caldrail

By sheer good fortune I saw this last night. I suspect the 'realistic Roman dinner' was nothing of the sort (no slaves, a single linear table with modern upright chairs, no additional entertainment - apart from the Marquis of Bath that is). I wish he served the the prototype of the ejaculating cake. That would have been fun, watching cake shrapnel take out the guests in one big explosion. He did cheat there didn't he? Don't see any mention of dry ice in Roman literature. What was interesting, and indeed the primary motive of Hestons attempt to recreate the dinner in the first place, was the aspect that food should not only be interesting and tasty, but an experience in itself. There he obviously succeeded. It struck me though that creating this meal wasn't exactly cheap, and as always, the indulgences of the wealthy minority of Rome get all the attention.

Nope. That kind of helps my argument doesn't it?

Yesterday was signing on day. My fortnightly ritual has now changed from late in the afternoon to first thing in the morning, except that no-one seems entirely sure when. I approached the reception and handed them my booklet. The young man glanced at it and very helpfully told me to go away and come back in half an hour. Then he noticed some other detail on the page and looked confused. "Wait here please." Wait? At a dole queue? Thats novel.... Initiative of the Week It seems our security concious land is about to train store managers in anti-terrorist techniques. Wow. I'd better be careful the next time I get shoddy service at the till. Sharp suited operators abseiling down ropes with submachine guns and wrestling me to the floor, yelling "Don't Move!". Come on mate, all I want is a plastic bag.

Headhunting was common to celtic tribes though I agree some tribes may have placed more importance on it. As regards cannabalism, a useful analogy comes fromNew Guinea. There, it was traditional to hunt and eat people from other tribes. But it was only eating the brain that gave you your enemies virtue. The cult of the severed head was pre-roman however, and I don't see any resurgence in that practice regardless of celtic legends recounting such activity.

Agreed. But I was considering that the pilum might travel further than the front rank of the enemy, or that in the dynamic conditions of a melee, enemies behind their front would have time to sort something out. The Pilum Muralis is known to exist from Caesars time, I understand there's archaeological evidence for it (From Weapons of the Romans, Michel Fuegere) The soft shank was designed as a more practical version of the two pin pilum, and we know the later pila heads were only hardened at the tip. After all, if you're going to go to the trouble of hardening steel for penertation it would be just as easy to harden the whole thing and create a rigid shank - we know they didn't do this. It was the fragility of the two pin plia that gave rise to the 'bendy' pilum. I think too much emphasis might be placed on this however. The whole point, as it were, was to deliver a spear into enemy lines before an attack. The bending bit was after impact. Yes. Like at Adrianople in ad378? The goths were of well armed with missiles anyway - they were known for it, but the Romans, compressed and disordered, had less chance of returned missiles than the fluid and mobile goths milling around outside them. Caesar, as I've mentioned before, complains of the gauls throwing his pila back at his troops. Fact is, you could do that whether the tip was bent or not. If you're a defending Roman, you still raise your shield against a thrown stick of that size or risk some bruising in the face. At any rate, it could ruin your whole day regardless.

I can't find the book I wanted to unfortunately - a hazard with libraries. However... With human societies (this is especially true of warrior cultures) there is a connection drawn between a spiritual quality and a specific part of the human body, such as the heart, or the brain. The flesh is mundane, usable only for sustenance if your society is so inclined. The bloody mass sacrifices of the amerindians focus on the heart. Japanese culture focuses on the abdomen as the center of the man, and the celts saw the head as the focus of a mans virtue. Not suprisingly then in celtic societies there was the cult of the severed head. The act of taking a head demonstrates your mastery over your enemy in a very final way, and to own a head was to own its former courage. A celt would boast that he had been offered a great sum to sell his heads but refused. The symbolism for the celts was very important. Their spiritual beliefs were based around this kind of thing and it survives in the earliest versions of the arthurian mythos, celtic tales passed down from before the Roman period. The cauldron is another important icon. I don't understand what the significance was exactly, but the cauldron was some sort of recepticle for spiritual power. Add to that the various properties associated with plants and animals, the 'fairy tale' menagerie of spirit creatures, and you get some idea of the richness of their beliefs. Now since people aren't always so immersed in religion as others, I've no doubt that some individuals paid lip service to these beliefs. The point was though that the severed head demonstrated your prowess in battle. You had cut the mans head from his shoulders and therefore the ownership of it gave you a very real measure of status. A currency of severed heads in other words.

