BOOJUM! Bounces Back

Oh Yes
     As anyone with wit and eyes has noticed, BOOJUM! does not always post on a daily basis.  The failure to post yesterday is due to physical issues, rather than technical ones = to wit, the Hovel getting a plastering.
     Yes, look to my post of the 29th for confirmation of plastering being done.  Well, once the plaster has been slathered into place, what comes afterwards but the tidying up?  Hoovering, then dusting, then moving things about.  All this whilst watching "The Great British Bake-Off", besides.

Russia.  Back in the Frame
     I see from my Overview that citizens of Russia are dipping their toes into the scummy, opaque waters of BOOJUM!  Good for them!  I can hobble along reading Upper Case Russian, although the lower case alphabet is a mystery to me.  Now - and this may only appeal to Continental readers - how can you not like a nation that has produced Tchaikovsky and the Brothers Strugatsky?  Also "The Tale Of The Turnip" and "Gusliar Wonders"; the latter proof that what is funny in Russian is also funny in translation.  Trust me on this, O suspicious Western World!

Tomorrow
     I am apparently to partake in a "Car Boot Sale".  I'm not selling a single book, CD or DVD, although maybe up to 4 of my wargaming paste-tables will be there.  I have provided 24 Nieman-Marcus cookies, but I also suspect that regulations will prevent us selling them.  Okay, then, please place a "donation" of 50p in the pot after taking a cookie.  Recipe ingredients: butter, sugar, flour, chocolate chips, fudge chunks, coffee, vanilla - and love.  Can't put a price on love.

Unless it's Cupboard Love, in which case = 50p per cookie.
 

 Okay, off to listen to more Mars Volta on Grooveshark, whilst reading "Essential Avengers" - those folk at work who laughingly call me "intellectual" would surely revise their opinion if they could only see ...

What ho!

Project Damnation: the First Day

Or, Conrad Gets Plastered

Do you see what I did there?
 

Apparently, according to witnesses, Roy got down to the brickwork underneath, the plastering was so friable and rotten.  He's back tomorrow to finish off - Hooray!  Then comes the painting of the walls, and a whole lot of dusting and hovering to boot.

Pub Quiz Beckons
     Another reason to be hasty tonight.  Our team has a £15 token to spend on beer before we have to buy our own, and without my darling daughter there - why that £15 divide neatly between the three of us.  Only problem - I've not been cruising tabloid tat websites to brush up on "celebrity" gossip.

And Tomorrow's Cake Will Be ...
     Lemony Olive-Oil Banana Bread, with chocolate and a sugar glaze.  Another reason tonight's blog is succinct - been baking the caking, haven't I!

Project Damnation

a.k.a The Plastering of My Lair's Walls
     My Upstairs Lair is where all my books, comics, CDs, wargaming kit et al are stored.  Since before Easter it has looked like this:

Not very, ah, salubrious.  Not at all.  Not only that, with no wallpaper present any wind in the vicinity found a way between any cracks in the walls and lowered the temperature to Involuntary Muscle Spasms Centigrade.
     However, human beings - Hom Sap - are adaptable creatures and I've grown accustomed to those bare walls and lack of plaster.  Tomorrow, though, the plastering gets done.  So I've been hauling boxes of 6mm wargaming miniatures, trade paperback comic books and DVD stands out of the way.
     If Roy, the handyman, finds a bottle of Southern Comfort that's been missing in this Lair since December 2012, he is welcome to have it*.

     Eh What Say What?
Not very British, blowing your own trumpet, don't you know.  Not the done thing.  Bit boastful, mind.  Shy blushing and silence the order of the day, old chap.
     Ah what the heck!  In a short getting-to-know each other interview today, my new Team Manager showed me an e-mail detailing how a branch of <The Company I Work For> had said they were happy and even excited to get me on the phone when calling in to make changes in our <Enormous Yet So Far Anonymous> company's database.
     Small things make your day!  Hopefully this will partially protect my arse in future if I drop a massive clanger and blow up the company intranet, preventing 120,000 people from getting paid.

   Syria, France and The UK
Whilst BOOJUM! attempts to exist in a world entirely divorced from the squalid horror of the real world political situation, I feel that my interest in World War Two and the Eastern Mediterranean may be called forth here.
     72 Years ago, Syria was part of the French overseas empire.  The French had either followed or inspired the British habit of acquiring pieces of real estate abroad with a sunnier clime than the mother country.  In 1941 Syria (which included today's Lebanon) was under the sway of Vichy France, a proto-fascist rump state allowed to exist by the Nazis.  Smooth-tongued Free French persuaded the British Middle East command that a conquest of Vichy Syria would be easy.  Easy-peasy, in fact.  Easy-peasy-made-of-cheesy, in fact.
     Wrong!  It was a rather bad-tempered campaign, actually.  Eventually the mighty British war machine** triumphed and the Vichy regime went the way of the dodo, having fought rather harder for existence.
     Thus.  The Brits and the French have been there before.

