Foreign Drivers!

No!  This Is Nothing To Do With Making Bits Of I.T. Kit Work
You know what I mean, when you connect up a digital veeblefetzer to your laptop and a sneering dialogue box comes up "Installing driver software" - at least it always seemed to be sneering at me, if not really thinking to itself "Installing driver software you sap" - and you have to wait 45 minutes with a reboot until your computer's hamsters deem that yes, they can actually make this particular model of veeblefetzer work.

Very possibly a Veeblefetzer

     Well, that's what this isn't about.  Instead it's about E.E. 'Doc' Smith's 'Lensman' series, since your humble scribe is reading the first volume proper: "First Lensman", as published by a publishing house called "Ripping" who have completely disappeared from the scene.*

Oh - and the Lens won't work for women.  Tee hee!

     You see, Lensman Virgil Samms takes a trip to Rigel, in order to scout out any potential alien Lens candidates, and once there is required to travel as a passenger in a Rigellian surface car - perhaps "Alien drivers!" would have been more accurate, if less comprehensible.  Rigellian driving behaviour makes the maddest Italian motorist look like a sane and sensible plodding slowpoke.  Their machines are made out of inch-thick steel, at least, and move at nothing less than insane speeds, with constant violent evasive manoeuvring to avoid collisions.  A couple of inches separation from traffic in front and behind is deemed a ridiculously wide safety margin, and getting dents, knocks, gouges and scrapes on your machine is - perfectly normal.  Not only that, Rigellians have no ears, no sense of hearing and consequently know nothing of sound-proofing.
     Samms has a rough Rigellian ride, it is safe to say.

Rigellian family runabout

     Not only that, his driver had been instructed to drive especially slowly and carefully due to the important status of their guest.
     It struck me as an amusing bit of prose in what is usually very stern and sombre stuff, and also a neat way of encapsulating how very alien some alien races are (Star Trek' I'm looking at you with your "Practically human apart from an odd forehead' races).

A Rigellian, for your illumination.

     This reminded me of a similar scene in "Earthman, Come Home" - of which maybe more tomorrow.  Or the day after.
     Well, now that we've got foreign drivers out of our way, perhaps we can perambulate across the lowlands of the mind and into the Heights of Imagination!**
     Oh, hang on, before we do that, time to squirt vindaloo into the motley's eyes and have it run through Hampton Court Maze!

"The Rockford Files: Whiter Than White And Nearly Perfect"
This is one of the most amusing episodes of the show ever, and one I recall seeing first time around way back in the later Seventies.  It features Tom Selleck as Lance White, a desperately sincere, noble and naive private investigator whom everyone regards with immense respect, regard, fondness or (in the case of the ladies) barely-suppressed slavering desire.  Art?

Lance, being modest yet charming

     The only person not swooning in adulation is Jim, who cannot believe someone as trusting and open as Lance is still alive.  Jim, it seems, espouses a healthy dose of cynicism in one's professional career as a PI.  It's not like the movies nor the pulp thrillers.  Except that it is, when Lance is involved.
     This gig, incidentally, was what got Tom the chance of doing "Magnum P.I.".

 Well, we've explored the inky depths of outer space, the seediness of the long-distance PI, what next?
     I know - MODERN OFF-SHORE CABLE-LAYING VESSELS!  How's that for the white heat of technology, eh?  And no, I don't mean any of the Van Oord fleet, either.  Art?


     One of the most advanced multi-role cable-laying ships in the world.  Not bad, eh?
     It has dynamic positioning, and a great big crane, and it's green!  Spiffing stuff.

     And now - Misery!  Strife!  Bloodshed! Men in tartan trousers!
     
"The Invisible Cross" By Andrew Davidson
If you recall, in 'Journey's End' the 9th East Surrey's make a bloody but successful trench raid, sprung with inadequate planning and time; six raiders are killed and only one live Teuton prisoner captured.  The Battalion CO, a Major, is conspicuously absent from the trenches whilst his battalion is there.
     Now, when the CO is a capable man, as with Colonel Graham Chaplin, commander of the 1st Battalion the Cameronians during most of the First Unpleasantness, things turn out differently.

Some of the Cams plotting mischief with a rifle grenade

     All during the 3rd and 4th of June 1916 the artillery and mortars under his command were 'unobtrusively' making gaps in the Teuton wire (contrast with JE!) and at night on the 5th a reinforced company (probably circa 150 men) raided the Teuton lines.  They slay 8 of the enemy, take one prisoner alive, and lose one man missing (presumably dead as he never makes it back).  This kind of success is noticed at Brigade, Division and Army level; it's not often a raid of this size gets off so lightly and with a live capture, too.

A successful example: British Americans with a strangely-dressed Teuton captive.

     Well, I think that's enough grimness for one afternoon, let us go out on a high note, with <thinks> Sunset over Omsk!  Art?

On the banks of the eponymous river

     - and as old Sol sinks slowly in the west (for if it sank quickly there would be something seriously wrong with Earth's orbital dynamics) to the plangent strains of balalaikas, accordians and hammer dulcimers, the ancient city of Omsk can feel satisfied that it's helped Conrad to reach over 1,000 words today.

Na Dravye!




*  Or have they?  More going on here than meets the eye ...
**  Disgustingly poetic, I know.  What can I say?  The Muse struck