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Wednesday, 20 November 2024

Deep Thoughts

Not To Say Randomly Veering Ones

If Conrad's thoughts were a car, he'd definitely get pulled over by The Dibble for wilfully erratic steering, being all over the place.  I've been sitting and pondering for a good hour about how to create a hook to hang this Intro on, and it came to me in a flash.  Art!


     Meet Xenophon and his tenacious ten thousand, Greek mercenaries who were trapped in the middle of hostile territory, smack dab in central Persia, after their leader, a pretender to the Persian throne, had been killed.  An Ooops moment.  The Persians called the Greek's officers to a meeting under a truce, and then very un-sportingly killed the lot of 'em.  Ol' Xeny had to lead his troops on an epic march to escape pursuit and death, all the way to what we now call the Black Sea.  Art!


     Their fortunes only turned when they came into view of the sea, which they greeted with "Thalassa!  Thalassa!" which is Greek for "The sea!  The sea!"

     We now jump forward in time and take a look at "Mr Friend"'s Youtube channel, where we encounter a crashed plane, a pilot adrift in a yellow rubber dinghy and - well, it couldn't be a giant hand, could it?



     Because this is Thalassaphobia in action, of course the dinghy sinks, into the briny depths, which might or might not be the habitat of a giant hand.  Art!

'Depths' is the operative word

     Right, have we got the concept of 'depth' at the forefront of our minds?

     Good, because we are jumping back in time and space to the Italian Front of October 1917, which was discussed yesteryon through the lens of "The Great War In Europe".  SIT BACK DOWN!

     Thank you.  Conrad, behaving as if he knew what he was talking about, informed you yesteryon that the terrain along the upper reaches of the Isonzo River (known to the Austro-Hungarians as the Soca) was not suitable for any kind of prospective breakthrough.  Art!


     You can see why.  Lots and lots of mountains and valleys.  Nor is that all.  We here at BOOJUM! have explained to you many a time that trench lines in mountains need to be excavated with explosives or pneumatic drills and take a Dog Buns! long time to create.

     By late 1917 the endless Italian offensives along the length of, and across the Isonzo, had succeeded in gradually pushing the Austrians out of their last defensive line.  One more push would have broken them.  The Teutons, having a sudden surplus of divisions thanks to the collapse of Romania and Ruffia, hastily came to the Austrian's succour.  They provided seven Teuton divisions, better-armed, better-led and better-trained than the Austrians, adept at using infiltration tactics that were an unheard of novelty to their compatriots and the Romans.  Art!

Staged.  Though it does give a flavour.

     Their Pioneer Regiments also brought along a weapon copied from the British Livens Projector, which the Teuton stubble-hopping infantry hated and feared in equal amounts.  The Livens Projector was a simple large-bore mortar, buried at an angle in the ground and fired en masse electrically, in the hundreds.  They normally fired canisters of gas, of several pounds payload, and would saturate and render gasmasks useless.  Perfidious Albion was especially fond of firing these infernal engines at night from behind cover, so the muzzle flash was hidden and vast amounts of gas bombs suddenly hit their target.  Art!

Pioneers wiring up a projector

     This is from the Western Front, showing how the Teuton projectors were dug in, angled at the enemy, and with slightly varying elevations so the bombs spread out over an area.  An attack with depth, you might say.

     In the small hours of 24th October 1917, the Austrian artillery began to bombard Italian gun positions with gas shell, neutralising their counter-battery and infantry-support abilities.  Half an hour later the Teuton projectors let loose, targeting a critical Italian defensive position at Bovec, to the rear of a ravine, which was impossible to hit with anything except very high-angle fire. 

     Seven hours later, when the Teuton 35th Pioneers stormed the position, they might as well have strolled in, as all the Italian defenders were dead, all 700 of them.  This left a great big gap in the Italian defences.  Art!


     The Italian defences had NO DEPTH, unlike the Hindenberg Line depicted above.  On the Western Front there would have been two other lines located a mile or two behind the first line and each other; there would have been 'switch' lines at ninety degrees to these lines, preventing the enemy from rolling up a line from the flank.  A lack of such basics caused the whole line of the Italian Second Army to crumble and retreat, forcing the far less-affected Third Army to the south to also fall back; they lacked positions in depth, too.