So - Tanks?


Those stylish French - who else would paint a tank in a "Dijon Mustard" camouflage scheme?

Behold, a French tank of 1940 vintage that made mincemeat of German opponents.  Sadly for the French there weren't enough of them.  Thankfully for the British there weren't any in 1941 Syria.



*Said bottle went missing in January 2013 and has not been seen since
** Said with a touch of irony and homogeneity - there were a lot of ANZACs there, too.

A Hasty Post

 - Technical issues, don't you know.  Our internet service here at The Citadel is being hideously unpredictable, crashing or dropping out every 20 minutes or so.  Curse modern technology!

A New Hopeful Beginning*
    New team manager arrived at work today, to be introduced by one of the existing team managers.
     Up quoth I.  "Are you providing her with thumbnail sketches of her new staff?"
     Current team manager looks blank.
     "No."
     "Oh! Er - forget I spoke ..."
     Doubtless our new team manager was provided with nifty little guides as to whom to keep an eye on, who cannot be trusted with money, who spends far too long in the toilets, etcetera.  Sorry fellow team members!

The Weasels of Evils
     Or, our cats, Jenny and Beej.  Of late they have been slaughtering a swathe through the local rodent population.  Thinning the herd, you might say, by picking off the stupid or slow mice, shrews and small birds daft enough to roost on the ground.
     How do we know this is happening?  because this cat-kill turns up on our doorstep, literally, small rended corpses smothered with flies, as if to say "See?  See how much we love you, that we give up our prey?"
     Sad Cat was not available for comment.

End Of Watch
     A cop film, yes, but better than 95% of the other cop films out there.  Jake Gyllenhal is great in shaven-head mode, and Michael Pena is a small bundle of attitude and energy.  At present only 65 minutes into it, but once BOOJUM! is done, back to watching End Of Watching.

Got to go post whilst connection still there -

*  Yes, it is a Star Wars reference.

Books, Cooks, Nooks

BOOKS
     Today we went car-booting at Bardsley, where I came upon a leather and gold-tooled volume with the title "Kuvia Suomesta".  This might not mean anything to you, dear reader, but Conrad knows the Finnish for Finland is "Suomi", so he suspected something Finnish here.  The page with publisher information had been cut out, so the dating is a bit problematic.  I noticed only one date, 1919, and there are motorcars in only two photos out of 158, so I suspect some date in the early 1920's.  The lady selling it knew 0% about it. 
    Finnish consulates and embassies worldwide, I open the bidding at £50.  Thank you!

Cooks
     Well, today I made Fricatta, kind of an omelette finished-off under the grill.  Then there was the Honey-Roasted Peach Ice Cream; I shall have to go check on how it's set so far.  Then there is the Chicken and Pork Stew set up in the slow cooker crockpot - except I think I overfilled it a bit.  Er, a lot, actually.

Nooks
     I'm up to page 1100 out of 1800 for Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age".  This is taking longer than I imagined - and there are over 400 other books to go!

Rooks
     A bird, a chess piece and a time-travelling proponent of the underdog.

I think I had this edition.  Before Project Apocalypse, that is.
 

Tally ho!

1914 - 2014

     The First World War Centennial
     This will be arriving next year, dear reader.  Not as iconic if you're Italian or American, since your centennials would be 2015 and 2017.
     Anyway, I have to start making my mark as a pundit on the Great War - as it used to be called before the second unpleasantness - because probably half of my 400 military history books deal with Word War One in some way (not that I've read all of them yet) and reading and recollecting them enables me in the way of punditry over more than 99% of the UK population.  At my current rate, my hex-and-counter wargame of Third Ypres might be ready by the centennial year 2017; no, I am not a quick worker!
     One of the factors that fuelled the Great War's outbreak, conscription, is going out of fashion in Europe.  It was never in favour here in the UK - we had it from mid-1916 onwards, and for the Second World War and a few years after, but conscription is alien to the UK and any MP proposing it is signing a political suicide-note.  The major players, France and Germany, have gotten rid as well.
     Why is this relevant?  Well, because if the UK did have conscription prior to 1914, it would have put a severe crimp in the German General Staff's plans for war.  They could plan to smash the French whilst holding the Russians at bay, then railwaying their army east to smash the Russians, but posit a third enormous army able to descend on the German coastline and their plans begin to collapse.
     We will return to this subject, dear readers.  Oh yes!

General Blackader.  Yes, really.  Google if you do not believe.

Right!  Enough militaristic nonsense.  Next we shall have -

Nieman-Marcus Cookies
     In anticipation of next weekend, wherein the Family Connolly will be holding forth as vendors at a car-boot sale, I have been costing Nieman-Marcus chocolate chip cookies.  The recipe amount comes to about £3, if we factor in not just ingredients but the gas used to bake, the electricity used to mix, the washing-up liquid, and most importantly, the time I gave up to bake them.  I get paid £9.26 per hour in my daytime job, you know.

This is what mine look like.  Honest.

