The Wipers Times

If you have access, I recommend The Wipers Times, a docu-drama about the satirical journal printed by English soldiers while in the trenches in WWI.

(With anniversary of 1914 coming up, I suspect we'll see a lot of WWI content in the coming year. English are never happier when they're winning wars over again.)

It's on iPlayer, and might be on BBC World (no idea how they choose the content).

I'd heard of the Wipers times in a couple of previous BBC shows, including one by the main writer of this story, Ian Hislop (editor of Private Eye, on HIGNFY). A couple of officers found a printing press while scavenging for materiel in Ypres, and started their own satire magazine, poking fun at their situation.

In the film, many jokes are made into small comic sketches like vaudeville shows, to bring them to life, rather than just having the characters read them to each other.

The texts are not high comedy art, but it must have made a change from reading news, letters, and general grimness of living in a hole filled with mud. It was tolerated as 'good for morale' even when it mocked officers and command structure.

The published series is set in context of the mad obsession of fighting for a few yards of ground - the lead characters' orders take them from Ypres to Somme and back, twice in 18 months, gaining only a few yards of territory in that time.

It's a lovely English example of what is now called 'taking the piss'; refusing to speak seriously about serious issues, downplaying injuries deaths and misfortunes, enjoying wordplay and cleverness of language, playing up differences in social status.

The film itself is beautifully crafted, showing a tightly worded script that (I suspect) includes text found in the Wipers Times.

Recommended.

Urban signs of fall

...the cat brings her mouse into the house to play with it, cause it's too wet and yucky outside.

Harley was a mighty hunter and a proud one, telling us all about her exploits as she trotted up the stairs with a mouthful of mouse, keeping it just a little bit alive to round out the experience at home - to share with the incompetent non-hunters who needed teaching, I suppose.

Haggis had not, til now demonstrated her hunting skills, past chasing pencils around the bare floors. This is her first fall with us.

She brought her fully alive and kicking treasure in after midnight without comment, and it was the scrabbling in the dark that woke me. It was clearly too damp and chilly to play with it outside - far better to do laps round the bedroom, warm and dry, chasing it under all the furniture, flattening herself, stampeding the herds of dust rhinos from their underbed savannah habitats as she went.

Neither Robert and I could get a handle on this mouse - we could barely see it, it was so fast - and Haggis wasn't helping. And I was tired. So I took the easy option - stuffed my ears with earplugs and went back to sleep.

Next morning, it was clear that this toy hadn't wound down yet, but we still couldn't grab it from under Haggis' attentions. What fun, a game everyone could play! til finally it vanished...somewhere near a bag full of medieval clothes that, ah, still weren't unpacked from Raglan.

Haggis was stuck, and did circuits round and round the bag, very puzzled. I emptied the bag in one great heap on the bed and shook out the bag - no mousie.

We had to go to work, so we left an exhausted Haggis flopped on the bedroom floor.

I had visions of chasing this mouse around the house; of finding a rotting little corpse under my bed; of a headless wee body, like the one Harley left for me one birthday a couple of years ago, its ghost still hanging around the bedroom like Moaning Myrtle.

After work, I carefully shook out the pile of clothes, one item at a time, and sure enough, there was a stubborn? lucky? mouse clinging in the folds of my cloak. It managed to stay put long enough for me to carry it downstairs, and didn't leap for its life til it caught a whiff of fresh air - at least, that's what appeared to happen - maybe it was just lucky with its timing.

Hunting has given Haggis an appetite - she's inhaled all her kibbles from yesterday and today. We've seen her get the 10pm crazies before, but this was new. Can't decide if we're irritated or proud of her.