     So there you go, the Italians guilty as depth-charged*.


A Leading Question

We'll get to the question in question eventually.  In the meantime here's a bit of musing upon time.  Art!


Conrad does like this film.  Conceptually, it's a look at what they thought the future would be like, from a Thirties perspective.  Hence gigantic robots, robots with long tentacle arms, ray guns (inevitably) and enormous rocket-ship arks.  All done with vacuum-tube technology, I bet.  Art!


This, on the other hand, is the future as people of the Eighties thought it would look like, with gigantic corporations controlling life, artificial intelligence run amok and colonies across the Solar System.

     The question is, what do they have to do with this - Art!

Courtesy of the BBC

     There you go.  I think we can begin to list the answers.  You see, when SCATWOT was made, they wanted an actor with gravitas and presence to play the arch-villain (who was really just misunderstood), and they settled upon -



     A dead guy.  Not just dead, long dead.  This dismal fact was seen as a mere minor problem to the film-makers, who used the incredibly advanced technology of 2004 to recreate him from previous screen footage.  Art!


     That answers one of the BBC's questions.  As for the Bruce Sterling novel, Conrad distinctly remembers one character trying to contact Fyodor Rumin via a video-link.  What he got was an AI-generated replica of his mate, which carried out a desultory conversation, because Ol' Fyodor was, not to beat about the bush, dead.   His remaining technology was quietly camouflaging this demise with massaged video film and audio, and might well have kept up the charade forever.  As long as nobody forced his front door open.

     1985 and 2004 are waaaaay behind us in the rear-view mirror of time, but we are bordering on the kind of AI that Mr. Sterling foresaw.  What an interesting tomorrow we shall have!



     Hmmm.  That went on far longer than I anticipated.  A picture and a paragraph, I thought.  Bring on more pictures!


That Journey With Berni

Yes, I do randomly add or subtract the final 'e' because that's the kind of rock and roll rebel I am.

     Only joking.  If I were such a rebel, it would be spelled "rock 'n' roll', thank you very much.

     Right, let us do due diligence and check if Mr. Wrightson's picture is available.

     It is.  Art!



    Typical Berni.  He goes into detail about how he created this and with what, yet not what the subject matter concerns.  An axe-maniac parading around in broad daylight armed with a (notched and neglected) chopper without any concerned citizens alerting the police?  O well, poetic licence.  Conrad is also curious about what the shadows hide.


The Vicissitudes Of Venality

Conrad hasn't checked the values of the Orange Land Whale's TMTG stock for a while, imagining that it would have soared into the stratosphere after his election triumph <hack spit>.

     But no.  Art!

     You cannot deny odd things are afoot here.  Since his election win <spit hack> the value has dropped significantly, which doesn't make much sense.  Unless the people getting rid of stock know what the rest of us don't.  I feel I ought to end with a sinister dash -

Finally  -

I baked a Gingerbread Mug Cake last night, which has been left to cool so it can be iced without said icing running down the sides.  Will finish tonight and post photographic proof of same.


Chin chin!




*  Ouch.

Tuesday, 19 November 2024

A Park For The Middle Aged

Sounds Terminally Dull, Doesn't It?

By design it would be completely flat, without any forms of entertainment at all - no swings or slides or adventure playgrounds - and a shallow pond sporting a single plastic duck.  To accommodate the aged and infirm, there would be a bench every 10 yards.  YARDS not metres, none of the johnny-come-lately Metric nonsense.  There would be a small, well-appointed café serving tea and cake, without any wifi and with a phone-signal jammer.  They would have a monitor screen playing DVDs of all the classic detective programs from the Sixties onward, because once you hit middle-age, your Murder Mystery genes activate.  Art!

Nedry is about to get &


     Fooled you.  Ho ho.

