Memory's Stormy Petrels

How's That For Obtuse?
<Conrad is trying to be clever, says Mister Hand>  Yes THANK YOU Mister Hand you traitorous appendage, I'm trying to create a mise en scene* here and you're not helping!
     Okay.  The Petrel is a variety of seabird, also known as the "Storm" Petrel because folklore holds that seeing these birds was a precursor of a storm.  Art?

Art!  My Tazer is ready -

     I'm counting to five - 

Okay, count paused at four

     A metaphorical precursor to misfortune, you might say.  Bad luck ahead, you might say if not infected with lexicomasia.
     "Don't insult him about talking nonsense, I think he has a gun and a block of Semtex," I hear you mutter.  No, no, that's marzipan!
     Okay, let me explain - don't look so relieved! - as I refer to memory, specifically that of your humble scribe.  If you have been reading the blog with any frequency then you know that Conrad is ever one for buying books, usually military history.  My current list stands at over 650 books, which is rather a lot to remember.  I could print off a list and carry it around, yet it would be outdated within weeks and printer ink is expensive.
     So.  When I see this volume in Oxfam, what do I do?

     I flicked through the pages and looked at a couple of chapters and didn't recognise anything as familiar, so went ahead and bought it.
     To my muted relief, I didn't already have it, even if the Introduction was familiar - probably read as a library book many years ago.
     If you are good I may post a short review.  
     If you are bad, I will definitely post a long review.

More Of Animals
No!  Not the Pink Floyd album - and Art, if you post a picture of that, I will lock you in the septic sump. Yes, again.
     Allow me to cast our collective minds back to Monday, when I went to that gig at the Castle Hotel.  Arriving very early, I read the following:

An hilariously ironic title

     This is just establishing a mileu*, as it has absolutely nothing to do with what came next.  Having read through The Skinny - interesting article about Clint Mansell there - I resorted to going back through notes in my notebook.  This is something I rarely bother doing, as Conrad is neither self-aware nor reflective**.  Extant in skeleton form, Conrad is almost ashamed to say they still amused him, apart from the acronym "TWOTF".
     Primed by weeks and weeks of Cryptic Crosswords, I rapidly realised that the " -OT-" was probably "Of The".  What about the rest?  Given my reading habits, " -W- " was likely to be "War"***.  Then, in a lightbulb moment I realised it was "The War Of The Foxes".
     Except it had no foxes in it.  Like that swindling film "Foxcatcher"

Boxcatcher.
Okay, Art, the count stopped at three

Czech, Mate: The ZK383
It may come as a surprise to those of you not familiar with the Czechs, but in the early part of the 20th Century they were one of the Arsenals of Europe.
     NO!  I do not mean a football team!  The arsenal as repository and source of weapons.  Although, for your information, Arsenal a.k.a. Tottenham Arsenal a.k.a. "The Gunners" were a football team formed from workers at the arsenal at Tottenham.
     The biter bit: about a quarter of the tanks that the Nazis used in the invasion of the Low Countries and France were Czech ones, acquired after Munich.
     Any of you not interested in guns^ can skip this article.
     I append a photograph from Ian Hogg's "Infantry Weapons of World War 2", that classic touchstone reference work:

At the bottom

     This was a strange hybrid sub-machine gun stroke light-machine gun.  As you know by now, an SMG fires pistol ammunition, making it handier than the LMG, which fires full-size rifle ammunition.  Except in this case.
     As you can see from the photo, the Zk383 has a bipod, normally found on LMGs.  This makes it much more stable when firing in support of an infantry section.  The rate of fire could be lowered to 450 rounds per minute, which sounds like "bap-bap-bap" and means it's very controllable.  Also, you could change the barrel in seconds, a vital feature in LMGs because their barrels tend to overheat if fired for sustained periods.
     However, you could fold the bipod back into the forestock, and take out a special attachment in the bolt.  This increased the rate of fire to something like 800 rounds per minute, which sounds like "Brrrrrrrrrrr".  Just what you want as a SMG as you skirmish forward into built up areas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlFdhAK5c7Q

     There's the link to a Youtube article from Forgotten Weapons and that killer hippy Ian.

Wow.  Pretty heavy duty stuff.  Let's have lighter material!

Freer Beer
Conrad did the shopping last night, and having filled the boot of our Murdermobile Fiat Qubo with shopping, went to put the robust bag full of pop bottles and beer cans onto the back seat.  Which is when he smelt the beer.
     Now, Conrad has almost no sense of smell^^but if he could smell beer then there was a problem, as indeed there was.  One of the cans had split under the weight of a stone of pop bottles.  Hence I put the cans on the floor of the car.

Gaping hole et al

     In fact only about a quarter of the can leaked, and a lot of that was on the car park before getting in the car.  Still, the Fiat Qubo Murdermobile smelt like a brewery.  "Stank" would be closer to the truth, and I refer you back to my nose.
     "Yes, officer, how can I help you?" ran through my mind on drive home.  "An intoxication test?  Surely not!"





* A scene <translation from Pseud to English courtesy Mister Hand>
** And thus less of a person than The Machine in "Person of Interest"
*** Yes, yes, it could have been "Wibble" instead.  There.  Admitted it. Happy now?
^  Except - how could this be?
^^ Not needed on our hideous icy alien homeworld