A Great Big Pile Of Sh-

It Was Not Possible To Add This In Yesterday
Because I was at work, and the work PCs won't pick up any photographs from my phone, because otherwise Sa- because otherwise my Enormous Un-named Employer would implode in a 97 megaton explosion and destroy the borders of space-time-reality, or something.
     So!  Back to the reminiscences of one Roger Murray-Leach, he who helped design the sets and major props of the Beeb's premier dramamentary 'Doctor Who'.  Art?

The Talons of Weng Chiang.  I think he'd had them trimmed a little in this shot.

     TTOWC appears to incorporate the elements of both 'Doctor Who' and that most celebrated of British amateur detectives, the great Sherlock Holmes, in a Victorian whodunnit time-travelling murder-mystery.
     Okay, this particular dramatic reconstruction was being filmed in Seventies London, so - what does the Location Manager have to remove from in-shot to ensure a willing suspension of disbelief?
     Cars!

Excuse me whilst I plug my Tazer into the mains.  Coo-ee, Art?  Come here, Art!

     You'd better believe it.  They didn't have any cars in Victorian Babylon-on-Thames, so the LM had to go around begging and threatening to ensure people removed their horseless chariots before filming could begin.  Splendid, well done LM, we've gotten rid of all the cars - 
     Oh.
     There was a Porsche left on the street.  The owners had gone away for a week.  Filming was due to start in less than an hour.  The producers had neither the time nor money to have the car towed away.
     "Deal with it!" said the director to RML.
     So - in a television serial shot with horses, that has taken place over many hours, you can guess what resource they have lots and lots of.  The crew covered the errant Porsche with blankets first, and then a layer of horse manure.  Art?

     It worked.  After all, how many people do you know who have complained to the BBC about spoiling the mise en scene with a car that didn't exist in 1887?
     Let us now sit the motley down and feed it egg and cress sandwiches with a nice pot of Earl Grey, shortly before activating the trapdoor -

The Haul
Conrad, with his worrying interest in all things First Unpleasantness, recently bought the "History of the Eighteenth Division", for a fifth of the price that some bafoon on Abebooks is asking for.  This text is 97 years old, yet still hale and handsome - rather like <blatant lies excised by Mister Hand>.  Art?

     97 years old and yet in good nick.  Conrad feels like this is gloasting.*  There are two maps in pockets, which, if Art can show - 

     Impressive, non?  As usual with maps like this, they haven't been touched for many decades, if ever.  I can feel your hissing envy from here.

More Of Overkill
If you work for a large organisation then you are probably horribly familiar with that especially ghastly exercise known as "team-building", where you are forced into doing silly things with folk you are only in close proximity with because they work in the same place, and whom you avoid like bubonic plague otherwise.
     Enter Partick Thistle Football Club's new manager Gary Caldwell.

The man himself.
(Not someone chosen at random!)

     Don't worry, this is nothing to do with the ballfoot game.  No, Mr. Caldwell decided to try a team-building exercise by sending his team on a day out with the Army in Dumfries, where they have a large training establishment.  Cue footballers being shown lots of military kit, lots of oohing and aahing, and then -
     They had to undertake hours and hours of strenuous assault course exercises, which, fair play to them, they managed to accomplish, and felt pretty chuffed about.  Then it was into the back of a lorry for a quick ride back to the canteen and -
     TRUCK COMES TO A SCREECHING HALT AND ALL INSIDE ARE THROWN OUTSIDE AND BLINDFOLDED AND INTERROGATED HARSHLY -
     - and then get to the canteen.  Mind you, it did take 4 troopers From The Regiment Who Shall Not Be Named to bring one of the players down.

     As I said, a touch of overkill, but not a team-building exercise like any other, and not one any of the participants will ever forget, either.  Nightmarish - yes; forgettable - no.
Finally -
I think I should warn you that the publishing schedule of BOOJUM! o'er the next week or so may be a little more erratic than usual, given that it is the Christmas period, not to mention New Year, and whilst I shall have several days off as holiday (hooray!) I shall also be working on other days (booh!), and betimes there are parties and other social events to attend, which will all impact on 1) the amount of scrivel I can produce and 2) How often I can produce it.  Depending on your viewpoint, this is either a blessed relief from a tidal wave of toxic twaddle, or a disappointing drought of drivel.

An evil flower.  Just because.

*  Because it is.