     You see <preens moustache> 'Jurassic' is a period from the Mesozoic era, and what does 'Mesozoic' mean but Greek for "Middle Life".  Hence the initial Intro intro.  There might be a bit of mileage in just such a park, perhaps patrolled by a contemporary of The Child Catcher, who would be armed, not with a net, but a cattle-prod and a Tazer and authorisation to impound errant teens in his Mobile Mortification Machine -

     ANYWAY enough of Conrad's sordid imaginings.  Let us move onto cold hard facts, for I have been doing a bit of data-digging.  Art!


     Righhhhhhht.  A ten-ton thirty-foot dinosaur is able to tiptoe up behind people completely undetected.  Or - is it their loyal pet?

     Conrad hopes the estate of Michael Crichton is getting royalties from the "Jurassic" franchise, because the whole field has made in excess of $6 billion at the box office over the space of 31 years.

     HOWEVER! (that word again) remember, gentle reader, that 'Box Office' does NOT mean 'Profit for the studio' since said studio (Universal in this instance) gets back 50% of B.O. at best.  Now, let us look at the films in chronological order.  I have fudged the figures for Promotion and Distribution since these aren't easily accessible, working on a sliding scale of between 16% and 10%.   Art!

JURASSIC PARK 1993


     Who's your great-great-great grandaddy?  On a mere - as it would be nowadays - $63 million budget (+ $6 mill for Prom & Dist), this one clocked up $1,104 billion at the box office, which translates to $552 million for the studio.  Thus a profit of $482 million.  The good lord aloft only knows how much they made in merchandising.  With a bottom line like that they were doomed to have sequels.  Art!

JURASSIC PARK: THE LOST WORLD 1997


     Conrad may have seen this.  There was a van falling off a cliff with a shattered windscreen and Peter Stormare was a villain, a role he seems to be rather typecast in nowadays.  That's it.  Obviously not that memorable.

     ANYWAY on a $73 million budget (plus $8.5 for P & D) it hooked in $618 million at the box office, thus earning $309 for the studio, and thus a profit of $227 million.  Probably a disappointment for the suits as they spent probably $20 million more than the original and got but half the return.  See above paragraph and lack of novelty for reasons why.  Art!

JURASSIC PARK III 2001


     Definitely haven't seen this, nor did a lot of people.  The budget had increased, as they do over time, to $93 million (plus $10 million P & D), for a collapse in box office to $368 million, netting Universal $184 million and thus a profit of (!) only $80 million.  Or, one-fifth of the original's profits on a budget grown by a third.  Not a good ratio of return-on-investment.  The suits seemed to have realised that, in the words of the old aphorism, you can take the pitcher to the well once too often.

     So that was the end of the "Jurassic Park" franchise, which is fair enough, how do you expect to attract paying customers when there's a significant risk of being ripped apart for dino-dinner?

     But the story is not over.  Not by a long way.


More Of Hex And Vex

As we all know by now, Conrad is a dinosaur himself, who uses pens to inscribe on processed tree - 'writing' as the ancients knew it.  Thus I have been able to dip back into "The Great War In Europe" thanks to my notes.  We are now at Move Seven, October of 1915 on the Italian Front.  Art!


     The front in all it's glory.  Let us have a more detailed look.  Art!


     This is the Trentino Front, where you can see the mountains severely constrict movement; those black-bordered hexes are impassable, meaning that in real life they were unscalable mountain peaks.  The Italians don't have the numbers or firepower to mount a successful attack here, and the Austrians don't have the numbers to do anything but defend.  Art!


     The Isonzo Front.  This is how it looked in real life; constant Italian battering against Austrian defences in the mountains, with consequent heavy casualties.  Because the rules allow for the reconstitution and re-use of divisions previously destroyed, I cannot see the Italians (or Austrians) making a breakthrough here, just as in real life.  Unless a Teuton Army suddenly and secretly arrives* .....


Ladle On The Venomous Invective!

Not really.  I am referring, of course - obviously! - to "Joe Blogs", whose Youtube channel is eminently safe for work, and the strongest term Joe uses to excoriate the Ruffian economy with is 'interesting'.  That seems to be an euphemism for 'ALL WILL END IN FIRE AND BLOOD!' and here's another reminder of the ruble being rubble.  Art!