     Obloquy
Which is defined as A Big Fat Criticism, Something Really Hurtful, and What Your Friends Won't Tell you.  Honestly?  It sounds like a butter substitute that you make cakes with when you can't afford the real thing.  That, or it's French for "excellent boat-parking at the marina".  Then again, it does sound like an awesome swear-word in Russian - "May your mother ***** *** ******** eels forever!" kind-of-style.

Why do we have English grammar here?  because there are no tanks today!  That, and your rounded BOOJUM! education, dear reader.

Tally-Ho!

Saturday Shenanigans

No! NO! NOOOO! - oh alright then.

Digital Divertissement
     If any of you out there have followed this Blog, or even if you haven't and are only just tuning in, then you will know that I like the printed word.  Printed. "Hard Copy" in the parlance of today's youth.  "Books" as us Oldies call them.
     So, it is with some trepidation that Conrad announces his acquisition of a "Nook".  This is an electronic platform that can display the business end of hundreds and hundreds of books.  I didn't ask for it, or go out looking for it, nay it arrived on my desktop as a Birthday Present.

The Nook: minor demon denizen of the lesser-fraught circles of Hell (also - like that eye make-up!)

Leeds Music Festival
     I used to have an early warning of when this festival took place thanks to my darling daughter, who was there last year and the year before.  She retained the wristband of 2011 until she got the 2012 version, Oh! the lack of hygiene!   
     Anyway, she is now so far beyond the mainstream acts that Leeds simply won't do.  Not Indie enough.  No, she wants to go to "Scab-u-tron", held on the island of Rockall, with sufficient space for 45 audience members and where performers have to be helicoptered in one at a time.
     For me, Dad the Driver, this is good news.  Last year I got stuck in a massive traffic-jam when en route to pick up darling daughter and her three companions, adding an hour to the inbound journey.  We then had to queue for another hour before getting to the front of the outbound journey.

Leeds Music Festival 2011

That Zombie Novel
     I have cunningly managed to work in ice-cream recipes as part of "Revelations", the working title for My Zombie Novel.  After all, three years into a planet-wide Armageddon, wouldn't you sell your soul for a batch of Pistachio and Pecan ice-cream?  All the more so if you haven't seen an ice-cream since Year One of the catastrophe?
     (answers of "kill them and steal the ice-cream!" are refuted by armed ice-cream vendors)


So - Tanks?

This is your AFV-designing brain on drugs

     There's not a lot I can say about this. It's based on the chassis of a Universal Carrier, with a derrick that contained two Bren guns, intended to go "Peek-A-Boo" over vertical obstacles, upon which the enemy would die of heart attack/laughter/Bren gun.  Thankfully for the UK population we were never forced to rely upon the "Preying Mantis".

Chin chin!

BOOJUM! is Back

 

What do you mean, was I gone?

     Took a night off from posting meandering meditations on the Muse, baking and tanks.  Now I'm back, ready to kick bottom. 

     Turpitude
     I'm willing to bet you've only ever heard this word as part of a phrase - "Gross Moral Turpitude" and even then not very often.  It sounds like a submarine weapons system, or the Classical Greek definition of musical composition, or a kind of resin you get out of the Norwegian Pine.
     Well it's not!  It means being disgustingly depraved.  Disgustingly!  When spoken you must put emphasis on the first "T", making a spitting pronunciation.  Only then will your audience know the true evil of - turpitude.

Gross Moral Turpintude

Mangonel
     If anyone has read this blog from Day1 they might remember that I decided to use Trebuchet as the font.  I then provided illustrations of what a Trebuchet was; a mediaeval siege engine.  Say hello to the Mangonel, a less sophisticated and earlier siege engine.  The Romans knew it as the "Onager", their name for a wild ass, because their engine kicked like one.

Kick ass.  Literally.

You winched the arm back, placed a large rock in the sling, then released the ratchet.  Whammo-blammo, your enemy gets a great big rock between the eyes.
     Why am I telling you this?  Because you need a rounded education, dear reader.  Tomorrow we will tackle spigot mortars.  Make a note in your diary, there will be a quiz. 

Affleck as Batman
     A couple of my female colleagues were tut-tutting over the news of Ben playing Batman in the forthcoming Batman & Superman film.  May I point out:
1)  It isn't due until 2015.  That's plenty of time for this film to fall into Development Hell.
2)  Cost.  This is going to be a big budget summer tentpole blockbuster that will probably demand a budget going north of $250,000,000.  Which means it may never come together.
3)  Ben is actually a sh1t-hot director, witness "The Town" and "Argo".  He can act, too, but will probably need a director able to extract a good performance.  This is quite problematic.
4)  Look, this is going to be Superman and Batman, two cash cows for the movie business.  It's probably doomed to be made!

Conrad as Scriptwriter
     What I would love to see, as an animated 3D or live-action, is the original "Bad Company" from 2000AD way way waaay back in the  80's.

This is Bad Company before they got hardcore.

