What's This? No Metro?

There Were None On The Bus
Conrad is shocked!  What else can he use to stoke up the fires of his righteous rage other than tomorrow's litter-tray liner?
     Oh that's right, everything else.
     I made this up whilst waiting for the 409, which was late:

I rant and tant and vent my spleen.

Conrad: classy complaining machine.

Just give me a nudge and off I go -

Though I need catalysts like The Metro.

     So you see, out of misfortune comes dodgy rhyme.  The world's no better off, is it?

"Fortitude"
Conrad espied* a hoarding with four heavily-dressed characters all looking a bit nippy and cold upon it.
     'I bet that's set somewhere nippy and cold,' I declared.
     Breaking the rules for film reviewing, I dug up a bit of info on Wikipedia.
     Fortitude.  It's a murder drama set in the Arctic.
     Great.  In other words, "The Thing" with no Things.  I bet there's no flamethrowers and dynamite, either.  Tch!  "Drama".  

Fortitude.  Oh, no, hang on -

J. P. Harris, "From Amiens to the Armistice" And The Usual Suspects
Yes, another book about the First World War, in this case "The Hundred Days" that run from August 8th 1918 to the 11th November 1918.

The book in question

     I was struck in reading the Acknowledgements that Mr Harris composed, where he names colleagues who helped review the work as it was being written.  Dr Stephen Badsey - yes, know of him; Dr John Bourne - yep, him too; Mr Lloyd Clark - hmm, a stranger to me; Mr John Lee - oho another stranger; Mr Chris McCarthy - got two of his books; Mr Sanders Marble - got two of his books as well; Dr Gary Sheffield - got umpteen of his books and was cheeky to him on Twitter; Mr Peter Simkins - yep, know him too; Professor Hew Strachan - yep, got one of his books; Paddy Griffith - got a load of his books.
     I wonder - is it possible to be too much into an interest?

Confusing English; Pike and Pikelets
For those of you unfortunate not to live in the Blessed Realm**, let me explain that the "Pike" in question here is not the big stabby stick, viz:

A poke of pikes.  That's the collective noun, right?

     Nor indeed that inspirational role for Tab Hunter:

Captain Pike!

     But rather the freshwater fish, which is a kind of pocket-shark in green:

A pet pike being cuddled by it's owner.  Oh - hang on -

     After kicking the Art Department*** to the kerb, let's try that once again, hm?

An anti-pike pike

     There you go.  The pike has a reputation for being a vicious killer, which is entirely accurate as they are, essentially, vicious killers.  Also not very nice to eat, as Conrad can attest, being full of bones and not very tasty, unlike 

Rosamund Pike!

     I've lost myself.  Where were we?  Oh, yes, the pike.  
     Now that you are familiar with the fish, you might imagine "Pikelets" to be baby pike, all cute and - hmmm, can't have cuddly for an underwater denizen - strokey?

Like this.  Stroke at risk of finger-loss, mind.

     WRONG!
     A Pikelet is a type of crumpet, made without the traditional metal ring to keep the batter in place, thus resulting in a flatter, wider and less circular bread-product.
     Art Department?  Can you uncross your eyes and put down the absinthe long enough to

Pikelets.

Gerry Anderson And Thunderbirds:  More Ergonomic Assessment
I hope you found yesterday's article on Scott Tracy and Thunderbird One food for thought, and especially how hard it would be to breathalyse the pilot of a jet aircraft that can travel at Mach 24.
     Let us shift our attention, not to Thunderbird Two^, but to Thunderbird Three.  Now, here we have the interplanetary spaceship of the Thunderbirds team.  Yes, I know TB1 and TB2 can manage interplanetary travel, but - frankly - would you rather travel to Mars in a Rolls Royce Corniche or either a dump truck or a moped?
     Exactly.
     And here we have a concept that has legs - the International Rescue crew who board TB3 travel to the craft.  There's no gigantic engineering and heavy industrial plant that exists solely to move a huge spaceship hundreds of metres because the Tracy's have lazy legs.

Boarding begins:  please have your passes ready!

     The couch that they sit on gets spirited away into the belly of the beast:

Form and function

     And then the spaceship is launched from beneath the circular ranch-house:

     Please bear this last shot in mind.
     Okay, you're Scott Tracy, you stayed up until the small hours of Sunday, you have a banging hangover and today, Sunday morning, you just want to cuddle up to a glass of fizzy medicine.  You draw the blinds, put on ESPN, pour out a glass of lemonade -
     Elsewhere:  Alan Tracy informs dad that the ISS has lost power and needs emergency help, scramble Brains and Gordon in TB3!
     "WHAT THE HELL!" you shriek as an interplanetary spaceship launches into orbit five yards from where you now lie on the floor, covered in lemonade, quivering with fear and convinced that Brains finally did manage to split the atom -
     
     Just a thought!




* "Saw" for pseuds, translated Mister Hand.
** The UK.  Just so there's no confusing it with Narnia.
*** They're idiots, but they're cheap idiots.
^  That would be logical.  BOOJUM! doesn't do logical!