Chop-chop

[primsong]

I found it fascinating that during the height of the French Revolution there were too many heads to be lopped for the governmental officials to keep up with in the main cities, so they had a carriage built with (get this) a "portable guillotine" that would go from town to town taking care of all those troublesome executions. Sort of like a book-mobile.

I mentioned this to my daughter who gave me an odd look. "Like a book-mobile?" she said. "And what is this gesture you used - is that your new motion for executions?" I think I am being laughed at. I realized after the fact that when I referred to executions, I was rapidly chopping the air, as if whacking up carrots with a chef's knife. (well, gee, they did have to do an awful lot of them per day...)

Still nice and icy here - no school again, and lots of tea and cocoa. We could get used to this.

Comments

[meneleth.livejournal.com]

The problem with all those lovely snow-days is that when you've used up the allotment, the kids start to lose spring break time. With our schools closed due to having no power for 8 days in October our kids 'lost' a "supervisor's day" in November and their week break in February. So far the week's vacation at Easter is still on -- as long as we don't have any more major storms...

By the way, your opening paragraphs of the previous post (about the morning) were absolutely lyrical.

[primsong.livejournal.com]

Thankfully, our school is part homeschool so it just means a bit more studying on weekends (which normally don't have any homework). :-D

[accioboytoy.livejournal.com]

I like the fact that the heads rolled neatly into a lined laundry basket, still with the expressions on the visages. Very French of them *smirk*

The chop chop was accurate...head in the hollow, last words and swish-chop, there you go. Very efficient, really.

I love the SP with Anthony Andrews and jane Seymour - its my favorite historical telepic...besides Jesus of Nazareth, Masada and Thornbirds; all oldies but goodies.

[primsong.livejournal.com]

Still my fave version of it too, we probably have it memorized. There are some very fun "Making of the Scarlet Pimpernel" vids on you-tube, from a special aired to promote the opening of the Broadway musical version. Their stage Percy was darn cute, too! That was where they had the historian who talked about the porta-chopper.