on, I think that even he must have admitted that he never saw anyone stand so fiercely upright as I did behind mine, while the balls were rapping into it as fast as if a fellow had been hammering a nail on the opposite side, not to mention the number that were whistling past, within the eigth of an inch of every part of my body, both before and behind, particularly in the vicinity of my nose, for which the upper part of the tree could barely afford protection.
They don't tell 'em like that anymore! Anyway, see you on Monday when I shall provide you all with four theatrical reviews.
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