Time once again for my occasional series "Women with great hair fleeing gothic houses." And today we visit Germany.
This may involve compound nouns...
Germany is of course the land of the spooky schloß, but there are many other domiciles that Frauen mit Tollen Haaren can flee from...
They can flee a handsome Hanoverian crescent...
They can flee the haunted beach house of Heringsdorf Mecklenburg-Vorpommern...
They can flee across the Spree from the bust of Nefertiti on Berlin's Museum Island...
They can flee the God-awful medieval banquet they put on for tourists at Marksburg Castle, before the jesters appear and everyone throws up their rotisserie chicken and beans...
They can flee the dismal dungeons of the Aachen Grashaus...
They can flee round and round the fachwerk facades of Dornstetten's Altstadt until they're dizzy...
Or they can just go to the cafés of the Black Forest and scream at the prices.
Germany is of course a land of rules, and no fleeing is allowed unless gowns are ankle length.
Many German towns now frown upon women with great hair turning up unannounced at local historic monuments and demanding to flee them. These are now routinely locked after 5pm to stop such goings on, although you can apply for a municipal 'erlaubnis zu fliehen' in certain Länder.
Some German women are experimenting with cross-genre fleeing; for example fleeing an Aztec castle in the manner of Lara Croft. I doubt it will catch on, but well done for trying.
German men are also trying to get in on the gothic fleeing scene nowadays, but German women quite frankly aren't putting up with it!
And that's it for tonight's Germanic gothic fleeing guide. Kümmere dich darum, wie du fliehst...
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Given the current heatwave, I feel obliged to ask my favourite question: is it time to bring back the leisure suit?
Let's find out...
Now we all know what a man's lounge suit is, but if we're honest it can be a bit... stuffy. Formal. Businesslike. Not what you'd wear 'in da club' as the young folks say.
So for many years tailors have been experimenting with less formal, but still upmarket gents attire. The sort of garb you could wear for both a high level business meeting AND for listening to the Moody Blues in an espresso bar. Something versatile.
Today in pulp I look back at the publishing phenomenon of gamebooks: novels in which YOU are the hero!
A pencil and dice may be required for this thread...
Gamebooks are a simple but addictive concept: you control the narrative. At the end of each section of the story you are offered a choice of outcomes, and based on that you turn to the page indicated to see what happens next.
Gamebook plots are in fact complicated decision tree maps: one or more branches end in success, but many more end in failure! It's down to you to decide which path to tread.
He was the terror of London; a demonic figure with glowing eyes and fiery breath who could leap ten feet high. The penny dreadfuls of the time wrote up his exploits in lurid terms. But who was he really?
Today I look at one of the earliest pulp legends: Spring-Heeled Jack!
London has always attracted ghosts, and in the 19th Century they increasingly left their haunted houses and graveyards and began to wader the capital's streets.
But one apparition caught the Victorian public attention more than most...
In October 1837 a 'leaping character' with a look of the Devil began to prey on Londoners. Often he would leap high into the air and land in front of a carriage, causing it to crash. It would then flee with a high-pitched laugh.