I Did Say Things

It's Not All Wings

For Lo! we are back at IWM Duxford.  I only recently discovered that they used to have a whole Hall dedicated to Land Warfare, which was closed down in 2025, as it was beginning to fall apart and renovating would have cost more than building a new Hall.  Art!

     Some items have been removed to storage, whilst others were integrated into other display halls.  

     ANYWAY let us continue with the tour I am giving you for free.  Art!

     This was a mock briefing session for a South Canadian bomber squadron, going over the various arrangements for co-operation, escorts, targets and weather conditions.  Worthy but dull; it did illustrate the amount of planning and admin going into a bombing attack.  Art!

     I think this exhibit was there to use up space as it's nothing to do with the next set of exhibits.  Say hello to the Gloster Meteor, Perfidious Albion's first operational jet fighter, which went into action in July 1944, initially to counter the V-1 flying bombs.  Meteor pilots would occasionally use their wingtips to flip V-1s out of the sky, as shooting them at close range meant flying into an explosion.  They were an enormously successful aircraft and almost 4,000 of them were made.  

     Okay, time for the Battle Of Britain exhibition.  Art!

     Here we have a genuine Teuton Messerschmitt Me Bf 109, looking a bit bent.  It got involved in a dogfight with an RAF fighter over England and subsequently crashed, although the plaque mentions that there are no bullet holes in the aircraft.  It was seen to have smoke coming out of the engine, so the probability is that said engine failed under stress.  At this point in time - summer 1940 - it was as good if not better than any British fighter BUT it could only carry enough fuel for 20 minutes flying time over This Sceptred Isle.  Plus the undercarriage was notoriously susceptible to collapse.  Art!

     An anti-aircraft gun, and I didn't make note of what kind.  Hang on - nope, no info.  A gun this big would have been used to fire on bombers, keeping them up high and reducing accuracy as well as destroying the occasional one.  Art!

     The 'Allen Williams Turret' for defence of the home island.  You had two blokes dig a pit, then put the turret over it, then use the internal mount to put up a Bren gun or similar.  It could be installed in two hours and removed in thirty minutes.  I shall have to accept that as nowhere is the weight or thickness of the metal mentioned.  Of the 199 made, only 33 survive and this is the only one in good condition.  Art!

     A pretty basic anti-invasion 'pillbox' made out of reinforced concrete - you can see the rebar when concrete has flaked off - that were cheap and quick to make.  The idea was to have defensive 'layers' of these that would hamper and delay an invader, allowing reserves to assemble and counterattack.  Art!

     Behold the Beaverette!  Part of what wargamer's like to call the 'Impoverished' range of vehicles churned out post-Dunkirk.  This was officially an armoured car, used by the Home Guard and army, as well as the RAF - note this one's RAF identity on the front bumper - for airfield defence.  They were not very good but better than nothing.  Art!

     Another Teuton artefact looking a bit sketchy, this is the tail of a Heinkel 111 and if you look closely you can see the bullet holes.  Note that in the BOB the RAF fighters were using rifle-calibre machine guns, rather than the Teuton combination of same plus cannon in their Me 109s.  Art!

     Conrad is unsure what connection this peculiar craft has to the BOB.  It's an 'Avro Rota Mark 1' - aha! now I see - used by the RAF to test the Chain Home radar systems by flying in circles.  The top rotor is unpowered and provides lift when the aircraft moves forward thanks to the powered lower propellor.  As it's unpowered, an autogyro cannot hover and must keep moving in order to stay aloft.  Art!

     A rather more famous version.  Art!

3.7" AA gun with puny human for scale

     This impressively large piece of kit is, as above, a British 3.7" heavy anti-aircraft gun and heavy is right as it tilts the scales at over 9 tons.  It was produced in very large numbers and used throughout the Second Unpleasantness since it was an excellent anti-aircraft gun, and extra electro-mechanical kit introduced in 1943 raised the rate of fire to 20 rounds per minute.  Erk.  That's a 28 pound shell travelling at a kilometre per second, which would reduce any Teuton tank to iron filings, as happened occasionally by accident in North Africa and by intent in Europe after D-Day.  Art!

