I'm astonished, wall, that you haven't collapsed into ruins, since you're holding up the weary verse of so many poets.

But, even when the parliament does make an effort to connect with voters, the ponderous bureaucratic culture of its permanent officials tends to spoil things.

KA But then you've got to figure out a way we will skip over the insanely tedious process of getting permits and getting everybody on board but simply funding this thing.

In his book The Blue Nile, Alan Moorehead described the expedition thus It proceeds first to last with the decorum and heavy inevitability of a Victorian state banquet, complete with ponderous speeches.