I see boards as 'virtual pubs', if you don't like it then you can go elsewhere, some people can be barred, kicked out, all about balance really aint it

Moderators are the bar staff i suppose...

?

Leaving the possible intended or unintended alliterative implication in your last statement here, all that I would say here is that, as a long-time non-smoker, I would at least be exonerated from the risk of being banned for smoking in such a "pub" as this one...

Best,

Alistair

I am indeed grateful to The Doctor, not only for clarifying the correct alternative spellings of a word that is not part of my normal everyday vocabulary, but also even more for having provided a proper definition of the term.

In view of this, I must hasten to assure Lord Byron that absolutely no imputation at all was intended with regard to the nature and qualities of his lady companions.

Baz

"Non alpha"? You show slight self-effacement here that I doubt is shared by most of your floozies!

Baz

Lord B - for beta plus, perhaps?

Empress Ekaterina I of Russia was a floozy who rose to exalted rank.  A young lady of Livonian extraction, her father is believed to have been a parish gravedigger in a small town in what is now Estonia. Her real name was Martha Skavaronskaya ("Martha Saucepans") - she took the name Ekaterina only later.  She may or may not have been the bride of a Swedish Dragoon at 17, one Johann Cruse, although they split-up after eight days, allegedly after a "blacksmith marriage".  She then entered the retinue of the Preobrazhensky Regiment when siezed as booty after the Russians beat the Swedes at Marienburg - she was officially described as a "laundress".  Amongst her documented exploits was being presented "in her undergarments" to Brigadier-General Bauer (a Prussian officer in the Tsar's service).  Her prowess (as a laundress, one must assume) recommended her to Count Boris Scheremetyev. [Grandfather of Count Nikolai Scheremetyev who would later teach his indentured serfs to play wind-band music on Russian wooden horns, who brought the first troupe of Italian opera performers to Russia, and who married the Russian soprano Parasha Kovaleva.] Scheremetyev recommended Martha's abilities to Grand-Prince Men'shikov, Peter I "the Great's" aide-de-camp and closest confidant.  

[Men'shikov had been charged with the task of building St Petersburg, whilst its founder led the Army against the Swedes in the Great Northern Wars.  When later asked what had become of the vast sum of money entrusted to his care for this purpose, Men'shikov declared himself "unable to remember exactly",  but a splendid palace of his own built by Dutch architects, advanced cirrhosis of the liver and chronic syphilis offered the State Commission some evidence as to the usage to which the funds had been put.]

Men'shikov was at this point in his life engaged to the most celebrated courtesan in the country, Darya Arsentieva - a young lady with whom he shared great affection and rather unamusing transmittable diseases.  Regretfully unable to make greater use of Martha himself,  he saw in her a route to some kind of rebuilt confidence with his Monarch,  who was on the verge of sending Men'shikov to be the Governor of some wretched Siberian Province - a result of the extraordinary laxness he'd displayed with the city building funds.  Martha was thus offered to Peter I,  who was single at the time (having bricked his former wife up in a convent cell in Moscow, for plotting his murder.  He had one of the 113 co-plotters garrotted outside her window each morning).  A seafarer of salty tastes, Peter saw the girl's past as the regimental whore of the Preobrazhensky Regiment as the best of recommendations for her abilities - she converted to the Orthodox faith from Catholicism (changing her name in the process), and was secretly married to Peter in 1705.  Quite used to following in military trains,  and anxious that no other might supplant His Majesty's affections amid the cares of war,  Martha/Catherine followed Peter on his military campaign against the Turkish Vizier Baltaj.  When besieged by Baltaj,  she is alleged to have saved her husband's life by sending her jewellery to Baltaj as a present.  In return Peter now married her officially and publicly in 1712, in a spectacular ceremony at the St Nikolai Cathedral that was the greatest triumph of her career.  She survived her husband to rule as monarch in her own right.  The city of Ekaterinburg bears her name,  and was founded on her orders as an Imperial foundry town for casting cannon and other military hardware,  although in practice Men'shikov reaped the results of his clever planning, and was the power behind the throne.  

She was unrelated to Sophie von Anhalt-Zerbst - another foreign lady of exotic sexual habits, who would also change her name and religion to become Catherine II "the Great" in the subsequent generation.

I trust the above is sufficiently pedantic to meet the requirements of these boards?  I would not like to be compelled to join another board merely to post this stuff


PS the above shenanigans make-up the libretto of Gretry's opera "Pierre Le Grand",  although Martha is shown already named as Ekaterina, and unaccountably to be the ward of a French shipping captain, one Monsieur Georges,  who himself has designs upon her mother,  and appears to be a literary antecedent of Commodore Trunnion and Captain Haddock.  After a very good overture Gretry appears to have lost all interest in the piece, and there's little else of interest except for Ekaterina's aria when she fears Peter's been killed in battle.  Men'shikov appears - in best C18th French opera tradition - as the "speaking role" in the piece.

Perhaps your illustrious ancestor had a better take on things?.....

So, we'll go no more a-roving
...So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
...And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
...And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe
...And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
...And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
...By the light of the moon.

.....We'll go no more a-roving by George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)

Baz