     Whoops, no notes again.  I believe this is a Fordson Fire Tender, towing a pump with hoses and attachments, fire, fighting, for the use of.  Not very exciting.  Art!

     A V-1 on it's launch ramp.  You might be wondering what it's doing in an exhibition centred on 1940 when it didn't come into service until 1944.  Well, Britain still had to defend itself from these weapons, which is where the 3.7" came into play, firing proximity-fuse shells, and the Gloster Meteor in it's anti-flying bomb role.  The 3.7s shot down 1,878 flying bombs for your information.  Art!

     This is a one-pounder 'pom-pom' anti-aircraft gun of First Unpleasantness vintage, with a 13-pounder AA gun mounted on a truck behind it.  The Battle Of Britain Before The Battle Of Britain, perhaps?  Art!

     The Meteor, head-on as we leave the BOB exhibition.  You're welcome.

King Piggy Isn't Even Hiding It

Donold Judas Trump has now cut off intelligence formerly supplied to Ukraine and is getting rid of sanctions against Ruffia, which is excellent news.  

      Why so?  Because most South Canadians support Ukraine, something like 56%, and only 2% support Mordorvia and Putinpot.  Thus Don Snoreleone is only two and a half weeks from midterm elections and is now visibly pandering to Ruffia.  Mark my words, this will not go down well with the South Canadian electorate.  Art!

     Good Lord Aloft, he looks like one of the monsters from 'The Outer Limits'.  Visible proof that the morbidly obese weretoad is not remotely healthy and seems to be dying in front of our eyes.  I might get to drink my Just In Case bottle of Prosecco early.

Here's A Rather Grim Item

I just noticed this on the BBC News website

     <short pause as Edna gets fed>

US police identify remains of man found in barrel in shrinking reservoir

Edward "Buddy" Jackson's body was found stuffed in a barrel in 2022, with a gunshot wound to the head. Police say he likely was killed four decades ago.

     Apparently Buddy had a criminal history, and he appears to have gotten on the wrong side of some serious people.  The 'Los Angeles Times' even has a moulage of his head.  Art!

Absent the gunshot wound

Back To Brucie

We are getting close to the end of the slideshow I've lifted from 'Sci-Fi Art' over on Youtube.  Art!

     This is definitely a book cover, given that there's the 'Title Gap' at the top.  Conrad is unsure if this is a member of Hom. Sap. in a strange suit of armour, or an alien wearing it's skeleton on the outside.  Shovel time commences.

     Ha, got it- Art!

     Hmmmm.  It was awarded a Retro-Hugo in 2018.  The novel deals with genetic engineering and a post-scarcity society and comes in two parts.  Not sure which one Brucie is illustrating above.  Art!

     Hmmm, Brucie has gone all the way with objects in the sky receding to infinity, hasn't he?  Conrad remembers reading the blurb on this one when he picked it up a good fifty years ago - 'His mind torn apart by a madman's gun -' if I recall correctly.  Art!

     I rest my case and also my keyboard.  Want to go trotties, Edna?

So Much For Mister Tough Guy

I Am Talking About Clint Eastwood

You know, whose career breakout films were the Dollar spaghetti westerns, which we can all agree are pretty awesome, especially 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' with it's cemetery shootout and ending, and that bridge scene, and Blondie defying the hangman and the -

     ANYWAY I wanted to posit a film that I have never watched and probably never will watch, with him as a second lead.  Art!

       Firstly, it's a musical, and Conrad STILL HATES ALL MUSICALS.  This attitude was posted over a decade ago and has not changed.  Secondly, the plot is a bit weak.  The film is 'Paint Your Wagon' and Conrad is unsure if wagon-painting films did well in the late Sixties, as opposed to 'Where Eagles Dare', which involves blowing up a Nazi stronghold in Bavaria.  Top film.