You can see Joe Scummer, Dogface, Wallbanger, Mad Tommy Churchill, Kano, Thrax, etc. - all before the real human interest joined up.  I say "joined up" when it really should be "enlisted at gunpoint".  They are fighting on the jungle world of Ararat, in a hostile environment, against the sadistic, merciless alien Krool.  Hell, if "Pocahontas In Outer Space", a.k.a. "Avatar" can get made, why not Bad Company?

So - Tanks?
     As you may have noticed, I avoid depictions of the over-familiar Tiger, Sherman, Panther, Abrams or T55 here.  Here we see the Italian light tank "CV33"

Sadly, that big gun in the background is NOTHING to do with the CV33

More correctly, this is a tankette - kind of tank-lite, if you will.  This is the more deadly model armed with a flamethrower - that big pipe on the left-hand side, towing a trailer full of fuel.
     It wasn't very heavily armoured.  By anecdote, if you put a Lee Enfield rifle up against the armour and pulled the trigger, hey presto, you put a hole in the armour and whoever was inside. I have actually seen this vehicle up close at Bovington Tank Museum and there is simply NO WAY anyone of my size (6 feet 1 inch) could get inside.  Anyone smaller would still have a bloody hard job fitting in behind the machine gun mounting. 
     Imagine driving this mobile metal midden - crushed as you are into a space no bigger than a laundry basket - in the temperatures of Egypt at the height of summer, with dust being thrown up all around and a limited water supply.  Then add flies.  Then add British tanks and armoured cars and anti-tank guns that can turn you into a work of modern art in half a second.  Suddenly the Italian tankies don't seem so cowardly, eh?

Awwww
  Since we've had a lot of internecine content, here is something a bit cuter to end.
 

Mother and daughter aardvarks.  Why aardvarks?  because you need a rounded education, dear reader.

Pip pip!

Fairly Gruntled Tonight

"Gruntled" is a word,  correct?  If you can be "disgruntled" then one must be able to be gruntled, or that's how I see it.  Conrad - making the English Language work for him.

Tonight's Cakery Bakery
     Today I decided to make Lemon Drizzle Muffins, to use up a couple of lemons in the fruit drawer, and because I had the necessary yoghurt.  First potential pitfall with muffins - over-mixing.  You only mix until the ingredients are *just* combined, and no more.  Overmix and you get nasty dry muffins.  Second pitfall with these is the temperature, Gas Mark 6, which is high.  If you don't turn the tin halfway through and if you don't take them out early to test, you get nasty burnt muffins.
     Well, Conrad is happy to say the muffins are neither dry nor burnt.  They are cooling off in the lounge, away from our cats.  Thanks to the lemon drizzle I can't simply put a towel over to keep cat hairs off, so they are in a different room entirely.
     These muffins are for Friday morning, so I have tomorrow after work and before the pub quiz to decide whether to bake an additional something for work.

Wallace and Grommit and Storm Thorgerson
     Wallace and Grommit the whole world knows by now, the hilarious duo featured in "Curse of the Were Rabbit" amongst others.  Storm did the cover photography for Pink Floyd amongst others, and is recently deceased.
    What's the connection?  Aardmann Animations did W & G, and have been tasked with a trailer for the Tom Stoppard* play "Darkside", which takes inspiration from Dark Side of the Moon**.  After kicking my PC around the room with toe-tector boots when it failed to play sound properly, I managed to watch the trailer and quite liked it.  A touch surreal, a touch sinister, a touch we're all doomed doomed doomed.  Herein the link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23768213

So - Tanks?


In the Freudian "My gun is bigger than yours" design race, the Churchill AVRE trumped nearly all.

Churchill Crocodile in action.  Their barbecued chicken tasted of petrol ...
 

 The above are variants of the British Churchill tank - incidentally good at climbing hills - during the latter part of WW2.  If a particularly recalcitrant pillbox or bunker were encountered, the AVRE would hit it with a shell the size of a waste-paper bin.  A few rounds of these might encourage the inhabitants to give up.  If not, up tootled the Crocodile, one of the most terrifying weapons of war to ever exist.  It squirted several squirts of unfired fuel, then a last one of definitely fired fuel.  Bunker occupants instantly converted to charcoal.
 
*Tom is actually Czech but chose to become British, showing sound common sense.
** Dark Side of the Moon - come on, I don't need to educate you about this, do I!

Jazz. Cakes. Tanks

Music 101
     I apologise for using an Americanism here - "101" is apparently a Further Education notation for a beginner's class. 
     Jazz.
     What do I know about jazz?  Nothing at all, except I like most of what I've heard, and jazz is a particularly broad church, from the Tiger City Jazz Band to Weather Report. 
     I mention this since Grooveshark (see earlier BOOJUM! posts about streaming musical services) recommended a few jazz works, including Miles Davis - now, him I've heard of - and Gerry Mulligan and Lee Morgan and Art Blakey.  Brilliant stuff!  Probably best listened to at 2:30 a.m. in a smokey basement club through a haze of whiskies and cocktails in the company of Frank Sinatra and Sammie Davis Jnr - you get the idea.

