Lies In The Skies

No!  Not "Lies" As In "Lies Down"
"Lies" as in "deceitful, untruthful, untrustworthy, unreliable and mendacious" - in other words, just about a tick-list of everything to do with BOOJUM!
     As mentioned yesterday, I am reading a work on Perfidious Albion's RAF Pathfinder Force during the Second Unpleasantness, and O my! it confirms my belief that it really is spectacularly unwise to wage war against the denizens of this sceptered isle.  They are rather like a sleeping bear; leave it alone and all will be well; poke it with a stick and - do you have your running shoes on?

Caution!  Dangerous when irked.

     Anyway, much like you, I fondly imagined that the bomber fleets which went abroad from the Allotment to drop perdition upon the foe were merely an accumulation of giant flying mallets.  Not so.  They had to contend with Teuton radar, searchlights, flak guns and night-fighters, to which end the RAF flew some rather sneaky airborne accomplices.  These were aircraft especially fitted out to make the average Teuton's life as hard as possible - but not in the sense of perforating them with bullets.  Oh no.  That would not be perfidious enough.

A rotter through and through.
(Hence probably works for MI6)

     First, you had "Window", which was little strips of aluminium foil.  Sounds daft, doesn't it?  When chucked out of aircraft by the bucketload, however, it generated an enormous radar return, giving the impression that one aircraft was dozens and dozens.  These aircraft of 100 Group would either pretend to be a massive group of bombers heading for a target, or they would utterly confuse the radars along the route of a genuine bomber force.  Under the name of "Chaff" this stuff is still used today.

Window on left, window-breakers on right

     We will return to this subject later - I can see your brain glazing over.
     Right!  Time to put the motley in a pit and use the fire-hoses on it!

Conrad:  Possessor Of A Juicy Rump
Well, it must be a toothsome behind- that Dog Buns Coincidence Hydra has it's teeth in there again.  You will recall that yesterday one of my rants was about the BBC daring to have too many interesting stories on their website for a man whose disposable time was short?  Art - put down that coal and do some work!

     Yes, Art, you'd better look sharp, you're not irreplaceable and we always need a stand-in for the motley until it gets out of Intensive Care.  Now, what follows isn't exactly pop music, as it's based on a folk tune rendered electronically.  Art?

     No, no, not the stuff about the Slutpop Skank, the item above - all about numbers stations, and specifically The Lincolnshire Poacher.  Which we featured here recently.*  I don't recall ever seeing an article about the number stations before, and yet here one is.  Surely this is stretching coincidence beyond the bounds of normative causality?**

Make Mine Macedonian
Here we skirt the thorny waters of European nationalism, politics and Balkan borders.  The borders around that area tend to change over time, as countries either fall apart or get put together, and only this weekend the ex-Yugoslavian republic of Macedonia finally settle a decades-long quarrel with Greece over it's name.  The Greeks, you see, were extremely suspicious of the name "Macedonia", since one of their northern cantons is also called "Macedonia" and they felt that allowing the other bit of Balkans to choose that name meant that they were going to fall upon the Hellenic Republic and wage a bloody war of conquest.  Or nick their postage stamps, one of the two.

The bit of Balkans in question

     However, this is not what I intended to talk about.  What I wanted to explain is that Alexander the Great was not Greek; he was Macedonian.  You might be forgiven for not knowing that about him, rather less so of his father - Philip of Macedon.  Nor is Alexander regarded as "Great" (or ""Meglos") everywhere.  In Iran, which back in the day was known as Persia, Ol' Al has all the appeal of a cross between a demon and a tax-collector.  Art?

Ol' Al doing his thing

     I wouldn't say Ol' Al was exactly treacherous, unlike the inhabitants of a certain sceptered isle, but it was also spectacularly unwise to pick a fight with him him, since he never lost a battle or siege, and he could be a persistent swine when he felt like it.  Tyre, I'm looking at you!
     There you go.  Now you know more about Classical civilisation than you did ten minutes ago.  Don't you feel better for it?



*  This is code for "I can't remember when exactly and can't be bothered enough about either it or you to go look"
**  Or, a bit weird <translation from pseud courtesy Mister Hand>