     SO! Today's Intro, and potentially the whole blog, is another combination of HOA and TREE LAW!

      Firstly, we need to make an association with Black Oak Arkansas.  Art!

     They are - unsure whichever iteration they are on by now - a southern rock band dating from 1965.  They named themselves after their hometown, which must be so, so appreciative.  'Jim Dandy' is now being followed by Radiohead, which is considerably better.

     Now onto the real meat of the matter: Black Walnut Trees.  Conrad is no arborist yet he knows that these are EXPENSIVE.  VERY VERY EXPENSIVE. If you recall that film 'The Gingerbread Man' then you know that the plot revolves around a forest of black walnut trees which are worth millions.  Art!

Unsure about this.  Gingerbread not a sound structural material

     Not sure where the gingerbread comes in.  Conrad is a baker but cannot help you here.

     ANYWAY we go back in time a good 60 years, when Black Walnut Arkansas' grandfather plants an enormous 30-acre lot of black walnut trees.  He babied these trees forever after, going out to prune them every Sunday for decades.  

     BWA's father sold a plot of land to a developer on their border line boundary to a Home Owner's Association, whom we will now call the Home Owner's Association.  For reasons.

     The first intimation that BWA had of trouble was when the newly-appointed President of the HOA, Charlene - which I think is French for 'Karen' - turned up to complain about his leaves.

    BWA's leaves were blowing into her yard.

     CALL THE ICC! CRIMINAL CASE INBOUND!  HORROR KILLER EVIL!

     Well, actually not.  

     Charlene wanted his forest gone, because it - er -  interfered with her views of the sunset.  A forest she had already seen existing before she purchased her house. There is only one problem existing here: a forest she had already seen existing before she purchased her house.  I realise this is the same problem again but thought it worth mentioning twice.  

     Art!

     Naively thinking that Charlene would be amenable to reason, BWA had a surveyor go over the boundary lines of their mutual properties, laying down 'pins' as above to define the line and showing Charlene these same lines.  

     She was not convinced.  Instead she offered him $500 to cut a 'view' swathe through his forest, which is about 1/30th of their value.  BWA had a chat with his trees and -

     SHOCK HORROR SURPRISE HE SAID YES!
          Only joking.  He said no.  

     Thing is, when dealing with a case of Entitled Karen, they do not respond well to logic or rationality since they have never encountered the word 'NO' in the wild.  Same here.

     BWA's life intervened at this point, and he went to spend his grandson's first few weeks of life with his offspring.  

     Until one of his friends living in the HOA, whom we will call Lawnmower Man Who Fixes Them Out Of His Garage - actually we'll just call him Garage Guy and GG from now on - called to say that there were loggers working on his property,  cutting down the black walnut trees.

      Oooops.

     BWA, with vision of the logging company logo sent by GG, rings them on the number he can see.  The logger responds, stating that they are working on HOA common land.

     Remember that surveyor BWA commissioned?  He forwarded their documents to the logger.  Art!

     

     Bear in mind that this is a legal document, not a map that was never enacted 40 years ago.  The logger called back, stating that they were halting operations and calling their insurance company.

      When BWA got back home, THREATENED by spouse not to do anything that would put them in front of a judge, they confronted Ka - sorry, Chanelle, whom insisted 'This was completely legal' proving that 1) she is not a lawyer and 2) she knows 0% about Tree Law.  BWA counted 70 tree stumps on his property, including White Oak, another veneer premium species that is EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE to replace.  Art!

     

     The logger turned up during this confrontation, apologised fulsomely to BWA and -

     - provided copies of the contract Ka - sorry, Chantelle - had signed.  Which granted the logger $38,000 in 'All merchantable lumber', payable to Chantelle NOT the HOA, since the HOA was 'between banks'.

