Apocalyptic Rocket Bombs From HELL!

Or Not.
Frankly, I am un-amused.  There I was yesterday, regaling you with the pathos and power of a Beaufighter strafe across the heart of Occupied Paris, where a single French crow was mightier than the assembled hosts of the Luftwaffe - it collided with said Beaufighter's engine radiator - and I describe it in madly mild mellifluousness as a bit of a "Squabble".
     A squabble!
     Clearly you lot need hyperbole to generate any interest.  Hence today's title.  Forsooth, we shall be looking at the mighty Hawker Typhoon, an aircraft of the Second Unpleasantness, which did indeed rain down rockets.  Rockets, bombs, cannon shells and generally unpleasant invective.  Art?

A storm in a cockpit.

     Most of you will be familiar with the Supermarine Spitfire, an aircraft that greatly resembles a curvaceous ballerina <drifts off into pervy imaginings> AHEM! whereas the Typhoon was more akin to a drunken brickie - big, ugly and dangerous.  It permanently mounted 4 x 20 mm. cannons, which would wreak utter havoc on anything they hit that wasn't a tank.  If it were a tank, then, why, they carried either 4 x 500 lb bombs, or 8 x 60 lb rockets.  Art?

Someone, somewhere, is about to have the worst day of their lives.

     The mighty and informative Sir Ken Adams, who flew these flying artillery parks, told of the "Cab Rank" system that operated in Normandy in 1944.  Briefly put, four Tiffies of a squadron would be standing by on the runway, engines a-racing, battlefield maps at the ready.  Miles away, a Forward Air Controller would radio back a map reference to the squadron, denoting a target he wanted hit.  Off would fly the Cab Rank, and O My! they would pound the ever-lavang crip out of their target.  If, after a rocketing that amounted to almost a ton of high explosive, the target was still breathing and conscious, the next Cab Rank would pile in, whilst the first re-armed and re-fuelled.  If that wasn't enough, the third Cab Rank took over.  
     And there were eighteen squadrons waiting behind that first one.  

The Falaise Pocket 1944

     As other and wiser heads have pointed out, the Tiffy didn't actually destroy that many tanks from the air, since tanks are designed to be hard to destroy.  However, anything else was mere dog-food, and even the mightiest mobile metal fort that the Teutons had was vulnerable to it's track being broken; look no further than film of the appallingly large  explosions resulting from a Tiffy rocket strike and wonder how may track pins were sheared off ...
     So, a Typhoon that indeed brings a hard rain.
     Enough grimness - bring on something light and frothy!

Cake!
Once again I find - hey, this is literally light and frothy, or at least the batter and meringue was until they got baked, see?  see how it all hangs together? - that I have baked a cake and not taken a photograph.  Silly old Conrad.  I could take a photograph here at work, true, except I cannot then upload said photo from my phone <glum face>.
     It was from that new Hummingbird Bakery cookbook I got, and if our resident Neanderthal sluggard Art can put down his plate of coal -

Thus

    This one was the Almond and Macaroon cake, one I've not made before, so the ganterpies at work are going to be witting guineapigs!*

Similar to mine

      I shall have to go cut it up shortly.  I'll let you know.

On Fyre**
Conrad has covered a couple of utterly disastrous festivals before, though the one above took place only a couple of years ago, so it's well within living memory.  It is now the subject of two documentary films, proving that you can make money by documenting human misery (after all, how else does "Coronation Street" keep going?).  It was a truly horrid experience for those who attended, because all the advertising was, to put it bluntly, a colossal lie.  Rather than an incredible luxury resort, attendees were faced with -

Kind of basic, I think you'll agree

     In fact the arranger, one Billy McPartland, is now in prison for fraud.  How are the mighty fallen, hmmm?  If you want a bit more detail on the whole squalid affair, here's a link:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/06/fyre-festival-billy-mcfarland-millennial-marketing-fiasco

     Yet another reason why your humble scribe will never bother going to a festival, as he likes his home comforts far too much.***

SHARKS ARE OUR FRIENDS!!
Still.  I've not gone on about this recently, but I am still ploughing a lonely furrow in trying to rehabilitate the Carcharia.  Since "The Meg" is now but a distant memory, I am glad to see that font of all that's fit to be writ, namely the BBC, promoting harmonious shark-human relations.  Art?

It all ends well!

     This was an encounter between some divers filming tiger sharks gorging themselves silly on the carcass of a sperm whale; "Deep Blue" then showed up and the tigers broke free.^  The enormous, and possibly pregnant, great white then hung around the divers and used their boat as a scratching post.

A mother of a shark.  So to speak.

     And nobody got so much as a scratch.  I know, I know, that's a bit of an anti-climax; I bet you wanted it to make human soup of the divers.  Sorry, no!

Finally -
Ha har!  I have hit the total of 302 pages of "Martin Chuzzlewit", which puts me at 33%.  It's entertaining enough, particularly in giving one an insight into the lives of Early Victorian England, but - My goodness, is it slow!  We have only just reached the point where the titular Martin leaves that wretch Pecksniff, before he can be evicted.
     Down on his luck, penniless, jobless and with no prospects, what desperate resolution does our hero come to?
     He will travel to -
     - America!
     <Conrad directs dark look at the book>.
     We shall indubitably find out how this plan works.

A touch of cliché.  Sorry about that.

*  <cackles fiendishly>
**  Do you see what - O you do
***  Unless it features Siggur Ros, Muse, a reformed Comsat Angels AND Pink Floyd.  With free beer and popcorn.
^  Pink Floyd reference for you there.