Wednesday, June 23, 2021

Beers & Books C – Salvador de Madariaga

A Drop of Time

Salvador de Madariaga
(23 July 1886 – 14 December 1978)

7 comments:

  1. Congratulations on reaching the big C! And I do believe this series has got some mileage left in it yet.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you, Mark. I am surprised, myself. And all this only because of some idiots calling their beer 'Lancaster Bomber'.

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    2. Hmm... In Britain the Lancaster is viewed rather differently as a saviour of a threatened nation and way of life, although I fully understand your viewpoint too. There is also a fine beer called Spitfire, described as "Spitfire Amber Kentish Ale was first brewed in 1990 to commemorate the Battle of Britain which was fought in the skies above Kent 50 years earlier". Anyway, thank goodness we are only left with the names rather than the lethal applications. I don't suppose there is a Messerschmitt beer? There is also an English beer called Tirpitz, after the battleship sunk after damage by Lancaster bombers. One description of the beer concludes: "The ship went to the bottom of a Norwegian fjord after being hit be a spread of 6-ton tallboy bombs dropped by the bombers. Now British beer fans can down their own Tirpitz whenever they are thirsty." Meantime an advert for Spitfire beer says "Get 'Blitzed' by Spitfire beer". Hmm... Dark humour, or attempted humour about WW2 abounds in the UK, indeed just this morning I passed a young lady wearing a rock band tour style T-shirt that proclaimed: "Adolf Hitler - European Tour 1939-1945", and coincidentally that was just as we both passed the war memorial for my Dad's regiment. It made me ponder.

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    3. Thank you, Andrew.
      And yes, George Tabori who in a way was the obstetrician to a serious reflection of the holocaust and other atrocities “made in Germany” once said: "There are tabus that need to be destroyed."
      And none of his plays impressed me more than this “joke” (Witz):
      ”Wie lautet der kürzeste deutsche Witz? - Auschwitz.”
      ”What is the shortest German Witz? - Auschwitz.”
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      Alright, then:
      May Tirpitz drinkers enjoy the full taste of 1204 drowned corpses.

      And what was the result following your pondering?

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    4. But what were those 1204 drowned sailors planning to do to many other sailors, were they left alive to sail out to the Atlantic?

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