I'm Alright (And Left And Centre) Jack

Oh Boy
You won't have seen this one coming, mostly because it's subterranean.  Heh!
     Before we continue, you might be a little suprised that I can continue, seeing as how, on Saturday evening, The Mansion was about to be assailed by two of the CIA's most fearsome renegade creations: Clarissa the Cannibal Combat Chicken and Tony the Ten-Ton Terror Toad.  
     Apparently they were only on the scrounge for a cup of tea and a biscuit (which they quaintly called a "cookie") and then they were on their way.  Lucky me.

Lifesavers

     Okay, back to the matter in hand, or afoot.  We have, over the past few days, been discussing pipelines and underground cabling systems and their ilk, and also the First Unpleasantness and this brings me to a very, very obscure topic: the Barratt Hydraulic Forcing Jack.
     A bit of a mouthful, hmmm?  They were colloquially known as "pipe-pushers" or "moles" and we shall use the latter for convenience.  They were, and are, a civil engineering device for creating sub-surface tunnels of small bore.  You can tell the BHFJ is obscure as there are 0% pictures available on teh interwebs.  I can cattle-prod Art into consciousness and have him illustrate the modern equivalent.  Art!

A pretty fair illustration

     They are mentioned in that seminal work "Battle Tactics Of The Western Front" by Paddy Griffiths, sadly without an illustration.  They are also mentioned, briefly, in Perfidious Albion's Official History of the First Unpleasantness, yet only in the volumes for 1916.  Dr. Dunn, author of "The War The Infantry Knew" describes one in operation.  I suspect their use after 1916 was rare or non-existent, for reasons that will become clear.
     The idea of the military mole was that one could fill the tunnel with telephone wires, or gas, or - surprise surprise! - high explosives.  By burrowing under No Man's Land and blowing a tube of HE, an instant communications trench could be created.  Or, if one was feeling especially devilish, extend the tunnel a bit further and reach the Teuton lines, there unto provide them with a nasty surprise.

Yes, it would certainly have an impact if ahead of 100 lb of bang-making materials

     So - why is this device so obscure and ill-known?
     Because it didn't work very well.  That first illustration shows one reason why - tree roots.  Also, No Man's Land tended to have a lot of subterranean crud mixed into it thanks to battle, including bits of houses and railways. If the mole encountered any of these (and it frequently did), it was diverted off-target and not uncommonly ended up under the British lines, where setting it off caused bad tempers, to say the least.  Doctor Dunn describes one pipe, having hit tree roots, being forced to the surface and writhing about like an enormous metal worm.
     So!  No pictures, sadly.  Instead, use your imagination.
     Hello, motley.  Time for a bath to soothe than sunburn; a bath in the juice of one thousand freshly-squeezed lemons!

BOOJUM! Reviews Films
In our own curmudgeonly way.  Basically, we make it up as we go along, based solely on the film title in question, although this being BOOJUM! we will also break this rule if we feel like it, because we can and because we are perverse.*  Let the film clip rip!
"Killing Eve": Okay, so technically it's a television program, not a film.  It has still been on the side of every other bus that's been swanning up and down Tandle Hill, and besides, whose blog is it?  It seems to me that you're in serious doo-dah if you kill off Eve.  For one thing, making an assertion like that means you're on a first degree murder charge.  Next, if you kill off the mother of the human race (according to some best-selling pot-boiler), won't you cease to exist as well?  In which case, how can you exist to go back in time and <Mister Hand interrupts an almost infinite recursion that went on for 78 pages>.

Trevor Eve.  Still living, but not for long.

 "Bohemian Rhapsody":  At last it can be told!  You may, if you were around in the Seventies, be aware of Anton Dvorsak's "New World Symphony" because it was the background music to an iconic Hovis advert.  Quite what wholemeal bread has to do with Czech composers, or a planet orbiting Epsilon Eridani, is anyone's guess.  Hopefully this film will highlight the other significant Czech composer (Bohemia being one of Czechoslovakia's provinces), Bedrich Smetana.  One of my preferred bits of classical music is his "From Bohemia's Woods and Fields".

               Ant            and      Bed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILQ6Ik2sm-w

     - and that there is the Youtube link to it.  How refreshing it is to see some quality music being en-nobled in film!**
"First Man": Now you're confusing me.  This would be Adam, right?  You've just killed off his wife and now what - a gloating documentary about the grieving widower?  Really!  Ghouls like this ought never to be let near the camera.  Oh - hang on - this couldn't be about the President of the United States, could it?  I know his lady wife is called the "First Lady", so by extension - 
     If the latter it might not go down well with audiences in Iran or Ruffia.  Just saying.

Thirst Man.  Close enough.

Okay, it's now time for my constitutional stroll into Royton in order to get some fresh air, exercise and boost my Fitbit total as well.  It's literally a one-way street, since I walk in and catch the bus back.  Hey, you have to take this fitness thing carefully and pace yourself!  Can't have me suffering burn-out.

How Conrad feels exercise ought to be taken.

*  Not in that way, you dirty-minded rascals!
**  This is the only possible interpretation, right