Wednesday 20 July 2011

Suits Of Armour Heavier Than Pin Stripes Shock!

Dear Huge,
Sorry not to have written in a while but I've been having problems with baliffs and creditor banks whose posse gatherings outside the front door make it difficult to pop out and post you a letter.

The banks are foaming that I have not made payments on the credit cards which I have maxed to their finity and they are threatening to take me to court because my congealed cash-flow prevents me from contributing to their greedy bonuses.

Anyway, I bring tidings of great joy and of near-miraculous discovery from Albion's seats of learning and I thought you might benefit from this latest example of university intelligence.

As you know, I have sometimes wondered if our academics are fucking idiots in disguise. But this cruel and cynical jading is with me no more as my understanding of the bleeding obvious has been illuminated by geniuses of the Universities of Leeds, Oxford and Milan.

Brainboxes from these hallowed garrets of intellect today published a report which I am certain will rival Newton's and Einstein's theories of the universe. The Eureka report was summarised on the BBC News thus:

'Medieval suits of armour were so exhausting to wear that they could have have affected the outcomes of famous battles, a study suggests.'

I know what you're thinking - 'fuck me, I'd never have worked that out; thank God for science' - and I am sure that many millions share your astonishment.

Get this, it will blow your mind also. Led by chief researcher Dr. Graham Askew of the University of Leeds, the study group used high-end technology to work out that a soldier weighed down by so much armour [50 kilos] he could barely move faster than a pensioner in a post officer was not half as nimble in battle as an enemy who didn't come dressed like a shoplifter at a Le Creuset closing down sale.

Pay attention, you are spending £9,000 a year for your kids to study at these places and you might want to pull them out of their second year and send them to learn more by talking to ants instead.

So, armed with this brilliant insight that it is more difficult to move if you're weighed down, the wise minds of Leeds/Oxford/Milan [I expect they chose the last one for the good shopping between seminars] 'worked out' that the French lost the Battle of Azincourt because their armoured curs got bogged down in the mud whilst the cheeseclothed English were dancing around them hewing like Pan on a bad ears day.

A few incidental points here. One; the learned minds and the BBC both spell 'Agincourt' wrongly, thus activating some suspicion of their actual learning. Two; they could have saved themselves a lot of time and their universities a lot of money by buying Bernard Fowler's book [Azincourt] which said all of this three years ago. Three; the famed BBC could not possibly be expected to have known this before compiling their gushing gosh report as Fowler's book was only an international best-seller. 

But the best bit comes in a comment from an armoury expert in the tail of the BBC's report:

'It is interesting to use scientific methods to answer these questions and confirms what we have always suspected, heavy armour would reduce your ability to run around.'

'Always suspected'? Stroll on.

Must go; it's cloudy here, I've got the washing out and I've always suspected that clouds mean it might rain.









  

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