Welcome To Rocket Science!

Not The Mathematics Of Same -
Because, good Lord aloft, that would be stunningly dull stuff indeed - Delta pi and acceleration and foot pounds of thrust and so on - and I'm not trying to send anyone to sleep this early in the evening.
     No, what I'm talking about is a wartime project carried out by Perfidious Albion during the Second Unpleasantness that is so obscure you cannot find any pictorial references to it at all.  Go ahead and try if you don't believe me.
     It was called "Halije", which is "Elijah" backwards, referring to Ol' Ellie getting swept off to heaven in a cloud of smoke and fire.

Ol' Ellie doing his thing

     The Army went to the boffins of the Department for Miscellaneous Weapons Development, no doubt a bit warily, and asked if they could come up with a method of dropping supplies from a great height - without using parachutes.  Parachutes too slow.

NO!

     So the boffins got together and had a think, and decided - rockets!  They would use a platform with rockets attached, which would get shoved out of an aircraft, and the rockets would fire and brake the platform, which would arrive on the ground like a piece of thistledown, and whatever was on the platform would stay hale and hearty.
     In theory.
     As you might suspect, getting it right was verrrrry tricky.  If the rockets fire too soon, they expire and the platform builds up speed again.  If they fire too late, they don't brake sufficiently.  In both cases - Art?

This!

     So the boffins dangled a plumbob on a cable below the platform to trigger the rockets.  This was a disastrously stupid decision that merely increased the incredible unrealiability of Halije.  When the Sinisters came up with air-deliverable AFVs they used rockets to brake, yes, but they used rigid rods beneath their pallets to trigger the braking.  Reliably.  Art?

     
     And I think we will leave the miserable existence of Halije there.  I think I've done quite well for a device with absolutely no internet footprint.
     Now to see if the motley can swim faster than a flock of piranhas that have been starved for a week!

Speaking Of Festivals -We were talking of them yesterday, before you start squawking.  Whenever people speak of Festivals, I always recall the late great Sir John Peel describing seeing three sodden event attenders at Reading as he drove away; all three looked utterly miserable, sheltering from the rain beneath a coat held horizontally over them.  Conrad, being old and set in his ways, has his sights on a rather more civilised Festival upcoming: the Feel Good Festival in Ur-on-the-Roch (Rochdale if we're being formal).

   
     I recognise one of the headline act, Feeder, and actually have <thinks> 3 of their CDs, and they have a pretty good repertoire.
     The other good thing is that I merely need to walk thirty yards from my front door to catch a bus into Rochdale, and at festival end it's only another 10 minute bus ride home.

   Of course, the alternative is to gamble on the weather and go shelter under canvas, as with Bestival this year - which had to be cancelled on account of the INCREDIBLY STORMY WEATHER.  Art?

A good time was had by - none.

  

     Whenever I tell tales about festivals, I always like to bring in a shot or two of the utterly disastrous Eerie Canal Soda Pop Festival, which was a string of disasters one after the other.  I have gone over it in hideous detail elsewhere - can I find a link? - hang on -


https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2017/05/conrad-killer.html

     There you go.  Art?

Breakfast in the ruins. 
(The stinking, smoking ruins)

     Festivals - bad for your health.

If I Knew You Were Coming, I'd Have Baked A Cake
Are those the lyrics to a song?  Our friend Eileen mentioned it once as a phrase and it's stuck in my head ever since.  
     Oh, and I have baked a cake, already, gluten-free Norwegian Pear Cake that I made last night in honour of Darling Daughter's attendance at The Mansion.  I have pictures, too, but because the laptop refuses to accept that my phone is connected or even exists at all, or that such things as phones exist, and that it's all digital trickery anyway and it's all probably done by hamsters - you'll just have to take it on trust.

From which come- Norwegian apples!
(Clever, eh?)

    Okay, a giant platter of sushi is about to arrive, and I must go do it justice by eating my 20 pieces, or more if the others can't manage. 

Chin Chin!