Cakes
     Yes, cakes, a BOOJUM! staple, except this time Conrad is watching not making.  "The Great British Bake Off" commenced again on television tonight, so I sat and watched.  Entertaining as ever. Scary stuff, tho'. Remember for those who fall at the first hurdle, they are being watched by a team of presenters and bakers, plus a BBC camera team, and 12 other bakers besides. And, they are under the whip. Time limits, you know? That's why they use too much salt and grate their thumbs off. I would not care to do it! The Technical Challenge alone is enough to put me off.  Still, I shall probably be watching next week.

So - Tanks?

The one and only truly original Pink - no, er, sorry , Vickers 6 ton Tank
 

The Russian pirated version.  Sadly at the time, no PRI to refer to.

A Finnish version.  No, no, it's a "hakaristi" - predates Adolf by several millennia.

 

This above is one of the front runners in AFV terms of the 1930's.  Created by Vickers, who are still going (Google the Challenger), it was exported across the globe way back then.  At that time the Soviet Union was the China of today - buy a single item, reverse-engineer it, make thousands of copies, see if hapless Western barbarians will buy some from you.
     Now, I wonder, have Vickers retained the services of a no-win-no-fee lawyer who will seek recompense from Russia?

Gunnery Sergeant Hartmann vs. Donald Duck

     Okay, I exaggerated
     This is BOOJUM!  Don't expect boring things like linear thought, logic or sequential argument.
     Nevertheless, ladies and gentlemen, I present in the left corner - Full Metal Jacket!  One of Mr Stanley Kubrick's finer creations.  I love the central conceit of this film - recreating Parris Island and Hue City in the docklands of London.  As a film of two halves you get to see how US Marines are created before seeing what they do.  And, of course, you have the awesome - a word not used lightly here - the awesome Gunnery Sergeant Hartmann*, both hilarious and pant-wettingly scary at the same time.
     To get to the point, at the very end of the film Private Joker narrates a closing speech.  Hundreds of Marines are on the move in the dark, all singing -
     The Mickey Mouse song.
     It makes for a bizarre conjugation - a blazing, shattered cityscape at night with big hairy Marines singing "Who's the leader of the gang, the one for you and me? M - I - C  K - E - Y M - O - U  -S - E" for several choruses.  That's the only circumstance I've ever heard the song and can recite what they sing as it rather stuck in my mind.
     In the right corner - The Disney Corporation!  a bunch of litigious boors who will sue the arse off anyone they think is thinking of impinging on their cash-cow.  Cash-mouse?
  Anyway, suing is big on their menu as the first item.

     The question is, how did Stan get away with that song?  It's not subtle or short or winsome or whimsical or flattering or fairy-dusted.  How did he not get up the morning after and have his wife call out to him "Honey your ass is missing.  I think Disney sued it off overnight,"  ???

So, Tanks?

Wartime Matilda with additional decoration - captured Italian flag

    

The Matilda; or Infantry Tank Mark 2, at the Imperial War Museum, in Caunter camouflage
 

This squat little character is the heavily-armoured British Infantry Tank Mk II, better known as the "Matilda".  A few of these, literally a handful, put such a frightening on the Germans at Arras in 1940 that the Fuhrer almost wet the bed.  They were intended to accompany infantry in an advance and were thus slow, but well-armoured.  Dismayed Italian anti-tank gunners in 1940 and 1941 watched their armour-piercing rounds ricochet of the hull whilst doing no damage at all.  A German commander of a mixed 40-strong German and Italian panzerkeil took his group into action against 3 Matildas.  Two of the Matildas were knocked out but the panzers took so many losses their CO was known as "Panzer Killer" afterwards.
     I could witter on for hours on this subject but mercy compels me to stop here.

Thanks!

     Cakeday
     Today at Chez Connolly it was "Cakeday", in honour of my birthday yesterday and my darling daughter Sally's excellent A level results.  Cakeday has a shallow history, only being instituted a couple of years ago, but it follows an outline, viz:
     Invitation:  specific and general invites are sent out, with times
     Preparation:  Mr Connolly - me - bakes a ton of cakes
     Anticipation:  the premises at 625 are given a clean and tidy
     Participation:  various guests turn up and enjoy cake.
When you have 19 guests turn up at different times in differing numbers across seven hours you learn to wash up and dry dishes and cutlery before the next person arrives ...
     This year, in addition to the usual cake and cookies, we were able to offer Tassimo coffee, and four varieties of ice-cream.

     Nook
     Which is, an electronic book.  I got this as a birthday present and am still puzzling out how to use it.  With a book, you simply turn the pages; there may be an index, and a bibliography, and a list of maps used, but it's pretty basic and has been since some gifted Egyptian invented it 3,000 years ago.
     The Nook, mind you, is a digital device with almost-human cunning and levels of complexity that remind me of the first work I'm reading upon it - "The Diamond Age".

