I Say, About Will Hay -

You Remember?
Any answer other than "O Yes!  Absolutely" will mean your descendants being sent straight to the organ-banks when my invasion fleet gets here.  Will Hay, the comic actor who was also a gifted amateur astronomer?  And who has an asteroid named after him?
     Relax, this is nothing to do with that, other than to remark that his film "The Ghost of Saint Michaels" is pretty much a remake of "The Ghost Train".  Which you ought to have seen, it's a British classic.  Art?  Less coal, more pictures!

I think his parrot is dead

     No, I don't know why they cast Arthur Akey, and no, I don't know why Richard Murdoch glories in the name of "Stinker", because they're not the point.  The point is that this film is an adaptation of the stage play TGT, which was written by Arnold Ridley.
    Are you still with us?  DO keep up!
     You will be familiar with Ol' Arnie from another British classic - "Dad's Army".  Art?

"Might I be excused?  I seem to need to - that is -"

     It (the play) was the result of Ol' Arnie being stuck on a railway station platform overnight, an experience Conrad can sympathise with thanks to First Bus.
     If you check out Ol' Arnie's Wiki entry, it also mentions his service as a real soldier, in the First Unpleasantness, where he was invalided out due to injuries.  His military exploits aren't given, only his injuries: shrapnel injuries to both legs, an injured left hand, a bayonet wound to the groin, and a head injury caused by the swipe of a Teuton rifle butt.  Conrad can join the dots from these last pair of injuries - the sort of thing one suffers in close-quarter combat during trench warfare.

A slimmer, trimmer Arnold

     Not only that, his great-niece is a big cheese in the Starry War fillums as well, which is probably ironic or something.
     And now, on with the motley!

Petrol-powered Rats
Yes, we are back to The Rat Patrol again.  Hey, it's my blog and I'd already made notes about it.  Art?

Rat attack!

     Now, for my South Canadian cousins and probably 99.9% of you out there reading this, the Desert Rat (or jerboa) was adopted as a symbol by the British 7th Armoured Division.  Art?

A more recent iteration

     Hence that title.  Oh, the Ockers under siege in Tobruk also wholly embraced being called "The Rats of Tobruk", the slouch-hat wearing desperadoes*.
     Now to the problem of TRP being "attached" to the LRDG.  As it happens, the LRDG - or Long Range Desert Group** - swanned about behind Axis lines, covertly.  They spied and eavesdropped and watched and waited, rather than getting jiggy wiv it.  The SAS, on the other hand, got extremely jiggy and TRP would have more realistically have been "attached" to them - except back then in 1967 nobody had ever heard of them or knew anything about them, so a forgivable oversight, particularly if you're a South Canadian.

Probably the most famous desert photo of the Driving Armpits

     And that's enough of this for tonight.

I was going to go over more of the 6th Canadian Brigade's Machine Gun War Diary, but we've just been wallowing in warfare and I think a little levity is in order.

You What?
Conrad, perceptive and acute as ever, is now firmly convinced that The Monkees are going to reform, at least the ones that are still alive.
     "But there is no mention of this in 'Q' or "Rolling Stone"m" I hear you object.

Don't mention The Beatles

     Pausing only to appreciate that you didn't mention that faded worthless serial collection of adverts the 'NME', I shall explain.  
     I make my assertion because there are many a bus poster adorned with chimps - which are the same as monkeys but different - and a banner about "WARP LANE TAPES".  Probably some substandard demos from the Sixties that were found in the back of a cupboard in a landfill by a greedy record-industry suit.
     Bah!

Is that - no, it can't be.

Finally -
I have drunk all my Bovril so I need to restock with Marmite, and some margarine, and - I've only been in the new job nine days, so - can I get away with stale bread dipped in a cup of hot Marmite for breakfast?




*  Rats with artillery and machine guns; to be treated warily.
**  Which really ought to be the Very Very Long Range Desert Group