     As Joe pointed out with a great big cheery smile, the ruble has dropped from ₽84 in June to ₽100 today, and it's been hovering around the 100 mark since last week.  When the Toilet Paper Limit was reached in early October last year, the Ruffian Central Bank started throwing liquid funds at the problem and had the slide reversed within a week.  This doesn't seem to be happening now.  
     Joe speculated that the ruble's demise as a global currency may result in Ruffia having to use other internationally-traded currencies, which will make the ruble even more worthless.
     So much for BRICS supplanting the dollar, hmmmm?  Art!

"No, no, I just have a bit of dust in my eye," lied Dimya.

"The War Illustrated Edition 197 5th January 1945"

I think we're coming to the end of this edition, so perhaps the next one will be allowed to cover the Battle of the Bulge, as by 19th January the Teuton offensive had definitely failed.  We shall see.  In the meantime - Art!


     They gloss over the fact that the design is pinched wholesale from the Teuton jerrican, which was much prized as a trophy in the desert war.  Eventually Perfidious Albion began making their own, and I bet they didn't pay the Teutons for patent infringement, tee hee!

     What you see here is a forward filling-point, where the cans will be filled from tankers, then loaded up to be taken to dumps behind the front lines for fuelling the vehicles there.  The acres of cans you see here are one reason why Allied vehicles didn't get abandoned thanks to running out of fuel.


Mystery MacGuffins Return

Since I unsubscribed from "The Daily Beast" you have had to go without all the Temu tat they had in their advertising sidebars, which featured gadgets and gizmos utterly baffling to the average Briton, as they were all made in The Populous Dictatorship and aimed at South Canadian consumers.

     Pine no longer!  Art?

     I've no idea what it is and suspect you don't, either.  Answers in the Comments, ta very much**.

Finally -

Better get downstairs and see about that Gingerbread Mug Cake.



A happened in real life.

**  In case you were desperately keen to find out.

     Not that I feel any more enlightened.



Monday, 18 November 2024

Today We Are Going To Be Talking Of Escalation

NOT, I Hasten To Add, Escalation As Per Jake Sullivan

If you're unsure whom he is, imagine a cabbage but lightly endowed with intellect, driven by the need to be awarded the Ruffian Order Of St. George, and whose tongue has a tropism for shoes.  Art!

Jake's official administration portrait

     He doesn't have a lot going for him, does he?  Apart from being good at bulking out a stew or soup.

     ANYWAY I took counsel of my "Collins Concise Dictionary" to see where 'Escalation' comes from and do you know it didn't exist until the Twentieth Century?  It is derived from 'Escalator', which is (or was) a trademark, being backwards-constructed from that name.  Presumably itself being derived from the Latin <hack spit> 'Scalare', meaning 'To mount'.  Art!

Lazy South Canadians mounting

     Because nothing is ever simple, these inventions were originally known as 'elevated walkways' and were built by the Otis elevator company, until in 1900 a Mr. Seeberger applied for a patent and created the word 'Escalator'.  

      Where was I?  O yes, escalations.  Well, this one concerns another Youtube tale, this one taking several left turns that nobody ever saw coming, in a happily-married suburban couple.  To begin with.  Art!

As innocent as this

     The first sign of impending trouble came with Weirdo Wifey's obsession with True Crime stories, especially those involving cheating and murder, which she lapped up like a cat with cream.  Had it stayed there we might have had a verrry short Intro.

     It didn't stay there.  There happened to be a real-life case of cheating and consequent divorce in their happy suburban white picket fence neighbourhood, which WW picked up on to the exclusion of all else.  At any social gathering she was obsessed - that word again - with finding out the uttermost details of what happened, rather to the concern of Put-Upon Hubbo.

ONE MONTH LATER

PUH was cleaning out WW's home office and found what she had labelled as CONSPIRACY BOARD, which is candid if worrying.  Art?

For illustrative purposes only

     She had painstakingly constructed a map of their neighbourhood, with notes and yarn links between people and houses, pictures of their neighbours being added from social media, all intended to indicate the Coefficient Of Cheating.  RED FLAG #1.