     Here BWA hires a lawyer.  Said lawyer, a local lady much experienced in the laws of property and TREES, tells him to hire a 'consulting forester' whom you and I would call an 'arborist'.  Said arborist, whom is an expert with qualifications in judging trees, declares the felled timber at $150,000.

     BRING IN THE TIMBER TREPASS LAW!

     Most states in South Canada have laws about illegally taking timber from a neighbour's land, stating that the damages incurred will be multiplied by three.

     Ka - sorry, Chanelle's - looted lumber came to $150,000, meaning she was liable to $450,000 in reparation.  Art!

    Long having a suspicion that this process had been taking place under the counter,  BWA had a meeting with the HOA board in GG's garage, where he could be away from the exploitation and  explain what had happened.  The HOA members were aghast at what Ka - sorry, Chanelle - had done WITHOUT PERMISSION and had opened the HOA to legal sanction.  An emergency HOA meeting was called and she was immediately fired as President by 200:1, with her as the 1.  

     She later turned up at BWA's door with a document that encapsulated her "No jury is going to care about some trees" that she wanted him to sign in order to end the case.

     This did not work*.  

     The case went to court, and SURPRISE SURPRISE she lost.  Not only did she lose the $450,000, she lost BWA's legal costs as well, which I would estimate as probably another $5,000 as well.

     She had to sell her house and leave the HOA to manage to pay her bills.     

     Oooops. 

     Nobody here has explained what happened to the original black walnut lumber that was cut down, as to whether it was returned to BWA or not.

*Surprise!

We Seek To Gain From Mark Twain's Brain

For 'Twas He Whom Came Up With The Classic Line

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics".  He credited Disraeli with creating it, but no, it was indeed Samuel Langhorn Clemens, to give him his real name.

     For this Intro I'm going to be looking at the recent Ukrainian drone strikes on Ruffia's Yandex data centres, drawing on 'Jake Broe', Twitter and 'Ryan MacBeth' whom is no relation to The Scottish Play.  Art!

Sasovo pre-kinetic sanctions

     The three sites hit were Sasovo, Kaluga and Vladimir.  Sasovo housed two supercomputers used for AI tasks and may not be recoverable.  A Ruffian journalist put it well: "Then it suddenly emerged that tens of billions of rubles had been spent on internet filtering and blocking online dissent, but somehow no one had bothered to protect data centers against potential attacks by enemy drones. "  The Ukrainians were retaliating for attacks on Kyiv's own data centres and seemingly hadn't planned on causing such immense trouble to the orcs; they may be paused at present to see what the longer-term consequences are for Yandex.  Whom still haven't given a timeline for restored operations.  Art!

Oooops

     The same journalist also pointed out that the centralisation of these data centres made them easy targets to hit and destroy.  Rebuilding from scratch would need at least $100,000, sanctioned microchips no longer available to Mordorvia, and at least six months to achieve.

     Where do the lies come in?  Well, Ruffia uses 'bot farms' to push it's narrative on social media, and the traffic at some social media platforms has fallen off a cliff.  Art!

     'Daily activity over 3 months' - this is the neo-Nazi Teuton AfD's traffic activity, suddenly down by 56%.  Art!

     The equally loathsome Reform party's activity also crashed and burned.

     HOWEVER - a word you surely knew would turn up sooner or later - the contention that the bots have vanished is actually a lot more complex than it seems at first sight, and I've Followed 'Ioana' on Twitter as she explained it using words new to Conrad.

