Follow The Light

"Oh Boy!" Said Conrad
 - well aware of the enormous number of punning possibilities offered by beginning a blog with "Light". First of all we have those pioneers of lightweight pop, Travis, whom your humble scribe has a definite soft spot for, and the track "Follow The Light" from "The Man Who".  Art?

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

    Conrad has a definite plot reserved in the wasteland humans normally call a "heart" for this album, as it was bought as a goodbye gift from the folks I used to work with at Harpurhey.
     "Enough emotional piffle!" I hear you sneer.  "Get on with your hideously convoluted explanation of why we have 'Light' as a theme today.  Get on with it!"

Caution:  this is not Travis
(Although a couple look like Dave Lee Travis)

     Pausing only long enough to confirm that the confidence-building lessons have clearly worked wonders, I shall indeed press on.
     Wonder Wifey, as you should know by now, possesses little to none of that thing called "self-restraint" and still less of that virtue, patience.  So, when she decided that the ceiling roses in the Mansion's kitchen needed replacing, Lo! It was going to be done.  This meant removing and then re-attaching the lights and wiring.  Conrad, who fears change, treated this idea with his patent Dark Frown.
     " - or pay £120 for an electrician to do it," was WW's riposte.  Conrad, who is as stingy as he is set in his ways, had no comeback, and allowed WW to get on with it, solo, as he is tremendously scared of work electricity heights.  He had to depart the house at 3:30 p.m. to get to Pete's stag do on time, at which point one light had been successfully done.  The other was more complicated, having a lot more wires than expected.
     "What can go wrong?" I pondered at the bus stop, wondering if the Mansion I returned to later that day would be a cindered shell; or a vast palace of light*.
     Wonder no more!  Allow me to show you the new bulbs in the kitchen.  Art?

Art - don't be so literal!

     I apologise for Art.  He'll be spending time chained to a hoop hammered into the ground in a distant field for that (as he enjoys being locked into the coal cellar, the fiend).  Allow me to show you the new bulbs in the kitchen -

Extra-large to appreciate the knotten cording

   Well, that's enough of domestic normality.  Let's now move onto Follow The Flight.  Don't worry, it'll all make sense.

The Messerschmitt 163 Komet
Well now, there are some people, Max Hastings amongst them, who are very cross that Nazi Germany lost the Second Unpleasantness because, according to their analysis, they were simply too good to beat.
     Here I beg to differ.  And I have a concrete example.  Recall me mentioning hypergolics**?  and the Me163, one of the most suicidally dangerous aircraft ever invented.  It originated in Nazi Germany and one strongly feels it was built to boastfully prove what technical prowess the Tertii Imperium had - "Look at us!  Look at us!" is not a genuine design spec.  Since the fuels it used were hypergolic ("C-Stoff" and "T-Stoff") there was a good chance of the Komet suddenly blowing up on the airfield tarmac out of sheer explosive enthusiasm.
     It is usually described as the only rocket-powered jet ever, which ought to give one pause for thought - why didn't anyone else utilise similar?
     The tale of woe only begins with exploding on the runway.  Since it was built without landing gear ("Look at us!  Look at us!") it took off on a detachable dolly that frequently bounced back into the lower fuselage on detaching:  "Shot down by yourself" is a peculiar epitaph.

Ready for:  Take off/blowing up/dolly destruction
(delete where appropriate

     Of course the rocket engine provided tremendous acceleration and speed, which meant little to no time to intercept, let alone destroy, the much slower Allied bombers - which was supposed to be the Komet's raison d'etre.
     Next in the chain of problems was that the fuel capacity only gave 7 minutes of power, after which the Me163 became a very slow glider, and an easy victim for any Allied fighters stooging around***.
     The glider bit also affected landing, as the Komet would surge upwards on the slightest updraft when it came in to land, which was another problem as it couldn't go around for another attempt - no power, you see.
     When - or if - it did land, as it had no landing gear ("Look at us!  Look at us!") the pilot had to trust in a rubber strip attached to the bottom of the fuselage to slow, cushion and stop the aircraft, which is asking quite a bit of a strip of rubber.

It's not drunk, it's only landed

     The British captured a whole lot of these aircraft intact, but only one pilot - the awesome Eric "Winkle" Brown, who deserves a whole blog to himself - dared to fly it under power.  All other attempts were made by towed, unpowered aircraft.

Eric.  Yay for Eric!

Lighten the tone, Conrad, lighten the tone^!

How To Speak Cat:  An Occasional Series
Predictably, when your humble scribe entered the kitchen this morning, Jenny was nowhere to be seen - after all, why lie around ready to converse with humans when there aren't any?  However, no sooner had I set up on the table than -

"Mine"

     As you can see, she has now claimed dominion over my books and notes, despite not being able to read a word herself.  The caption helps to translate her smug purr.





*  A line I nicked from this:


** Liquids that spontaneously combust when they combine.
*** And they were always stooging around.
^  Do you see - O you do.