It was my understanding that druids sacrificed criminals, but I'm prepared to put straight on that. The idea that druids ate flesh as a normal practice in order to gain their enemies strength runs counter to the accepted head hunting they used for that purpose. The possession of an enemies head was supposed to impart their manly qualities. There was also some symbolism fromskulls connected with it but off hand I don't remember the details. I'll do some digging on this - There's some literature to hand.

I've decided cars are female. They just are. most are frumps unfortunately. Some are reliable, others not. Some have interesting personalities, many simply don't talk to you or keep on nagging because you left the bootlid up. Then there's cars like Ferrari. Curvaceous redheads with tight leather, vivacious, demanding. You just know she's going to be trouble but you can't help yourself. I say this because going through some old papers I discovered my report from a racing school where I drove F355's at Thruxton circuit. Now that takes me back. It was the first time I'd driven a real Ferrari. I was expecting it to be a real beast, twice the power of anything I'd driven previously, and my brain was telling me to take care. You might not be suprised, but the tasty redhead won my heart in the first ten seconds. She beguiled me with all her italian charms. She was doing strange things to my anatomy, but luckily the lady owner who instructed us plebs in the driving of cars that cost more than my home had seen it all before. You see, german cars are a bit cold. Very good, but like female scientists with whips. "You vill take zat bend faster Caldrail *crack*". You come to a bend and you wonder 'Can I go round it a little quicker?'. To your delight, you can. Then the same thing happens again, up until the point you realise you really have exceeded what the laws of physics allow. Ooops... Close your eyes Caldrail... But Ferrari? She snorts in disdain at your sensible driving and starts stroking your ego. "Go on Caldrail-a, I want-a to see you drive-a!". The woman was insatiable. And I didn't mind in the slightest. As it turned out, she was a pussy cat. She handled almost the same as my long-serving Toyota MR2 (albeit considerably faster). There was that momentthe instructor told me to go for it, to drive a hot lap. I floored the accelerator and the car went light, lifting on its wheels and sudden;y this well mannered and sophisticated lady was lap dancing in front of me in a wild frenzy... *dribble* That was a fun day. Thing was though, I went back to work the following day and a workmate approached me. "So you need to take a day off to get a haircut do you?" He asked me with obvious contempt. "No." I answered, "I take a day off to go flying in the morning and drive Ferrari's on a race track in the afternoon". "Oh." He said, "Your day was better than mine." Yep. Conundrum of the Week Ferrari's are red, fast, powerful icons of motoring. Symbols of excess, tempting you to break speed limits, behave like arrogant playboys, and earn more money than you could possibly spend. Cars that evoke passion, cars that make you choose between them and your partner, cars that change you from ordinary caring sharing Joe Bloggs to greedy, demanding, sexually jaded Schumacher Junior. So why did the Pope bless Ferrari?

You have my sympathies. i suspect though, Mr Obama's expensive plans have more to do with actually doing something, rather than making expensive plans, paying for it, making a big noise about it, then forgetting it ever took place.

Yes this begs the question then ... How did the Roman army reuse bent pilae? I had always pictured the Roman Legionaries on fatigue duty heating and straightening their recovered weapons. It strikes me as a total waste if they couldn't. Of course might this mean that reused pilae were far more likely to bent then those that were fresh? The reason the Romans adopted the soft iron shank was that the earlier two-pin approach was fundamentally fragile. Any knock on the side and the wooden pin broke, making your pilum useless. The advantage of the soft iron version was that you could/i] bend it back in line, thus putting right any incidential damage and retaining the pilums utility. This did mean of course that craft enemy might realise he could bend it back and throw it at the Romans - Caesar complains of this sort of thing being done by the Gauls - but the idea persisted for centuries. As for being weakened, remember that the metal was only hardened at the tip. The shank was left as soft metal and didn't weaken that much, although it should be borne in mind it wasn't bent often in normal circumstances.

The problem is that Grodon Brown wanted to appear as a brilliant Chancellor. Every so often we saw a press release or some politican repeating that mantra. There was always enough money it seemed. If you looked closely, he was txing everything b the back door. Pensions were taxed for the first time for instance. Insurance and travel taxes increased. Fuel duty raised to 75% of the price at the pumps. You pay tax first then claim back whatever benefits your situation allow (if you know about that). The thing is, whilst appearing beneificent, he was running up huge expenses and borrowing money to pay it off. So inevitably he was keen to move to No10 as soon as possible and avoid the criticism that he wasn't as good a chancellor as he made out. A lot of people are fooled - on another website, I got called a tory spokesman for criticising GB. Yeah right. Labour came to power saying the old ways were over. They weren't the party of high taxation any more. Yet now we find our tax bill is the highest ever. Dangnabbit, Neph, you win again!