So - Tanks?

A factory-fresh Vickers Mk VI.  Direct offspring of Dalek and Bren Carrier



A Vickers Light Tank Mark VI.  Apparently brassing the cr@p out of the landscape.



Not quite what you imagine when the word "Tank" runs through your mind, is it?  These little articles - Vickers Light Tank Mark VI - were a mainstay of British armour in the early years of WW2.  Bearing in mind that they mounted a .50 inch Vickers machine gun, if you were the enemy and not wearing a suit of armour plate, you were in for a torrid time of it.

52 Today!

My Birthday
Yes it has been 52 orbits round the sun since yours truly arrived to grace the planet with my presence.
    Today I have been baking - Norwegian Pear Cake, chocolate brownies, Nieman Marcus cookies, and Chocolate, Marshmallow and Cola muffins.  Whilst waiting for this lot to bake I've been reading "Engines of Creation" on my birthday Nook, as I'd made a note of this particular title in relation to nanotechnology, in my Book Of Things*.

Old Golden Hen
     Not a pet, or even dinner.


Beer.
 

Sister - or brother - to Old Speckled Hen, I only tried this today and I like it!  A nice light beer, especially so cold from the fridge after working over a hot oven all day.

The Rock
   No, not Dwayne Johnson.

Gibraltar, featuring The Rock (the big thing upper left of centre)

     The British and Spanish governments appear to be having a p*****g contest about Gibraltar at the moment, with all the intellectual firepower of a pair of five-year olds in the schoolyard arguing about whose dad is bigger.  Grow up!
     One local in Spain, quizzed by the BBC, quoted "Why the hell are the British in Gibraltar?"
     Well, mate, because we over-ran it in a war over 300 years ago, and have hung on like limpets ever since.  The locals don't want to become part of Spain, either.
     Now, trust me, the Spanish government now and in the future shouldn't ever ever ever actually acquire Gibraltar under any circumstances.  Why not? Because it makes such a wonderful distraction.  Scandal in the Cortes Generales?  Blockade Gibraltar.  Attempted coup?  Froth about Gibraltar and smuggling.  Royal family member caught doing drugs?  Prevent Gibraltar overflights.  Eurozone bail-out funds require austerity measures?  Complain about nuclear submarines visiting Gibraltar.
    And, whatever you do, don't mention Ceuta or Mellila ...

My Last Day!

 - of being 51, that is.  52 tomorrow.

Birthday Imminent
The rascals at work got me a hamper full of foodstuffs they thought I'd find interesting, and did (Hunter's sausage, pickled mushrooms, incredibly smelly cheese).  Marna came up with a limerick, as it's normally me who produces some doggerel at these events.  And some cheeky, anonymous whippersnapper wrote on my card "Do you have any dark hairs left?"
     This day last year I'd just been offered a permanent job at my current employer, up to that point convinced, and I mean really convinced, that I'd given my worst interview ever.  It was, I believe, the 17th interview I'd had since being made redundant.  Lucky 17th?

More of Food
     Anyone who reads this blog knows I like food, eating it and cooking it.  Tonight it was the turn of potato pancakes.  I found them a bit bland and chucked some Worcestershire sauce in, which improved them.  Currently the Yorkshire Brack is baking, and may need covering with foil to prevent burning.  It's a fatless fruit cake where the fruit soaks overnight in tea to add moisture and flavour, and it keeps well for ages. 
     Tomorrow will find me baking more for Sunday's Cake Day; I may relent and make another Norwegian Pear Cake for wifey, seeing as she loves it so.  It isn't hard to make, it's the baking that bothers, since it cooks at Gas Mark 6 and consequently burns easily if not watched closely.  I find I have to cover it in foil for the last 20 minutes of baking, then cut it up and return it to the extinguished oven upside down in order to get rid of sogginess.

"I'm Walking Backwards For Christmas"
     "Across The Irish Sea" - a ditty by those 50's pioneers of madcap humour The Goons.  Note to any non-UK reader, or indeed any UK reader, not familiar with this lot - go find out! 
     Is this relevant?  Tangentially, dear reader, tangentially.  You see, whenever I get my big sweaty paws on another military history book, the first thing I do is turn to the end, find the bibliography and go through it.  I make note of works that turn up repeatedly, and (true anorak style!) tick off works I own or which I've read.
     Today it was the turn of Simon Ball's "The Bitter Sea", about World War Two as it concerns fighting for the Mediterranean.  The campaign in Tunisia, bordering the Med, involved a certain Gunner Milligan (for which see The Goons) serving in a 7.2" howitzer battery.
     The unfunny thing about Spike is that the Royal Artillery, he being a member, used to make Axis soldiers go pale and quiet when it was mentioned.  They might sneer at Tommy, or his tanks, but the RA, and Spike, were treated with mordant respect.

So - Tanks?

