Peculiar History or Saved By The Bop or The Japanese Invasion of Ireland in 1942

History is quite often depicted by authors and historians as a horizontal line with the occasional sticky-uppy or droppy-downy line and a date which indicate important events.

Unless of course it's a vertical line, in which case there will be sticky-out-lefty or sicky-out-righty lines with dates.

In the case of Brian - an acquaintance (not through choice) who now and again, when least expected, turns up and attempts to 'explain' things - the 'line', with all it's stick-uppy (and downy) or sticky-out-righty (or sticky-out-lefty), has been well and truly scrunched up into a ball and left for the cat to play with.

I must stress that Brian is NOT a client!

He is the friend of a friend's cousin's next-door neighbours friend ... or something like that ... and is, contrary to popular belief, highly intelligent but, sadly, easily confused.

I bumped into him on Tuesday!

"'ere!" he shouted when he saw me. "You was the Army, weren't ya?"

I sighed! It was not going to be easy extracting myself from a conversation with Brian.

"Yes", I answered."But not all on my own."

"Yah! You got your arse kicked, didn't ya? Them Russians kicked your butt!"

It was going to be one of those conversations. I winced.

"What?"

"The Crimea ... " he continued. "When you nicked those Russian cannons to make them Victoria Cross's. They kicked your butt!"

My protestations, in which I denied all responsibility for any theft of cannon's at any point of my military career, fell on deaf ears.

"You British ..."

"You are British too, Brian"

"Na, mate. I ain't your kind o' British cos I never killed no Irishman to steal his potatoes. And then after you killed 'em, you made 'em join the British Army and fight your wars against the Chinese."

Confusing, isn't it?

"And all them Chinese and Japanese and ... and ... 'ere! I reckon I know why there are so many Japanese in Ireland!"

Sudden and unexplainable changes of conversational direction were commonplace with Brian.

"Why?" I asked, knowing full well I should be making my excuses and going home. What can I say? I'm curious!

"It was on the History channel!" he said. "They was looking to invade England in 1942  and they landed on the wrong island!"

I was not surprised.

"Anyway, why did you kill all the Irish then?"

At this point my phone began to belt out Cyndi Lauper's She Bop.

I was saved!

I took the call.

"Sorry Brian. Have to dash.  Emergency at work. See you again soon."

It was all I could do not to sprint away from him.

Saved by the Bop!

Behind me I could hear Brian begin another verbal assault on an innocent passer-by.

"'ere! Phil! Phil! Wassat what them Vietnamese did in Burma when the French ..."

I'm A Certified Failure

Today, along with tens of thousands of other British citizens, I failed my British citizenship test!

What I wanna know now is ...

Am I gonna be deported?

If so, where to?

Stop Thief!

It was most definitely stolen!

Baseball!

You took it and we want it back!

We don't understand it; we don't even like it, but it IS ours and you lot (over the pond) took it!

Now, before you start diving into Wikipedia do check this out, let me tell you that baseball is derived from cricket (we don't really understand this game either, but it's ours), which in turn is derived from unknown medieval (so it is said) stick & ball games. Ball games (or round stones, rag balls, etc.) go back a long many years and way back in the day when tin suits were all the rage, the French were said to use "stick & ball" games as part of the training for their knights (which is said to be how modern sports came to be).

Romans mosaics have depicted children with sticks apparently swinging at round objects.

Anyway, the invention of baseball has absolutely nothing to do with Abner Doubleday (who may have created a rule or two).

It seems obvious to me that the Romans, right, came to Britain and stole the stick and ball idea. When they left Britain they must have stopped off for a bit of sightseeing in France or something (hence the French stick & ball games).  I mean, get real!  The French couldn't invent anything, could they?

Obvious, isn't it?

As a point of interest, the earliest mention of baseball (in a literary sense) was made in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1817).

So, now you know where it came from you can give the bloody thing back, OK?