Conveyor, a person or thing that transports or communicates something; a conveyor of information, where to start with our subject today?
The first thought that came to mind was “Don’t shoot the messenger” which led me to the story conveyed by Pultarch, a Greek biographer and essayist, who later became a Roman citizen, who told of the story of the arrival of the messenger who spoke to Tigranes during The Roman Wars.
It seems this poor fellow was the bearer of bad news which displeased Tigranes, barely had he spluttered the message out when Tigranes ordered his head to be cut off. I’m led to believe that these actions tended to deter any further messengers from bringing any bad news, perhaps they just arrived and gave a cheery weather forecast and when questioned as to, “anything else”, would say “nothing I can think of” and left as quickly as possible.
I’m always amused by politicians who have a policy or message they wish to convey, when being interviewed by reporters who ask about farming for example, the politician has the opportunity to reply thus. “I’m awfully glad you’ve asked me about farming as it gives me the opportunity to say something wonderful about my parties policy on banking”! Hence the derivation of the word bullshit.
My last thought on the prompt of the day was of my rather wonderful 1947 Bentley Mk VI a splendid conveyor of ladies and gentlemen from that day until this. Just after the war, World War Two for those of you wondering, which war exactly? Britain was on it’s uppers having spent a fortune fighting the war, rationing was still in place and you had to be someone special to be allowed to purchase a motor car.
The car was purchased from Jack Barclay, Hanover Square, London, W1, by a Mr William Wright in December 1947 for the princely sum of £4056.00, which in those days would have been enough to buy three fairly substantial houses. I don’t know how Mr Wright thought about his motor car but having traced the history of the vehicle I do know he was offered three times the purchase price and turned it down. He must have thought it was a rather special Christmas present and I must say I agree with him.
Just because I can convey this story to you in writing does not mean I have the ability to include pictures but I will have a go, I shall if I can leave a link to my website which has a photo of the conveyor mentioned, apologies if it doesn’t work.
The Diary of a Country Bumpkin 