The Weasel And The Unicorn

I've Decided
- that the noble and jolly useful weasel is a far more worthy specimen for British heraldry than that lazy so-and-so the lion.  How does the African lion keep our native vermin in check, hmmm?  Not one bit!  Nor could Leo be an effective member of the Tufty Club, as he'd probably consume the other members.
     Oh yes - you're probably wondering about the Tufty Club.  Art?

Weasel, squirrel, rabbit: all icons of road safety

     This was a Sixties initiative to instill basic aspects of road safety into small children.  
     Now, despite Conrad going to bat for the weasel for lo! these many years, I am afraid it still has rather a negative image; the Tufty Club is a rare example of Our Friend The Weasel being presented in a positive manner.  More usually it's in the manner of "The Wind In The Willows", where the villains of the piece are - weasels.

Sheer slander!

     It doesn't stop there - remember "Who Framed Roger Rabbit"?  Judge Doom?  What was his Goon Squad composed of?  Yes, weasels.  Art?     

Crass caricature!

     And yet - and yet - if the Allotment of Eden were to adopt Our Friend as an heraldic emblem, it wouldn't be entirely misplaced ...

Beware The British
I just made up a rhyme on the subject.

O Albion so Perfidious!

They really are insidious.

They scheme and plot,

A hell of a lot - 

They are, in short, invidious.

     In case you don't recognise those words, let me just say they are not complimentary.
     "What are you rabbiting on about now?" I hear you query.  "Explain quickly, for "Police Interceptors" starts in ten minutes."
     Pausing only - oh, you like that, too?  Yes, my guilty pleasure also -
     Where was I? Oh yes, the untrustworthy British.  They come over as all nicey-nicey, playing by the rules of cricket even in wartime, and then - 

     M.S. Factory, Valley:  I came across mention of this factory in connection with "Tube Alloys", the Allotment's nuclear weapons programme during the Second Unpleasantness.  It was originally constructed for the production and storage of mustard gas weapons, and the sole newspaper article I've seen bangs on about mustard gas ad nauseum.  

Dark and satanic but not a mill

     What they don't mention is the use of a gaseous diffusion process at Valley with uranium hexaflouride to research the feasibility of creating an atom bomb.  Well before the South Canadians tackled it, too.  Someday I may go on about UF6, in a "Meanwhile Back In Dangerland" post as it ticks all the boxes.

     The Disney Bomb:  There was nothing remotely amusing about this thing, especially if you were anywhere near it's impact point.  A bored British inventor sat down one day and thought "A freakishly huge bomb is already dangerous.  Just how much more dangerous can I make it?"  So he added a bunch of rockets to it, that accelerated said bomb to 1,000 miles per hour.  Art?

Go on, laugh.  I dare you.

     The somewhat whimsical name comes from a Disney cartoon about this puppy.  It only got used in the last few months of the Second Unpleasantness and had several kinks to work out, but it would still go through 16 feet of concrete.

     Helmover Torpedo:  The name doesn't really do this thing justice.  You will have seen a torpedo many a time, launched from tubes on ships or dropped from aeroplanes.  Art?

Thus.  

     However, this particular monster was essentially a miniature remote-controlled submarine, guided by an aircraft flying overhead.  Here's a picture to give you a sense of scale:

A big baby

      The whole thing weighed in at 5 tons, 1 ton of which was the warhead.  It was nearly 30 feet long, and was intended to travel on the surface until within range of the target, when it would submerge, still walloping along at 40 knots.  Sadly the Second Unpleasantness ended before it could be put to use against the Imperial Japanese Navy (as there had long ceased to be a Teuton one).

The plan

     Enough perfidy for one day!  Let us move on to matters musical and away from exotic machineries of death.

The Flop House - Yes Again
It's not my fault if they're a fecund and prolific Facebook group, who post on a variety of topics.  Why, only thanks to them do I know who Chuck Todd is (I wasn't missing much).
     
     Hang on - got to go see if Ben Folds is still alive - yes, okay, we can carry on -

     Only earlier this week they had a post of interesting bands whom they liked but were pretty sure other people did not know aught of.  Merely local, obscure or poorly promoted, whatever the reason, so - you are probably wellllll ahead of me here - your humble scribe being a scribbling pedantic dinosaur, I wrote down the names of 18 bands that I now intend to check out on Youtube.

Including this lot - Ethyl Meatplow

     Which methodology is how I came to discover Ol' Ben.  Hang on, let me just go check if he's still alive -