'Tis The Season Of Slutch

If You Are A Regular Here - 
 - then I give you full permission to move on past this Intro and into the really interesting stuff.
     "No! No!" I hear you call, a little surprisingly since you probably have so much important business to conduct on a Saturday evening.  "Tell us more!"
     Er - okay, then.  As you probably know by now, Conrad resides in that minor paradise the UK, which has a lot going for it in terms of scenery, balance of trade, friendly locals, bandwidth speed and easy access to a motorway network.  One of the counts against it, however, is the weather. This is never less than a fitting subject with which to break the ice at parties, because it can be wildly variable across a day.  Art?

The bus stop view

     Note the airplane just to the left of the lamp-post.  You can see it because it's quite close, whereas Oldham Edge is invisible in the fog and vapours.
     This is supposedly at the beginning of British Summertime, which is almost as big a piece of fiction as First Bus timetables*.  Conrad is firmly convinced that global warming has reduced the seasons in the UK to two - Summer and Slutch.  Summer is two weeks of good sunny bright hot weather, although not necessarily of one day following the other.  Slutch is the rest of the year; grey, wet, miserable and possibly one reason why the British went abroad to establish an Empire.

Heavy And Light And A Bit Of A Fright
Actually a lot of a fright, but I jump ahead.  Bear with me, this item might swerve across the information super-highway a bit.
     I have mentioned that stalwart steely-eyed chap the Iron Skeptic, and then I checked out an item of his on the knee-jerk banning of 0.5" calibre weapons from sale in the State of California, on the factually-challenged grounds that these might be used to shoot down aircraft.

A Barrett Light Fifty.  Not noticeably "light" in any way

     Er - No.  As IS himself points out, the sheer improbability of this is hard to calculate.  Check out Pierre Closterman's "The Big Show" when he (an RAF pilot) describes hitting German aircraft with 4 or 5 machine gun rounds, these being the kind of rounds a 0.5" weapon would fire.  The net effect is nil.  Even 40 or 50 rounds might not have much effect.  On the other hand, hit said aircraft with 4 or 5 cannon rounds and it becomes a collection of flying confetti.
     IS also rather erroneously compares the difference of being shot by a standard 0.223" round and a 0.5" round, and states that he'd much rather be shot with the 0.5" as it expends little energy on you the target and merely keeps going.
     Er - No.  Check out "Sniper One" by Dan Mills, the tale of a British army garrison under a state of virtual siege in CIMIC House in Al Amara, Iraq.  A single reinforcment arrives, not wearing a uniform but carrying a Barrett Light Fifty, which is as big as he is.  The besieging Iraqi militia know very well how far the garrison's normal sniper rifles can reach, leading to some terminally-surprised militia victims of the much-longer ranged 0.5".
     There was a worry that criminals might also want to use 0.5" weapons to commit crime, which is vanishingly unlikely due to their sheer size.  Art?

Heavy duty stuff!

It's My Trumpet So I'm Blowing It
Yet more self-referential stuff.  If you have any kind of memory, then you are aware that Conrad began BOOJUM! almost three years ago, on 16th June 2013.  It was a modest thing in those days, proven that, by it's first anniversary, the hits had risen to 5,000.
     

Read 'em and wee!**

     Here we are two years after that stat, and at 30,000 hits already.  The bad news is, I still enjoy composing the blog - take a bow Art, Oscar, Steve and Mister Hand my fellow conspirators and creators - and as long as it amuses me, it'll continue.

Annnnd For The Next Coincidence
I'm not sure if I included all the weird and wonderful animals that help to round out the blog here - Tony the Ten-Ton Terror Toad, Clarissa the Cannibal Combat Chicken and - always present - the Coincidence Hydra.  Which has an unpleasant habit of biting your humble scribe on his Gluteus Maximus***.
     Take this picture for example - 

The piper on the right

     Actually that's another coincidence, Wally the Wide-eyed Wonder Weasel Walking Wearily <Mister Hand intervenes to cut short the torment> Wolverhampton.
     NO!  What film has Conrad been watching of late?  None other than "The Longest Day", where we meet Lord Lovat and his Special Service Brigade, and also piper Bill Millins.  The pipes ... the pipes ... if there's the slightest bit of the Celt in you then when you hear them in the heat of battle the red mist comes down and you FIX BAYONETS AND CHARGE THE ENEMY AND GIVE NO QUARTER AND KILL KILL KILL - er - so I'm told.
 Conrad loves him some bagpipes.  Couldn't name a single tune bar "Hielan' Laddie", mind.
     And what - upper right, thank you - is this on Facebook?  None other than Lord Lovat and Piper Bill Millins, who walked across Pegasus Bridge under fire, because pipers - get this - never run whilst playing.  They walk^.    

Or, they stand up to make an even better target.

     The story goes that various Germans had Millins in their sights but refrained from firing at him because he was obviously off his rocker, playing that plaid doodlesack.


*  I had to get that in.
**  Sorry, "Weep"
***  Bottom.
^   Cock of the walk, indeed.