The mighty Bob Semple tank.  New Zealand's finest.  "Finest" spelt "Crap".
 

Behold the awe and mystery of a tank more akin to a cheap Doctor Who monster from the 1970's.  You can imagine it wiggling those machine-gun "arms" and shouting "ELUCIDATE!" in a robotic monotone.
     It would have been highly successful in combat against the Imperial Japanese Army, though.  One look and they'd have died laughing ...

Chin chin!

A Swig of the Cava

I don't usually drink champagne, I don't have a very discerning palate and it's pricey stuff.  However, it was on sale at half-price and my darling daughter had done very well in her A Level exams*, so it went in the shopping basket and we've just gone at the bottle and done it justice.

What I did in my time off**
     Cooking - cornbread, upside down peach muffins, Norwegian Pear Cake, chicken chasseur, corn fritters, savoury rice pancakes, rice and mint salad.
     Writing - now into Year Four of the Zombie Novel, got a few thousand words done.  Also reviewed my wargame rules.
     Reading: another Bernie Gunther novel, "Battalion" by Alastair Borthwick, and Images of War, three copies of a magazine from a car boot sale.  In a curious coincidence, one of the photos in the IoW dealing with the battles around Caen showed the battlefield grave of a Lance Corporal in the 5th Seaforth Highlander, E. McErskine.  "Battalion" is about the 5th Seaforths, and there the soldier is in the Roll Of Honour, killed on the eleventh of June.
     Watching: the third season of Falling Skies, just about to complete watching Episode 10.  Personally I would have ended it here, but those fools at TNT don't listen to me!
     Looking back, I think having a schedule of "Things to Do" might have helped me be more efficient.  But I did make a lot of nice food ...

I don't have to dash off immediately as I usually do on a Thursday, sandwiched between work, baking and Pub Quiz, so I wondered what else to put down.  "Tanks" replied darling daughter.


So, yeah, Tanks


A10 Cruiser in Caunter camo scheme (as used in North Africa)

A10 Cruiser mounting 3" Gun in 1940 European colour scheme



 

You won't have heard of these AFV's*** before, but they were part of the British Army's armoured force in the early years of WW2.  Normally they mounted a 2 pounder anti-tank gun, but the two above have a 3" gun for firing smoke and High Explosive ammunition.  The lower photo is from that Mecca for tankies, Bovington Tank Museum.  Now, I'd read plenty about the A10 and how rubbish it was, but when I stood in front of it in the flesh (so to speak) it was big, blocky, rather imposing and I wouldn't fancy facing it down in the field.

There you go - Tanks!

* A Levels - exams taken after two years of Further Education and which permit access to University courses.
** Three days of lying in, pottering about on the computer and not having to answer phones.
*** Armoured Fighting Vehicles - a posh way of saying "tanks".

Multicultural Me

Well whilst drinking British beer (thank you Bombardier) I am listening to "Sabeltanz", which is German for "Sabre Dance", a composition by the Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov, after eating Buttermilk Cornbread, an American dish.

Is There Anyone Out There?*
     I apologise for not posting a blog  yesterday, but I was busy reading a whole bunch of fan-fiction I wrote six or seven years ago.  Tangentially related to Doctor Who, it recounted the story of an officer in UNIT over several years during the mid to late 1970's, and you know, it wasn't bad. How good I'm not sure, but not bad.
     Then there were the novel-length fan-fiction works I wrote and posted.  I got some very flattering feedback for these, which is nice because I took them seriously.  A lot of the stuff on Fanfiction incorporates all sorts of wishes and wants by the authors  - romance, crossovers with other fictional characters, slight plots extended to extinction, romance, silliness, no spellcheck or grammar correction, romance - you get the idea.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2824071/1/The-Sea-of-Sand

If you want to check out one that got some favourable reviews.

In today's bakery -
     Well, I made buttermilk cornbread in half the recipe's amount, checking if it would fit into a 7" by 11"** tin.  It did, most snugly.  Now I know how to manage a Cornbread Cobbler.  Also, there were Savoury Rice Pancakes - nice, but perhaps a tad bland.  I've not been successful with pancakes over the years, they - and torte - are two bakey-cakey products that seem to baffle me at every turn. No longer!

Mid-August Melodrama
     I don't know what you chaps out there across the world (hello Denmark!) do for your Further Educational results, but in my time it was an occasion of fear, and wonder, but mostly fear. Tomorrow my darling daughter gets her A level results, and I will find out what these are at short notice, for - Lo! - am I not the taxi-driver to take her there and back?
     I know she'll have done extra-specially well in her arts subjects but my fingers are crossed for the English.
     Good luck Sal!

Gotta get going, that zombie novel ain't gonna write itself ....

*Yes, another Pink Floyd reference, and just out of spite I'm not going to tell you which one.  Ha!
** Imperial measures, baby, Imperial measures.

From Titan to Titanic

Actually that should be "Europa" - one of the moons of Jupiter rather than Saturn, but I don't think any big ship called "Europic" ever sank under media scrutiny.


