Saturday 12 June 2010

SOUTH AFRICA, PREVIOUS FIXTURES.

11 comments:

Verge said...

Anybody passing through Brecon could do worse than pop into the regimental museum - there's an old uniform on a mannequin and at first glance you might think it belonged to some kind of mascot or cadet. OK, maybe it shrunk in the wash over the years but the soldier it once fitted must have been the original little big man, like most of his mates.

"Zulu" sticks in the mind for the accidentally hilarous exchange beteen Caine and Baker at the end.
"Was your...first time...like that? I feel...dirty."
"It was...my first time, too."

Better still was the sound-recording - the authentic, open-air thrill of thousands of warriors chanting and striking spears on shields puts much of today's murky digitised fakery firmly in its place.

Dick the Prick said...

Quite liked the Blackadder sketch where they were fighting off mango wielding natives with cannon and rifle - bit like eyerack really.

OT but was watching Ch4 news last week and John Smith's daughter, Sarah, did a report on US drone planes and their capability. It was claimed that their use was sanctioned in order to protect pilots' lives but seeing as fucking no jet pilot has been shot down one kinda suspects that's bullshit. They're scary motherfuckers though as their altitude is virtually unrestricted and the noise is undetectable as their weight is significantly less.

Ruin's arsenal.

call me ishmael said...

I agree about the sound, Mr Verge, it was stirring but I thought, at this distance, the shoot 'em upping was flawed. Coincidetally, it was on Film4 tonight and much of it, the hand-to-hand stuff, was quite primitive cinema; we do blood and guts so much better these days, the whole thing has not dated very well, much like the Rorke's Drift legend, challenged as being a PR cover-up for the failure, at the same time in the campaign, of the Islanawand (?) battle which was a disaster and has been put down variously to the Staff Officers' incompetence and to the impossibility of accessing the ammunition in its over-sealed boxes - eleven VCs giving the Home Front something to shout about and over shadowing the much greater losses up the road. Who knows, it was the same crew running things then as now. I'll have a look, if I'm ever in Brecon again.

Ruin's Arsenal. I like that.

Anonymous said...

open-air thrill of thousands of warriors chanting and striking spears on shields puts" You could have been talking about our new "Maggie's" political police force showing those fucking miners who is the boss to the chorus of "Arthur Scargill is paying our mortgage" Ah happy daze no U turn there I see.

richard said...

"Every piece of wood in this blistering country's been eaten by ants!" Unlike the recording of Sgt Windridge describing the battle of Rorke's Drift, which was taped over by the BBC as it wasn't of historic interest(!)

Anonymous said...

it wasn't of historic interest(!)" If you thinks thats bad wait till you see the new version of "Dambusters" screenplay by Dame Stephen Fry where Guy Gibsons dog and the mission was called Nigger. It id now called I believe Trigger. It makes you think how that would sound in the film Apocalypse Now when the black man who wants to kill a Viet Cong who is taunting them says "Its OK theres a Trigger on the trigger".

Anonymous said...

Or the John Wayne line, having just shot an outlaw: "go get a spade and bury him", dubbed as "go get a shovel and bury him".

mrs narcolept said...

Never mind spears and shields, they should just have blown those plastic football trumpets at them for a few days; death or madness inevitable.

callmeishmael said...

Yes, even on this side of the screen it is intolerable; must be a form of collective madness, once in a while maybe, when a goal is scored but this seems like infantile lunacy. I blame Nelson Mandela.

Agatha said...

"they should just have blown those plastic football trumpets at them for a few days; death or madness inevitable."
Yes- it sounds like the enraged buzzing of a nest of hornets lodged firmly on one's head. Being chronically uninterested in football provides some minor defence against the jibes of my Scottish colleagues against me, an expatriot Englishwoman, a stranger in a very strange land, and my supposed support of the English football team. These Scots are so very, very rude: they support "any team but England", and justify their racism and downright lack of loyalty to their sister country in the United Kingdom by referring to the triumphalism and anglocentrism of the English media, and, of course, to hereditary grievances against the country they sought to ally with and which has been sending the gold up the Great North Road ever since.

mongoose said...

And is it, Agatha, as we are told, the best part of England?