     PUH thought it creepy.  WW claimed it was as much a piece of modern art as it was proof of her detective skills, and that it would only have been creepy if created by a man.  RED FLAG #2.  Art!


     Things got more strained when PUH found he'd been added to the Coefficient Of Cheating Chart, with a link to a female neighbour he knew casually, and when challenged WW claimed she was going to add herself.  Yes really.  Like, that would make everything fine and dandy?  RED FLAG #3.

     PUH told WW to get rid of the board and - he thought - things were only rocky between them.  Alas, were it that matters stopped there.  Art!


     You should know by now that BOOJUM! does not post salacious pictures for the sake of it or higher traffic numbers.  No, this red bra is part of the story, because it was found by PUH/WW's neighbour's wife, and <drum roll> it did not belong to her.  Reverberations were heard around the world neighbourhood, all the more so as WW wheeled out her Coefficient Of Confirmed Cheating Chart and gleefully indicated a link showing that hapless neighbour was a potential cheater.  RED FLAG #4.  

     Hubbo was immediately suspicious because the chart and links and Post-its had been amended since he last saw the chart prior to it not being destroyed.  Playing detective himself, he went around to the husband neighbour, now solo as his wife was staying with her parents.  The offending lingerie was produced and -

     It belonged to WW.  


     Under pressure and with the evidence in hand, WW confessed that she'd planted the bra RED FLAG #UMPEENTH to - and this is where her logic completely breaks down, because this behaviour is just bonkers.  PUH got WW to admit to her offence to the wronged wife and hubbo and they lived happily ever after.

     PUH and WW?  Not so much.  Things got far worse after this, so much so that it would take another Intro to do it justice, and I'm not going to inflict all that on you, gentle reader.

     Yet.

     You have to admit, this one did snowball spectacularly.


Conrad Is ANGRY!  Yes Again

This time I have cause to be crotchety, as admittedly I can be angry in an un-directed way until a subject comes along.  You have to hone a Frothing Nitric Ire by virtue of long practice, you know.  Enough preamble!  Venting time begins!

VATIC: Conrad has to guess at this one before looking it up in the CCD.  Is it a contraction of VATNIK?  A term used by vintners and distillers?  Latin for 'dismissed to the upper storeys'?  Nope.  Art!


     Prefixed by the word "Rare", it's characteristic of a prophet or oracle and indeed comes from the Latin.  Rare?  It's positively half-baked!

EXOTISM: There's no 'Rare' about this in the CCD for the very relevant reason that it's not present.  Conrad had to slum it on teh Interwebz to discover that this means 'To hail from foreign climes, not native, as of a flower'.  Like the Manzanilla Tree?  Art!


AMPERSAND: You may not know it, but you've seen many an ampersand in your lifetime.  No! they are not a species of fungi, still less a Swedish Formula One racing team, nor is it a move from Botvinnik's arsenal of chess plays.  Art!


     The word itself is a corruption over time of "And per se and" and dates back to Roman times, and their word 'Et', meaning 'I've had me dinner' 'and', which got contorted by travelling through the time-space continuum unprotected.


Vatic Vulcanism

We are back with mild-mannered Kyle, who has been diligently informing those of us who live beyond the shores of South Canada about the weather events that make life there so - ah - interesting.  From his "Geography King" channel.  You may have already clocked the hurricanes and tornadoes and earthquakes and be wondering what on earth Ma Nature can throw at the hapless citizens.  Well, you asked!  Art?

Mount Saint Helens: Before and After

     VOLCANOES!  Having an oracle or prophet who could accurately predict when these explosive mountains might go pop would be a good thing.  What a shame it's so very difficult to predict vulcanism.  Art!


     The risks of a volcano suddenly appearing in your back yard across most of South Canada is 0%, because their existence is closely aligned with the presence of earthquakes.  Visible on the map here are the high-risk areas in the Pacific North-West, Alaska and Hawaii.  The last-named has some 'pet' volcanoes that erupt and ooze lava regularly, and can inconvenience people thanks to lava having no social skills or sense of direction.  Real danger comes from the active volcanoes in mainland South Canada, because when these erupt they go off like all the nukes at once.  It's 44 years since Mt. St. Helens blew itself apart, a measure of how rare yet deadly volcanic eruptions are.  Art!