     First of all, the very widely-quoted 99% reduction in bot activity takes in all bots, not just the ones pushing Ruffian propaganda, and a lot of that percentage are what she called 'web crawlers' or 'indexers' working for Yandex itself.  "A web crawler (also known as a spider, spiderbot, or automated indexer) is an automated software program that systematically browses the World Wide Web to discover, download, and index web content"

     Secondly, especially with Sasovo going dark, the bots lost access to Yandex's ability to boost them at scale by using YandexGPT and it's 'cloud translation API'.  "A Cloud Translation API is a developer tool that lets apps and websites translate text and documents automatically using machine learning. Most notably, the Google Cloud Translation API uses neural machine translation technology and large language models (LLMs) to convert content across over 100 language pairs".  So they couldn't craft posts in Ruffian Cyrillic, translate it into the Roman alphabet and post out en masse any longer.

     Thirdly, the outage has completely halted 'Indexing and promotion' activity, meaning that the sites web crawlers would rank and promote by the thousand are inert.  "Web indexing is the process where search engines collect, parse, and store webpage information in a massive database so the pages can show up in search results. Web promotion (often tied to Search Engine Optimization or digital marketing) is the set of actions taken to increase a website's visibility, attract traffic, and improve its position in those search results"  Art!

     Jake played a clip of very angry Ruffians, who now have no access to their funds in Yandexbank, and whom cannot order goods or food online, nor can taxi drivers navigate.  Art!

O but they can

     I believe Yandex has just retroactively changed it's Terms and Conditions to remove any requirements to compensate for any losses.  Typical orc corporate behaviour.  Hence Mister Jazz Beard above being angry.  Also a South Canadian who took up the Yandex Disk storage option - a year's worth of cloud storage for $40, totalling 3 terabytes of data.  He had accumulated 2 terabytes of what he called 'rare bottom porn' across a couple of years, only to see it all wiped in a couple of seconds when Fire Point's flaming messenger arrived.  Conrad, whom is not very accommodating at the best of times, is not one bit sorry for him.

     Fire Point did a bit of trolling of their own.  Art!

Trolling at it's best, inspired by "The IT Crowd"

     Note how Dima coyly uses the word 'damaged' yet avoids explaining what caused the damage itself.  Can't have the orcs making themselves look bad, can we?

     Jake ends up with a Kozaky comment about the Ruffian disaster relief plan - build data centres in Kazakhstan.

     Enough of lies and statistics!  Bring on the empty horses!

Actually I Meant Aircraft

Not horses.  Empty or full.

     For we still have many, many photographs of the exhibits at Duxford.  Here's one.  Art!

     Ladies and germs and those unsure, meet the De Havilland DH9, the only airworthy and flying plane of it's type.  Once again you can tell it's an original thanks to the drip trays to collect oil.  The plane was a bomber and whilst the design and construction was good, the engine was not, lacking power and being unreliable.  It took a completely new South Canadian engine to turn it into a much better aircraft.  Art!

     Some of the weird and wonderful adaptations of the Bristol Blenheim bomber, a British aircraft I have a soft spot for.  It was quite spiffy when first introduced but by the outbreak of the Second Unpleasantness it was obsolete and suffered badly when sent on operations.  I think the one supposed to be here was in for conservation work, otherwise I'd have a photo of it, wouldn't I?  Art!

In for conservation

     I was delighted to see this ugly beast, as I'd mentioned it to Darling Daughter in the Air Space Hangar.  It's a Fairey Gannet, and surely one of the ugliest aircraft to ever wobble into the air.  You see it here with it's double-jointed wings folded up, as it was used in carrier operations.  I can't think of any other aircraft that had a double-joint like this.  Art!

     Despite looking as if it got caught in the hangar doors, it was a very successful Airborne Early Warning plane.

Talking Of Aircraft -

I don't fancy being the orc who draws the short straw and has to inform Putinpot that 6 Ruffian Su-34 aircraft are now toast, having been hit on the tarmac in the same location.  Art!

Neptune has entered the chat

     Building shelters or hangars is for wimps!  That's a quarter of a billion dollars - dollars, not rubles - of aircraft destroyed, and about 5% of their Su-34 fleet.  'FighterBomber', a Ruffian milblogger, is going mental on Telegram and shouting that the wrecks need to be bulldozed before the Kozaky get pictures.  Too late mate.  In modern air combat losses are normally in ones or twos, not half a dozen at a time.  Perhaps they could send the rest to Kazakhstan for safe keeping?

