The Theme Is "S"

Yes Yes!
It's been a while since I posted another completely arbitrary list of entities that begin with a specific letter of the alphabet, working from "Z" backwards.  And no, I've got no idea why I began with Z instead of A, although the probability of me simply being perverse for the sake of it probably looms large.
     Also, I'm somewhat short of material.  My bus ride into work this morning generated enough matter for today's first post.  Not getting home until nearly 4 p.m. meant lack of time to sit down and work out what scrivel to add for a second post.
     This paucity hasn't affected my fans (because I have proof that there is at least one out there!) since the blog just hit 24,000 visits.  Obviously most of those are from the English-speaking world, since what we write here would make even less sense than it already does if it were in Jagellonian or Sanskrit.
     Enough witless babble - let the motley commence!

                           
                                      Yes Yes!

"Susuruss"
NO! Nothing to do with medical trusses.  As with far too many words in English, this one has a Latin root.  It means "a whispering sound" and comes directly from the Latin for "whisper", which is "susuruss".

A whisper is hard to illustrate, so here's a Liebig Condenser instead.

     Not many people know of or use this noun, so if you happen to be reading a Doctor Who fan-fiction over at Fan Fiction and this word crops up, odds are that it was Conrad.  But don't susuruss it about.


S'Hertogenbosch
A town in the south of the Netherlands.  For your information, "Holland" is one of the provinces of the Netherlands, not the country itself and the Dutch, who are unanimously easy-going folk, probably get as annoyed as the Scots when being queried if they are part of England?

Conrad once walked here

     Which is a bit off the tangent.  Why this unusually-named town?  Because Conrad spent the summer of 1982 working on a pickled-onion plant just outside it.  He has been left with a fond regard of the Dutch ever since; not only do their trains run on time but they have a pronounced sense of humour, a liberal drugs policy and they got rid of the death penalty mid-nineteenth century.

"Scutum"
I know, I know, two items about the etymology of words.  As with "susuruss" this one is not used nowadays, except in the brand name "Acquascutum" for rainwear and "Scutum Sobieski" for an astronomical term.
     "Yes, Conrad, but-" QUIET!  and I will explain.
     It is Latin for "shield".  So, Acquascutum means "Water shield" in Latin, which is extremely apt for Britain.  The Romans used to call the British Isles "The Tin Isles" whereas if they'd known us better that would have been "The Fin Isles" as the locals need to make like fish to get around.

The Shield of Jan Sobieski.
This photo cannot have been taken in the UK, as THERE ARE NO RAIN CLOUDS!

Soft Machine
I talk of the band, not the book, although they took their name from the novel by William Burroughs.  They were formed in the late Sixties, by Daevid Allen if my grey cells are working proper.  They went on a Continental tour, and then Customs wouldn't allow Daevid back into the UK, as he was Australian.
     Not just Australian, I mean!  He looked suspiciously like someone who consumed herbal tobacco and indulged in wild orgies with sheep in vats of treacle, something like that.  So the group changed direction and headed towards - jazzy rock?  They featured the always interesting Robert Wyatt on drums and vocals.  He later recounted that there was little to no banter on stage between members as they didn't get on.

In the days when serious musicians HAD to have long hair

Splacknuck
I had to look this one up to see if I'd remembered it correctly as I've not read "Gulliver's Travels" since A-Level at night school, which is well before the Berlin Wall came down.
     So what is it?  A creature along the lines of a Capybara, except about twice as big, so that Gulliver is mistaken for one when in the land of Brobdignag, which is not a very pleasant comparison to make:
     "I say, Queenie, yonder critter looks like a giant rat!"

Don't tell him that!

Styria
Let me stop you right there!  Read the word properly.  Of course, if you're Austrian (are you?  then what brought you here?  Just curious!) then you knew already.  This is one of the provinces of Austria.

Notable for an absence of baking desert sands

     Conrad remembers reading about it in connection with medieval European history, when it was probably a kingdom in it's own right.