Tablets of TERROR!

It's Not What You Think
Although it may not be what I think, either, which would be worrying, eh?  Don't worry, I'll just turn the i-pod up a bit louder and that should drown out the voices in my head.
     Ghost stories!  Which might be subsumed under the larger title of Horror Stories.  A staple of the human race since Hom. Sap. stood upright, I rather gather.  Take Mesopotamia, for example, where you have accounts of the hero Enkidu and the travails of his ghost after his death.  In this case we are talking of the Sumerian civilisation, going back many a millenia.  2700 BC if you want to split hairs.
     How did the Sumerians transcribe the spoken word?  Why, on clay, of course.  Art?

Let's see - "It was a dark and stormy night -"

     You can see where this is going, can't you?  Clay tablets recounting ghost stories - hence Tablets of Terror.  Sorry, TERROR.
     Predictably - you could see where this was going to go, couldn't you? - this has nothing to do with the rest of this Intro.
     What's that quote from Boromir in "Lord of the Rings"?  About suffering so much for something so small, as he picked up the Ring.

Thank you, Art

     You might well say the same thing for that biological blot upon the escutcheon, Bacillus Pestis, as this, too, is very small in the scheme of things.
     Then, too, say hello to my Terror Tablets.  Art?

With pen for scale

     These little rascals are, indeed, little.  However, and a however writ in letters ten feet tall*, they come with a list of possible side effects ranging from drowsiness to incipient heart attacks.

Happy Liberation Day Bulgaria!
In fact this occurred on Friday 3rd March, so please forgive the lateness, especially if you're reading this in Sofia.
     Now, the more paranoid Little Englanders amongst you with a long memory may recall, many long years ago, when European Union laws were relaxed in regards travel and employment for Bulgarian citizens.
     "OH NOES!!!**" shrieked headlines in newspapers like the Daily Mail.  "A tidal wave of feckless foreign benefit-hoovers are going to overwhelm us!!!"  SHRIEK SHRIEK PANIC PANIC.
     Fast forward to Friday.  Currently the only Bulgarian on our floor of 150 staff is Stan (short for "Stanimir"), whom I congratulated on Liberation Day.
     "Liberation from what?" I hear you ask.
     Quite.  This is a question I asked Stan myself.  Liberation from the Sinister yoke?  Royal feudalism?  Russia and the Romanovs?  Barney the Purple Dinosaur?
     None of the above.
     "From Turkey," explained Stan.  Elaborating further, he explained that Bulgaria was under the Ottoman heel to the extent that, whilst we here in the Pond of Eden had railways and the London Underground, Bulgaria didn't even have electricity.

The essence of Evil Imperialism.  No - hang on -

The Haul
As you surely know by now, Conrad is over-fond of military history.  Being in Royton to impose myself on the medical practice there, I missed the 409 bus home and so ducked into Age Concern to nosey through books for a minute or five.
     Result!

That's "Modern World" in case you were wondering

     The selection has a lot of what might be called The Usual Suspects - Von Manstein, Montgomery, Foch, Patton - and quite a few not-so-Usual Suspects.  I may report back o this, so!  be warned.

Who's Sorry Now?
Don't answer that, it's rhetorical.  You will, unless you avoid the news entirely, recall the dramatic events of last month, when there was a major scare at the Oroville Dam.  The headwaters behind the dam had risen as a result of unseasonal rains after years of drought, meaning that the spillway came into use.
     And then some!  Art?

Spill is the right word

     Not only did the spillway come into operation, so did the emergency spillway.  Whilst the conventional spillway has an engineered and symmetrical concrete channel, the emergency one is only a small lip of concrete.
     After the floods have subsided, there is considerable damage to the spillway.  Art?

The beginning

     Once the damage had begun, water pressure and erosion ran their course.  Art again?

"Corks!" about sums it up

     This is why it is not a good idea to challenge Mother Nature, as she usually has more in reserve than you do, and is easily provoked.

Right, slightly shorter than usual as I have an oven-full of Southern Fried Chicken to consume and it's already getting cold.

Chin Chin!

*  None of that metric nonsense here.
**  Apologies for using so many exclamation marks; I wanted to make a point.