Europa - not the biggest latte ever seen from above.

In an earlier post on BOOJUM! I mentioned one of John Wyndham's science-fiction novels, "The Kraken Wakes", which I like a lot better than "The Day of The Triffids", and I also said I would expand on it further.  Well, here we are:  Expanded! baby, expanded. 

This is so NOT an alien car-boot

     TKW features an alien invasion quite unlike any you've ever read of before; invaders postulated as being from one of the moons of the gas giants (either Jupiter or Saturn).  I would like to work out a screenplay for TKW, and have annotated the book to that intent, but with 101 other things to do, this has been on the back-burner for five or six years.  I had a friend (thanks Moyra!) at work bring back postcards of Falmouth, and in fact worked out the opening scene.
     Which, was, from memory, a couple sitting together talking about creating a record of their recent history.  As the camera pulled back, their casual little chat is seen as taking place on a rooftop.  The camera pulls back further, revealing that the house roof they sit upon is flooded to the upper windows, and that a small rowing boat is tethered to the chimney.  A road sign not far from the house has the word "Falmouth" visible above the floodwaters.  The camera then spins around to look at what the couple can see, and we witness the English Channel, full of icebergs ...

Imagine this, next to the pier selling "Kiss me quick" hats.  Terrifying!

     Not bad, I felt.  But I doubt Hollywood would want to spend $250 million based on that alone.  "$250 million!" chorus a thousand - okay a hundred - okay one or two - readers of BOOJUM!  Well yes.  A lot of the novel takes place at sea, which always makes filming expensive.  Then, too, it is spread across the globe - England, Ireland, Spain, the Caribbean, Indonesia.  Travelling to film abroad costs money, Veronica.    Then you have specific London landmarks mentioned as part of the plot, and after flooding takes place you have specific London landmarks as water-sports venues.
     That's before you get to spend $1 on the cast.  The leads would have to be British (Of Course!) and I wouldn't want to trespass on the casting director's toes, but - Dougray Scott gets my vote as our male lead, and Kristin Scott Thomas as the female, because she's i) an accomplished actress and ii) pretty damn pretty.

Hot. Cool. Damnit, she confuses me!

Bernie Gunther

From Weimar to Havana<
     If some person had sat down and thought "How can we create a detective thriller that would entertain Conrad?" they couldn't have come up with a better idea than Philip Kerr, author of the "Bernie Gunther" detective novels.  Bernie is cast in the classic mould of The Honest Cop, one who will pursue the truth even when it puts him in harm's way, and since we are talking the Weimar Republic, then Nazi Germany and then the Cold War, harm frequently comes his way.  I am intimately aware of the background to the novels, being a sad military history anorak, and find it delightful how Mr Kerr manages to blend the fictional with the factual.
     Also I didn't need to buy the latest "A Man Without Breath" because our local library has it already.

"The Alien Years" vs. "Falling Skies"
     In what must amount to irony, I read Robert Silverberg's novel whilst on holiday in America.  Meh!  A long boring chunter about a family, with aliens thrown in now and again.  Plot holes I could have driven a Challenger tank through. This was one of the last books I ever picked up with the proviso "I will finish this book regardless of it's qualities".  And how do I see it described on Amazon?  "Epic masterpiece".  Sorry, no. Not at all.
     Falling Skies, now there's an alien invasion story that I like.  Only occasionally epic, but very watchable indeed.  Not sure how it will sustain into a fourth series, as Conrad would have tied everything up by the end of Season Three (Conrad says "Beginning - Middle - End").

Cornbread Cook-out
     Last night I made a batch of cornbread.  For all you non-Americans out there, this is an unleavened sweetish bread using more cornmeal than wheat flour, made in large batches.  Inevitably this begged the question from other family members "what can we eat with our cornbread?".  The answer turned out to be Jamie Oliver's Beef and Ale Stew, which is very easy to make and dead tasty.
     While that was cooking, I made a batch of Raspberry and Peach ice cream, in order to use up some of the collection of tinned fruit sitting in the cupboards.  Thus we have Kulfi, Mango Ice Cream, Pistachio and Pecan Ice Cream, Coconut Ice Cream and the Raspberry and Peach sitting in the freezers.  Hopefully the weather will remain baking hot in order to consume these as they are meant to be - whilst wearing swimming gear in the back yard.

Eyes are the windows to the soul, eh?
     Ah, but does it matter what they're looking at?
     I ask because Chris, colleague at work, no intellectual lightweight, recounted all the films he had yet to watch.  I too have a backlog of films to watch, but more pressing and more time-consuming is the mountain of books I have yet to read.  There's thirteen sitting next to me at the computer - and let's see - another ten in the lower cupboard - and another six in the bedside booshelves - not to mention at least two dozen in the upright bookshelves, without venturing into the main storage in the upper cupboard.

< You have to say it out loud.

The "After" photo.  After I'd eaten three 8 inch pizzas against the clock.  For Charidee!