Yes, but politicians only race until they get there, then they stop and do nothing.

The government have required agencies to make a profit for some time now. Here's an example... When I qualified for my New Zealand PPL, they sent my license in the post within two days at no cost, aware that I was there on holiday and wanted to do some flying around their islands. Two years earlier, a UK PPL cost me more than two hundred pounds once I'd done all the requisite flying and exams, and I had to wait a couple of months for it to arrive. It seems the romanesque attitude of screwing the public for every penny has become well rooted in our society now, and we have the current government to thak for that.

And he still hasn't gotten rid of bendy buses.

Yesterday morning the weather was overcast, another typical dull British day and disappointing after the spell of spring sunshine we've been enjoying. By lunchtime the sun had burned off the cloud and it was a gloriously warm day. So much so I decided to go for a stroll, and headed north to Seven Fields. Thats an area of farmland surrounded by housing developments and designated public space, although its still used as hay meadows amongst the wooded hillsides. There's an unspoiled quality to it. None of these manicured parks with denuded foliage that Swindon is becoming fond of. It is however bordered by two of the three 'P's, the grotty undesirable bits of the town. Park is too far away, but Penhill to the north and Pinehurst to the south mean that urban squalor is staining the outskirts with it's detritus. I wandered along the path that follows the curve of the hill through the woods above Penhill. It resembled South Wales almost. Untended gardens filled with rubbish, shabby unloved houses with shabby unloved inhabitants. I reached the center of the wood where the large oak had been set fire to four years ago. They'd finally cut it down. Surrounding it was a rubbish dump spread through the undergrowth. Shabby unloved woodland. What can you do? Complaint of the Week A shabby and unloved youngster picked out his DVD from the selection at the library and put his coins into the machine for the ticket to allow him to take the item home for a week. He ambled toward the security guard with a look of bemused outrage on his face. "I put two pounds in." He said. The security guard stared back unconcerned. "The machine doesn't give change Sir." "Yeah but I put two pounds in." "Sir, the machine doesn't give change." "....I put two pounds in. I'm supposed to get fifty pencve change." "And I'm telling you, that machine doesn't give change." "But I put two pounds in. Where's my fifty pence?" "Library opens at half past nine. You can sort it out then." "I should have fifty pence." And so on, until a librarian had the misfortune of passing by.

I'm glad to see not everyone is taken in by his posturing.

I thought that was canon. I had no idea it was being debated.

The biggest problem with throwing a spear is that your enemy can pick it up and throw it back. The pilum was designed to avoid that by bending after impact, thus making the weapon useless to the enemy. Well, even then it wouldn't of course, it could still be thrown back even with an off balance bent tip, as Caesar complained of when fighting the gauls. The original idea was to mount the tip with two pegs, one wooden, one metal. The wooden peg broke on impact so the head pivoted on the metal one. Whilst this could make the pilum useless as a throwing weapon, if embedded in a shield a healthy stomp on the shaft would force the enemy to lower his shield. This was said to be one reason for the victory against the Cimbrians. The later idea was to make a longer head with a soft length, so that the metal would bend in the same way as the earlier version would pivot. It wasn't overly successful because if need be the enemy could simply bend the head back if he had any time, and with changing tactical requirements, the pilum was replaced by spears in the late empire. The Romans even experimented with extra weights attached to improve penetration. There were heavy and light versions for use by legionaries, plus a much heavier version still for use in defending in sieges.

I would answer - Rome conquered the world in perpetual self-interest.