Mount Rainier: a cause for concern


Our Journey With Bernie

Yes, I do like messing with the spelling of his name, as I know it irritates people who want consistency in all things, forever.  Let's have another illustration, this one being #35: "Sleepy Hollow".  Art!




     If you can't read it, allow me: "Given the nightlife at this location, I doubt anyone has gotten a good eight hours kip for decades".*


Finally -

Week 7 of being Mister Sobriety accomplished.  Whilst I am not spending money on wicked spirits and beers, I did burn £16 at the weekend on loose-leaf Darjeeling.  Which will last for many months longer than an equivalent amount of alcohol.  Not that it's really a fair comparison since I begin the day with a couple of pints of tea; imagine trying to work after imbibing a few snifters of gin washed down with Old Speckled Hen.  Not a winning scenario!



*  This may not be entirely correct.

Sunday, 17 November 2024

Dober Dan

Which, As You Ought To Know

Is Slovenian for "Good Day" since I have no way of knowing what time of the diurnal cycle you'll be perusing this Intro at, and Good Day seems undefined enough to fit in.

     Why do we have a greeting in Slovenian?  Especially since we tend to use Romanian for an exotic European language when the need arises.

     O I thought you'd never ask!  Because we're going to be breaking down another mountaineering vlog, this time from Andraz Egart.  Art!


     Andraz seems to have an affinity for the Dolomites, which did initially make me wonder if he was Italian, except 'Andraz' and 'Egart' didn't seem very Latin as a name, which is because he's Slovenian.  The country that borders Italy's north-eastern land frontier.  He doesn't look very husky, which is because he's not, although he has incredible stamina and is a lot stronger than he looks.  Today we'll be looking at his ascent of the Julian Alps and you can pander to your inner acrophobic whilst remaining completely safe.  Art!

The valley bottom in Autumn

Bivacco Cai Gorizia the destination

Technically it's "Bivacco C.A.I. Gorizia" whatever the initials mean.  Time to cattle-prod Art into semi-sentience and have him provide us with a map.



     Like potholers, mountaineers need to be well-informed and up-to-date about the weather.  There's no definite date given as to when this hike is, only "1 Year" on Youtube, so late autumn/early winter at a guess.  At any rate, Andraz narrates that there had been fresh snowfall in the mountains earlier in the week, which means the rivers and streams were swollen with meltwater.  Art!


     He's still below the tree- and snowline here, this spate is from catchment areas further up the mountainside.  He does get across this torrent without getting his feet wet, thanks to being nimble of foot.  Then it's up through the forests on trails.  Art!


     He encounters the first snow below the treeline, and after night has fallen, too, which must make a difficult task even harder, thanks to having to physically trudge through the nasty white stuff and getting cold and wet, in the dark whilst solo.  Eventually he makes it to the brace of Bivaccos, a toilsome process that I can appreciate all the more sitting next to the radiator with a pot of tea.  Art!



     Quite basic yet verrrry welcome, all the more since the wind had picked up outside, meaning a higher risk of hypothermia or frostbite.  Ol' Andy has a cautionary disclaimer on his Youtube channel, explaining that he can make light of situations thanks to years of experience, whereas you or I would be found by the Search and Rescue teams a week later, frozen solid.  Art!


   Not a MacDonald's or pub to be seen at dawn the next day.  No rest for either the wicked or the virtuous since Ol' Andy has to be on his way to scale Visola Bela Špica.  This is why he spends two days on the hike; getting up at dawn the second morning gives him all day to make the ascent and descent, important when daylight hours are short.  Art!

Target for today

     Whilst the previous day had been arduous, this is where things get actively dangerous.  Getting to that mountain peak involves scaling a sheer cliff at least a hundred feet high, whatever that is in Metric <hack spit>.  In deference to those of you who are, like Conrad, utter screaming cowards when it comes to heights, I shall only put up a single picture of his ascent.  Art!


