Avatar Fracking History: the Georgians

Hello and welcome to another edition of Fracking History, the top-rated infotainment docuhistoriography show here on Beans TV.

In this week’s episode, we’re going to be seeing what we can learn about the Georgians. We begin by drilling vertically downwards some 212 metres into the past, and then turn the drill head horizontally to push through a layer of sediment composed mainly of the late Qing Dynasty until we locate a rich seam of Georgian history.

Our loud, highly destructive machinery now begins pumping a mixture of water, sand and polyacrylamide into history at extremely high pressure. The delay while we wait for results is extremely tense, with our resident geophysical historian, Dr. Cornward Habsburg, nervously checking over his valves and dials. Eventually a thin, dark-coloured liquid begins seeping from the outlet valve, and we have our very first sample of the Georgian era.

What does it tell us about the aristocracy and the ordinary people of Britain in the eighteenth century?

Dr. Habsburg adds a few drops of hydrochloric acid to a sample of the liquid and places it in a centrifuge at a controlled temperature of 76° celsius. The resulting dark residue is then inspected under a microscope.

It reveals Georgian society in all its debauched, vulgar glory. The presence of particularly high levels of carbon nitrates can only be a result of the deeply unpopular Prince Regent openly enjoying affairs with a number of high society women and the early development of the gutter press in the form of short pamphlets and magazines printing salacious gossip.

It’s been a fascinating journey to an important point in Britain’s history and has brought to rich, vivid life a chapter of the past that can be so difficult to accurately reconstruct today. But all good things must come to an end. Join us next time on Fracking History when we’ll be using the latest hydraulic hammer drilling technology to break through a seam of solid, compacted Dark Ages to begin extracting parts of the early Roman era. Until then, goodbye.

18 comments on “Fracking History: the Georgians

  • Checking over his valves and dials? Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

    Do you think of fracking in the same way Kev thinks about wind turbines?

  • Wheeeeeeeey! (what?)

    I don’t think I do, no. My opinions on fracking are small, insignificant and easily frightened, like a vole.

  • So how do you turn your vole like feelings into ones akin to, say, a bewildered fox?

  • Strange. Those are the exact two items used by the main character in my new book: When Mooses Collide.

  • It’s unusual that your new book’s title doesn’t have more colons and subtitles in its title, or more references to you.

  • That’s the abridged version of the title. The full title is ‘When Mooses Collide: A succulent journey betwixt the agony and joy of me’.

  • I’m glad I could furnish you with the details and thus allow you to carry on your fragile and psychedelic life. You should read it though; it’s got pictures and everything.

  • It will be hard to read when I’m hurriedly escaping a publisher’s warehouse that is rapidly being engulfed by flames.

  • It’s comments like that which mean I have to keep the warehouse under 24hr guard. These babies are gonna be at the top o the bestseller list come Friday. Or Thursday.

    I mean I’ve seen keen and you seem to be keener than keen.

  • I’m not at all keen to see all those guards burned to death in the inferno, but if that’s what has to happen in order to prevent your book being unleashed on an unsuspecting public then I can live with that.

  • I don’t know. Since your efforts as a stand up comedian back in the cult classic Beans comic strip, I think your sense of humour has darkened. Like a wombat’s conservatory.

  • A champagne-coloured wombat’s conservatory?

    That’s not dark at all.

  • Wombats usually make their conservatories from bulletproof steel rather than glass, so they are a bit more hard-wearing when under heavy gunfire. So most of them are pretty dark.

  • In fact, I disagree so much that you’ll have to show me a photo and/or a picture of one before owl change my mind.

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