Monday, May 30, 2005

Claudius Tiberius Germanicus Britannicus

Semi-barbarian Britons conquered by civilized warriors from Latin South...



Dorset, England at her very best.. Posted by Hello


Spent some lovely days with the LandMark Couple, in Blackmore Vale, one of the tamed-Nature Arcadias of South East England. ( Have a look at www.dorsetaonb.org.uk ). Drinks one can get pretty much anywhere, good food either. Charming company or engaging friends not as easy, but achievable. Serious intellectual stimulation outside lectures or books (or some plays) is, on the other hand, very rare indeed. OldBoy of the LandMark Couple is one of such few and far between catalysts of some lively, no-punches spared, real intellectual discussion. A sport for wimps would you say? No, Sir. When you rate yourself (immodestly) as owner of rather brilliant grey cells and you discuss with someone you take as your equal on that department, Victory or Defeat in a discussion is as close as it gets to a blood sport.

We discussed the relationship of Humans to Nature, in the fox-hunting debate context; ChelseaFC vs Liverpool, in the framework of hooliganic Britain; ID Cards and Civil Liberties; referendum negatives among Frogs;the Deferential Society still alive in UK, with sneer remarks to the obsolescence of the Monarchic Principle; green-headed wild birds; Women's stubbornness both in its General and in Applied forms; amoral awareness of sexuality in young teenagers and ways to prevent old-bore attitude to reality-shows modern reality.. All that with generous amounts of Pimm's long-drinked with homegrown peppermint..


Part of the Dorset visit was some kind of poetic Advisory Board Inspection of Public Schools. The admirable grounds and buildings of Milton Abbey School in Milton Abbas (photoblogged in a separated blogtext due to technical difficulties) with a schoolboys population described, in feminine contempt, as "Milton Scabies". The precious St.Mary's School in Shaftesbury (whose schoolgirl inhabitants are depicted, by the Milton Scabies, as "The Whores on the Hill" and their school as "The Virgin(s) Megastore"). Some other Preppies I can't remember respective names but endowed with magnificent buildings and grounds nevertheless. ( If the coast of Portugal and Southern Spain is doomed to be the Florida of EU Senior Citizens, will Dorset and Wiltshire become the Secondary School Land of Europe? Some extrapolations on a map of Europia followed on... Where to put Wineland, Delicatessenland, Prisonland, Surgicalinterventionsland, Sexland, Broccoligrowingland, to name a few? I leave to readers' politically incorrect imagination the guesses about our post-sovereignty speculation).
As we discuss the Roman conquest of the southern part of the Britannic Island, with Tacit, Greaves and Gibbon intermingled in our Alzheymer-proned memory neural-areas, a doubt arises. In result, part of my halfterm duties consists in researching on the origin of Britannicus and report back. I duly oblige. Claudius was the Cesar who led the campaign against the Briton tribes, alright, but since it happened AS his son (Claudius Tiberius Germanicus), by his third wife Messalina, was born - the name Britannicus was added to the baby, of Racine's immortalising memory. Anno Dominni 41.

(End of Part One, to use soap-operatic lingo)

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