It's A Gas

No!  Nothing To Do With Jumping Jack The Flasher
Or whatever it is.  The Rolling Stones are all zombies, anyway, those that aren't robots built by the record company to keep the money rolling in.
     Once again, the Coincidence Hydra has been biting at your humble scribe's nethers, because what is in the news today but articles about Liquified Natural Gas?  And indeed the BBC website goes into LNG as carried in sea-going tankers.
     "What does this have to do with anything?" I hear you quibble.  "And it had better be quick, that re-run of 'Columbo' is on soon."
     Pausing only to point out that Peter Falk had a glass eye, I shall explicate.*

Having one of these nibble on your behind is no fun

     Back on the 5th of March I mentioned LNG in a post, and that it was transported in bulk by specially-designed shipping, LNG tankers.  There was even a picture, and I think it propitious to include another.  Art?

"Look No Guns" (I think)

     I was lamenting the lack of any pictures of an LNG tanker exploding.  This is because they are designed not to explode, which is good for marine safety and their crews, but bad news for nihilistic bloggers looking for explosions.  BIG explosions.
     Well, time to force the motley to dive into a swimming pool filled with ice cubes!**

Credit Where It's Due
Literally!  As you should surely know by now, Conrad is a pedantic hair-splitter of the first order, who is likely to take up any obscure challenge if it's time-consuming enough.  So, back to "The Battle of Britain", and the end credits.  Art?

     This is a little difficult to discern, so let me just explain that you're seeing a total of 141 Polish and 86 Czech pilots who flew in the real thing.  In other words, these exiles made up about 10% of the RAF at the time.  We may come back to this ...
     The last entry is rather controversial, since it credits a pilot to 'Israel' a full 7 years before that country existed.  There's a story there -
     - you see, I have been reading "The Narrow Margin" which TBOB was based on, and included in the Appendices is a list of all the aircrew who served in the RAF during the real thing, well over 2,000 of them.
     "Excellent!" I said to myself.  "I shall go through the whole Appendix and look for this mysterious pilot.  After all, I can't do anything else, I have a dog on my lap."  Art?

IMMOBILISED BY DOG!

     I found out the pilot was one Pilot Officer George Ernest Goodman, who flew with No. 1 Squadron RAF, with a total of 10 kills and 6 shared.  Although the Appendix lists him as 'Killed' he actually died in action in North Africa in 1941, shooting up an Axis airfield.  One reason he survived the real BOB was due to his considerable pre-war experience in flying, going back to his days in the Officer Training Corps whilst at university.
     He was indeed born in Haifa, which was then ruled by Perfidious Albion as 'Palestine'; since the connotations of 'Palestinian' in 1969 were a bit contentious, the film's producers decided to fudge the issue and use 'Israeli' instead.
     There you go, quite a long post generated from a single word.  Only here at BOOJUM!

"What shall we call this aircraft, that spits fire?"
"The Supermarine Weasel!"

Improvisation And Teapots
As you ought to know by now, tea features prominently in Conrad's weekends, and I can get through a gallon of the stuff if I drain the pot down to the bottom.  Problem is, my current two-pint teapot is not a Bodum one, so there is no detachable filter section to trap all the tea leaves.  This means the bottom of the pot is a-swill with tea leaves, so you get a cup full of debris.  Not only that, the pot is difficult to clean out, thanks to it's weight.  So!  Art?

     This is a strainer for use with my very best china cup, and by coincidence it fits quite handily into the teapot.  Your modest artisan merely pours the boiling water over the filter and waits for the brew to come up to strength, and then extracts the filter and chucks the waste away.
     It really is the small things that improve life, isn't it?

     Oh wow, we're at count.  Already?  Better go have some of that stuff humans call 'food'.
     Later!



*  Peter Falk, the actor.  He played Columbo.  I didn't just choose a name at random!
**  I've no idea what would happen, except that it would be hilarious to watch.