More Of That List Of Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi Novels Like 'Greybeard'

The only thing the novels on this list have in common is that they are post-apocalyptic.  Here's the next one I've read.  Art!

     I read it once and hated it.  Supposedly a classic, I found it dull and boring.  If you want excitement, do not pick this one up.  It's set in a Catholic monastery in the years following a global nuclear war, and contrives to make this setup utterly tedious.  1/10.  Avoid.  Art!

     This is more like it.  I believe it's available for free on teh Interwebz as I seem to recall that's how I got to read it.  It deals with a small Florida town that has to learn to adapt and survive after, once again, global nuclear war and the collapse of civilisation.  The title is a quote.

Finally -

I need to crank this out and take Edna trotties whilst the monsoon rains have paused.

O Delicious Schadenfreude!

It Contains No Alcohol, Calories Or Long-Chain Polypeptides

We have covered a few disastrous music festivals in the past, such as the Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival and the Fyre Festival, and today I'm going to go over one I've not heard of before: Woodstock '99.  Art!

     As you can see from the poster, it was held in New York State but not at the original 1969 location, meaning the promoters were trying to cash in on the original by connection.  The actual site was the disused Griffiss Air Force Base, and if we prod Art with this electric spoon -

As a site it was big and flat, which is all the promoters were bothered about, as they were finely focussed on $$$ rather than things like utilities for those attending.  Doesn't sound very promising, does it?

     Overcrowding became a major problem.  Despite selling 250,000 tickets and getting  $38 million from those sales, up to 400,000 people were onsite, far too many to be comfortably accommodated and causing vendors to run short of goods to sell.

    Overheating made things worse.  There was no shade or grass, meaning concertgoers were stricken by heatstroke as the tarmac heated up in 38º  temperatures.  There was little free water available and vendors were charging the equivalent of $8 dollars per bottle.  In desperation people broke open water mains, which were then contaminated by overflowing portable toilets.  When the promoters realised dehydration and heatstroke were occurring to over 1,000 people, then they provided free water.  Which also turned out to be contaminated with E. Coli.  Art!

The main stage

     The vendors were also trying to get rich quick by grossly over-charging for food and drink - see above - which antagonised their captive audience, never a good thing where there are lots of people and alcohol is involved.  Check out the Soda Pop Festival to see where this can lead.

     Then there was security, or, rather, the lack of it.  A total of 1,100 security guards were employed, which sounds like a lot but is one security guard to 300 attendees.  Nor were they well-trained.  Nor were they properly deployed.  On the Sunday night rioting (!) broke out, fires were started across the site, cars, trucks and trailers were overturned and set ablaze whilst security looked on.

     Then - we're not finished yet - there was the litter problem, especially at the campsite.  Art!

     I've seen the aftermath of the Leeds Music Festival, where the campsite is merely a rubbish tip with tents, but at Woodstock '99 the site was full of rubbish from the get-go.  Insufficient janitorial staff.

     Moreover, the general vibe of the festival was violent.  There were rapes, assaults and three deaths; two from heatstroke and one hit by a car.

     Reading about all this cement's Conrad's assertion that music festivals are a form of torture you have to pay a lot of money for.

     Okay, transiting from an epic of misery for hundreds of thousands, let us now take a final look at the duelling brothers No-Chrysler-4-Me and Chad Wannabe.  Did I mention that CW hated hated hated being upstaged by his younger brother?  Hearing of NC4M's final camping trip going so well piqued CW to the core, so much so that he decided to visit the very same campsite, solo this time.  His brace of pothead friends had probably decided camping with CW was far too dramatic.  Of course he had to purchase a portable DVD player, but at such short notice he got gouged for it.  Inevitably blaming NC4M for that.  Art!

