After the I likes hot comment “Ulster fries ready folk” caught me briefly wondering, “so what does it do to unready ones?”
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Takes their wallets, pats them on the head and sends 'em home?
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The unready get totally turned inside out and robbed blind then kicked out
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Or alternatively, what exactly do Ulster fries ready folk for?
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The Situation
whatever it might happen to be
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“These Unprecedented Times” (hack spit)
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Anything and everything TFM
Been visiting mates to discuss telly and satellite boxes for their house
And fell in love with the most gorgeous geranium - big balls of flowers that start white and blush to a wonderful sugar pink as the flower ages
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ETHELRED WOZ ERE
…and wishes he hadn’t been
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But was Ethelred ready?
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Just ill-advised.
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Pore Ethelred.
Soo xx
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And weak, according to the most reliable source. Indeed the first Weak King.
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Well, if you can tell a man by the company he chooses … after all, he could have chosen not to listen to the duff advisors. Or maybe he could have, anyway.
It was the Danes as was his bane. That and coming to the throne at the age of twelve after his faction murdered his elder brother to get him onto the throne: inauspicious, that sort of thing.
He did ok for over a decade until the Battle of Maldon, really. But even with the Danegeld and being chucked off the throne by the Forkbeard, he was King of England for 37 years altogether, which was better than anyone else managed until Henry III a couple of hundred years later. (And Henry came to the throne when he was nine, so he had a head start.)
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Not sure what if anything Ethelred had to do with Ireland, though. It wasn’t claimed as part of his kingdom as far as I know: that came later, more than a hundred years after his death, as far as I know.
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You’re not going to confuse the issue by bringing in facts, I hope?
(I have frequently noticed that those most keen to invoke history are also those least knowledgeable about it.)
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I blame my brother, who (like Tom Holt and Tolkien) taught himself early languages to read the Sagas in the original. I bet I have a larger collection of useless factoids about Danish Rulers of England than most, as a result.
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Two of my favourite authors there Fishy
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For instance, who was it who, after seizing a King’s daughter and making off with her and subsequently falling into the hands of that king, was sentenced to death with the rest of his crew, who were stapled to a log in a row to make chopping their heads off sequentially easier to achieve; each was to lean forward and put his neck on a block in turn to facilitate giving them the final chop.
Our not-really-hero was to be executed with a pet enemy of his (one of the dozens, maybe hundreds, but this one more than many) standing by, and at his turn, said to that enemy, “My hair has never been cut yet and I would not have it done with an axe; pray hold it off my neck”. His enemy duly did, and as the axe came down not-really-hero pulled back as hard as he could, such that his enemy’s hands were cut off at the wrists.
The king thought this such a good joke that he pardoned all the ones who had not yet been decapitated.
And no, it wasn’t Harald Horridlocks. He made a vow; this was a case of stubborn cussedness, probably because of some nurse who insisted on combing him at some point. I knew a man like that in the sixties; he neither cut nor combed his hair after he left school, though he did wash it. It stood out round his head in a wild mass, and when on one occasion a single lock of it was teased out and combed straight it came down to his waist. He smelt slightly of sheep when it rained, and had trouble finding a bike helmet to fit him.
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Eeeew…
Sorry
Liberates Pitcher
Carinthia.xx
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I am with you dear chatelaine
At least I brush my mop of hair 3 or 4 times a day…
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