     

     Cairn and secured journal in foreground, imminent storm in the background, which is rolling in fast enough to be seen moving on camera.  Andraz located the tin a log-book journal had been kept in, and added his own details.  Then it was time to beat the storm back down the mountain, which meant he finally got into the First Unpleasantness tunnels.  Art!

ACROPHOBICS LOOK AWAY NOW!



     Conrad is guessing that these were originally natural fissures in the rock which the Romans enlarged, otherwise they'd not have left a 6' drop here that needs a ladder to ascend or descend.  Probably not the original fitments, either, which would be over a century old by now and victims of rot and rust.  Art!


     This is an embrasure, presumably for an artillery piece, due to the excavated semi-circle that would allow it to be trained over an arc when the piece was moved to cover the Austrians getting up to mischief.  There may have been a naturally-occurring cavern here, which the Romans again enlarged with explosives and pneumatic drills.  Art!


     A not very appealing tunnel carved out of the living rock once more, after Andraz had to climb down another ladder, this one a good 9' tall.  It does lead to the outside, so eventually he hits daylight and -  the clouds have rolled in ahead of him.  At least he's off the mountain peak.  Art!



     The Bivacco was sufficiently lower down the mountain that he got under the clouds, after going through them, and found that his excess gear not needed for the peak ascent was still there.  Phew!


     There you go, all the excitement of mountaineering with none of the risks.  You're welcome.  Check out Ol' Andraz's Youtube channel too, he's too modest to insist you do so himself.

     Dober Dan!

In Sympathy With Andraz

We seem to have our traditionally awful British weather oscillating between extremes, one day bright and sunny, if cold, and the next horribly damp and foggy, if dank.  Art!


    On a clear day you can see Oldham Edge from this vantage.  Not on Friday.  Conrad would like to point out to the Weather Wizards that Halloween was over a fortnight ago.


Cooking Up A Book

Conrad used to have a cookbook with a rather peculiar outlay, which was meant to be opened and propped up vertically on a worktop, thanks to the spiral wire binding it together.  Inevitably the wire got deformed and became a problem, so I pulled all the leaves free.  Art!


     Here it is, now hole-punched and rehoused in an A4 binder.  


     Conrad checked out the Bara Brith recipe (port above) and we have all the ingredients for making what is a variety of fruited loaf.  I'll need to finish off the Apricot Coffee Bread first, which is lasting a long time thanks to verrrry thin slices.  Plus, I checked the Spicy Ginger Mug Cake recipe and we have the ingredients for that, too.


"The War Illustrated Edition 197 5th January 1945"

Last photograph from the Far East in this item for Ed. 197.  Art!


     These pictures are from the capture of Kalemyo, almost exactly 79 years ago today.  At top port you see a Chin 'runner' who would carry mail to deliver it by hand, and to starboard a collection of burned-out Japanese bunkers are being inspected by the curious.  At bottom is an M5 Stuart tank, nicknamed the 'Honey' by British soldiers thanks to it's reliability and speed.  It wasn't fit for frontline combat in Europe and hadn't been for a good 3 years by this point, as it wasn't sufficiently armed or armoured to be able to take on Teuton (or Italian) panzers or carro armato.  Over in the FE, mind, it was on par with nearly all the Nipponese tanks.  The riders here are Ghurkas, ferocious little fighters who will be off their ride with kukris a-swinging in an instant if it encounters trouble.  Art!

M5 unencumbered by untidy infantry


Batting A Hundred Yet Not

'Batting a hundred' is Conrad's knowing slang for 'Doing really well', as if I know anything about cricket.  Art!


     Valid as of 16 minutes ago.  In this instance hitting the 100 mark is not a good thing.  Watch out for a Joe Blogs' commentary on this horrid little statistic that Putinpot cannot hide, much as he'd like to.  Tee hee!


Finally -

I need to go box up today's Sunday Stew, and taste-test just how spicy it is.  I went light on the jalapenos but heavy on the chilli sauce.  We shall see.  It was also the recipient of a remaindered lamb leg, only 4 days past it's Best Before, which is practically in-date for Conrad.  And his stomach.