     He complained that the other campers didn't like him, NC4M acidly commenting that was because on first impression his older brother is 'a whiny bottomhole, mooching hothead or a general douche'.  No love lost there.  Nor would they tolerate any pestering or attempts to steal food or beer.

     Nor was he a fan of the DVD player, since the screen was so small.  He had a TV and game set-up in the camper - just no way to power them.  So he was bored.

     He was even more bored on Sunday, since it rained heavily all day long and he was stuck in the camper.  This does tend to happen in the north of South Canada in autumn, which is why NC4M had gotten his final camp in before the rainy season started.  Art!

     Come Sunday evening, the Mini-Ram wouldn't engage gears, even if the engine did start.  Utterly defeated, CW called NC4M for a tow in a massive blow to his ego.  Sportingly, his younger brother showed up with a can of Lucas Transmission Fix and a bottle of transmission fluid, as it had all drained away since CW didn't bother to check levels.  The Mini-Ram could then engage gears, but NC4M still towed it home to avoid further strain on the engine.  Decent chap!

     CW almost redeemed himself on the tow back but, once in the company of his pothead 'friends' he reverted to type.

     Sadly there is no Part 3.

     How's that for an epic of misery for a single camping person?

Ken Paxton Axed On

Ken 'Walking Dumpster-Fire' Paxton continues to generate hilarious content, which I will maintain is entertainment, not Politics.  He's the incumbent Senator in Texas, currently trailing the challenger James 'Cleaner Than Clean' Talarico in the polls thanks to a murky background of sleaze and adultery.

      Now, the 'Wall Street Journal' has published an article about his shenanigans on New Year's Eve last year.  Art!

     Also present was Anosh Ahmed, another fugitive from justice in South Canada.  He was indicted earlier this year but failed to return home from Dubai.  Do you know something else?  He donated $190,000 to Ken Paxtons bribe fund SORRY 'campaign fund'.

     When asked to comment about this mysterious congruence, Paxton's Senior Advisor completely dodged the issue and avoided any kind of explanation.

     Bring on the wheelie-bins of popcorn!

Being Literary

Writing this feels like having a shower after the immersion in Paxton's sordid life and times.  So, onto Page 3 of 'Books Like Greybeard'.  Art!

     I first heard this as a play on the radio and was intrigued enough that I took it out of the local library later.  The tale is narrated by Ann, a young woman who lives alone is a secluded valley, where terrain and weather have kept it free from fallout after a global nuclear war.  She thinks she's the last person left alive on the planet - until a stranger wearing an unusual protective suit arrives, towing a trailer -

     It's pretty bleak and it doesn't have a happy ending.  I loved it!

Bringing On Brucie

The Pennington chap, that is, with more slideshows from the Youtube channel 'Sci-Fi Art' and I promise we're near the end.  Art!

     Aha!  I'm pretty sure this is a book cover.  What we're looking at is one of the 'Elder Gods' dreamed - more accurately, nightmared - up by H P Lovecraft, namely Cthulhu.  Don't ask me how it's pronounced.  One of his residences is visible in the background; artistic licence, since in Lovecraft's reality these places are now sunken beneath the briny deeps.  They pop up back to the surface now and then thanks to tectonic or volcanic activity, and it never ends well for anyone who goes a-nosying.  Let me dig a little.  Aha - Art!

     Ha!  Called it!

     Art!

     They got this one wrong, that's not Bruce Pennington's artwork.  I think it's Peter Jones.  Allow me to check a tad - "The cover artist for The Book of Frank Herbert under Panther Books varies by edition:

• 1977 Panther Books Edition: Illustrated by Peter Andrew Jones.
• 1984 Panther Books Edition: Illustrated by Bruce Pennington."

     They got the wrong edition.  Ooops.  Art!

     That's the Brucie cover they meant to put up.

     And with that we are DONE!