He's at it again. Gordon Brown is thumping the table on the world stage and trying to impress upon everyone that he's a leading player. Walking beside Obama for the worlds press. Telling the economic conferences that we must all work together. Telling the third world they can have nuclear power if they don't point it at anyone else. I simply cannot stand the man. He spent a decade being lauded as a great chancellor, renowned for his prudent handling of the economy. What? All he did was overspend to please everyone and then paid the bill with Britains credit card, leaving his lacklustre successor Alistair Darling to look uncomfortable as the red letters roll in. He passed the buck. Instead of taking responsibility for his mistakes, he foists them on someone else and moves forward looking squeaky clean. Like Tony Blair before him, and probably with his tutelage, he's diverting attention from problems at home by making speeches abroad. He is, without doubt, trying to put himself in the history books as a great politician. He is, I sincerely hope, going to be remembered as the complete fraud he always was. Quiet Evening of the Week It's all gone quiet. Not a single rumble, drone, thud, or resonant vibration. I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

You make it sound like the Roman Republic prepared invasion plans and performed to schedule. That isn't so. They responded according to the situations of the time. Politics then wasn't much different from today, apart from the fact communications are much faster now. To begin with, the legions were intended as a protective force, a pair of annually elected militia armies to see off threats to the Roman interior. Later, the demands of the political situation meant that legions were required to stay in the field longer, and more troops were required. There was a sort of primitive arms race taking place, and once the Romans had reached a certain threshold, their legions were often superior in performance and number to any potential enemy on their border. The changes in the Roman legions were as much to do with military fashion and technique as any forward planning. In particular, the Marian Reforms did away with the militia and turned the legions into persistent armies (and the legions were small independent armies, not regiments) that didn't come home every winter. This was done to meet the demands of warfare at the time, not to faciltate expansion. It wasn't until the very late Republic, when ambitious and wealthy generals were seeking political careers from success in conquest, that expansion really mushroomed, and even then it was down to individual initiative, not a republican invasion plan. I would therefore suggest that the expansion of the Roman Republic was more circumstantial.

Typical of independent british youngsters really. They become inconsiderate and territorial very quickly, and the bolshier ones tend to assume they can do as they like, having been freed from the tyranny of parents and desiring above all else to have a good time. They're everywhere. The worst thing is that if you make a stand concerning their behaviour they get malicious, because they see any restriction on their activities as a personal affront. It really is selfishness. They just can't see it from anyone elses viewpoint.

As I expected, most ghostly encounters in Swindon revolve around pubs. Hmm... Not quite sure why... However, there's a lot of activity along Ermine St - unfortunately mostly Dick Turpin era or later - but there is one mention of a luminscent lemure The village and parish of Wanborough ( Town of "Durocornovium" ) a mile or so south east of urban Swindon, also has its share of haunting accounts. The top of Binlands was said to be the site of the appearance of a Roman soldier. The reporter told of a legionaire, in full colour, marching straight tioward him. Apparently he was agitated and was relunctant to return to the spot. Haunted Swindon - A census of Hauntings - Dave Wood & Nicky Sewell

Aha. Now Swindon isn't the center of the haunted world at all, but we have one or two spirits lurking in dark corners. Better yet, there's a book in the reference section dealing with this penumbral problem. Even better than that, I seem to remember something about a roman lingering on.... I am a man with a mission. More details as they come.

The sun was getting quite warm as I walked home yesterday afternoon. I wasn't in any particular hurry and made my way through Old Town. Yellow paintwork caught my attention. As an automatic reaction I glanced up like anyone else, and since bright paintwork is a rarity in the sombre decade we live in, it might not suprise you to learn the car was a Lamborghini Gallardo with its roof down. The driver was looking straight at me behind his shades. Don't know why, he just was. Then of course he noticed that I'd spotted the Lambo, and predictably he floored the accelerator, shooting off down the high street in a mad desperate bid to look superior. The engine noise was a disappointment. Sure, it sounded raucous and loud, like you'd expect, but somehow it had no class to it. He roared off sounding exactly like a souped up hatchback, and if I were brutally honest, behaving like one too. Now I've enjoyed an accelerator pedal or two in my time, so perhaps I can't claim moral superiority, but then, I press the accelerator for the sheer joy of it. He pressed it to announce he was the alpha male. By lucky coincidence his sudden burst of speed meant he was somewhere else a lot faster. Bye. Neighbours of the Week Around three o'clock this morning I became dimly aware that things were a little noisier than you'd expect. My neighbours, having returned from a nightclub and clearly wanting to carry on dancing the night away, pumped up the volume with their mates. Reggae bass lines resonated through the brick wall. I might be wrong, but I think its those idiots who spread snow on the path after I cleared it recently. Worse still, they had disconnected their doorbell. The police, naturally, weren't interested. So far, neither are the local council who deal with noise issues. We'll see.