17th Jun – You must realize, smoke gets in your eyes.

We received a wonderful response to our piece on mnemonics for Tudor Queens [https://dickiewhitesdiary.com/2024/06/08/8th-june-lets-start-at-the-very-beginning-a-very-good-place-to-start/]. Our favourite, reads: “Who do think you are, you fucking ponce? God’s gift to wit or something? Your (her spelling) about as funny as eye cancer.” The other was too rude to repeat.

It’s encouraged us to do some more, so here’s today’s offering: Balkan countries, in order, north to south, in and around the former Yugoslavia. Of course, Friend John, for whom these lessons are created, already knows the geography of that region, but it helps him with the English version of place names he knows by something else. Here we go: –

You get                              : Yugoslavia
Smoker’s                           : Slovenia
Cough                                : Croatia
from  
Benson & Hedges           : Bosnia & Herzegovina
Silk Cut                             : Serbia
Marlboro                          : Montenegro
(super)Kings                   : Kosovo
And                                    : Albania
Many                                 : Macedonia
other
Brands                               : Bulgaria

Simple, eh? Well, as with Henry’s wives, the difficulty comes when you try to add a little detail. The trick here, is not to blend it in with the original mnemonic as we did with Henry, but rather, to begin again with a new approach.

So, if we were, say, to embark on weaving in the capitals to these countries, we need to switch from the cigarette-based formula, to one based on the alphabet. ВТШ, Have you noticed how almost every word is formed entirely from alphabet-based letters? At the time of writing, the only exception seems to be Omega3. I’ll confirm that in a later post. Back to our conundrum; once you’ve assembled the countries, you then have to adjust your thinking to an alphabetical system to reign-in the capitals. B&S, to be precise. Like this:

The B countries have S capitals:
Bosnia – Sarajevo
Bulgaria – Sofia
The S countries find their destiny in quite a similar way: S’s becoming (al)mostly B’s:
Serbia – Belgrade
Then you have to start flexing, because the S-B axis is not as strong as that of the B-S.
So, starting with Slovenia, you have to imagine the Lju of Ljubljana is like an Italian the – like Lo. So:
Slovenia – (lo) Bljana
Then you go Croatia, where C is a short remove from B, as Z is a short remove from S.
Croatia – Zagreb
Then Albania, where A is one back from B, just as T is one forward from S.
Albania – Tirana

It’s not BS; it’s simply brilliant.

Or perhaps, SiMMPle. oK?

Skopje-Macedonia; Montenegro-Podgorica; Pristina-Kosovo.
Get it? = Greece.
Yes, A1 thanks = Athens.

Or, if you don’t like that as a final line, you can use, Pod lives on the mountain, and skips to Mace, to buy a present for his friend, Kristina. Whichever you prefer really; it’s entirely up to you.