Chalcedony!

It Doesn't Really Deserve An Exclamation Mark
Though I've not used one on a title for a little while and was getting fretful.  
     For yes, we are once again casting a wary eye at what comes out of Conrad's mind, and in this case it was - Chalcedony.
     In case you've never heard of it, nor seen any, I can tell you it is a gemstone, a variety of quartz whose crystal lattice is parallel in organisation.  Whatever that means; I looked it up in my Chambers.  Art!

What it looks like

     There you go, chalcedony in raw, polished and cut forms.  The name comes from a Greek town, Khalkedon.
     The big question, of course, is exactly why it popped up in my cranium.  It's not as if I have any such jewellery, because I don't have any jewellery.  I don't watch programs nor read media that drool over gemstones, nor has anyone at work been blathering on about their wonderful chalcedony ring and would you like to see it?*
     Okay, you now go away better informed than before about gems and stuff.  So do I.  As for my mind, that's a matter for another day.
     Right, we're up on deck and heading into heavy fog on this freighter, so lets shove the motley down a foghorn and see what happens!

It went down easily enough.

     Oh, a word of explanation.  Because I am working this Saturday <frowns> I have had today off, which has meant getting up late, doing crosswords and drinking tea, and being determined to only post BOOJUM! only once today.

"Martin Chuzzlewit" By Charles Dickens
I took this up again recently.  I've taken it up before, and only got to page 139, out of 915; Ol' Chas could certainly put a lot of words downrange.  At present I am now up to page 257, so over quarter of the way there.  
     Here an aside, which you may skip if you are easily made to feel squeamish or disgustrous.  On Monday I was desperately reading MC on the bus ride home, as a type of distraction, since, shortly after getting on the bus, my bowels announced that they were rather full, and would like emptying.

Oh, believe me, I know the layout all too well.

     "How soon?" I asked my quaking bowels - mentally, of course, you can't do this kind of thing aloud as it worries other passengers - and they came back with "Soon!"  So, a very uncomfortable hour-long journey commenced.  Ol' Chas helped.
     Back to MC.  There are notes in the text that help to explain the more obscure words or concepts, which were doubtless crystal clear to readers of the day.  One such word that cropped up without explanation was "Condign".  This had stuck in my mind from recently watching that wonderful dramamentary "The Ark In Space", when Vira states that Noah, big chief whatnot, has the capacity for "Condign action."

The perfectly delicious Vira, and the decidedly hatchet-faced Noah

     Back to the Chambers!  It refers to punishment and means "deserved or fitting".
     There is also mention made of the "Perkins Steam Gun", and I think I vaguely remember reading about this in passing, back at school.  Jacob Perkins, a South Canadian by birth, had suddenly come to his senses and emigrated to the Pond Of Eden where he set up in business.  He was a clever and inventive chap, always inventing clever things, and in 1824 he came up with a design for a gun that used steam rather than gunpowder.  Art?

The infernal engine itself

     He demonstrated it to the British army's big brass, knocking holes in 1" wooden planks at 35 yards distance with leaden musket balls, and holing a 1/4" iron plate with iron shot.  Apparently if you can get to a depth of 1/4" in a wooden plank, you are talking the equivalent of a serious injury to a member of Hom. Sap.
     Oh, and it had a rate of fire of 1,000 rounds per minute.  This is at least a hundred years ahead of conventional machine gun's ability to fire that rapidly, and anyone using Mister Perkins' broom would have swept a conventional army from the battlefield.  Luckily for the rest of the world, the military leaders of Perfidious Albion were not interested and declined to purchase the Steam Slaughterer; the Tsar of Russia, on the other hand, was desperately eager to get his hot sweaty hands on as many as possible.  Mister Perkins demonstrated a fine moral compass by not selling him any.

Most noble Perkins!

     This reticence is a good thing, since Ruffia and Perfidious Albion both clashed in the Crimean Unpleasantness.  Goodness only knows what refinements and advancements would have been made by the Eighteen-Fifties!  Probably better boilers allowing a much higher steam pressure and thus range, possibly also using streamlined projectiles to, again, increase the range.  Hmmm.  One can see the South Canadian Civil Unpleasantness being fought with nerve gas and atom bombs had Perkins been successful!
     It's almost as if someone were mucking around with history a bit to ameliorate the effects of armaments ...

<whistles innocently>

     Wow, that's a lot to come from MC and Ol' Chas.  I think we need a third topic.  

The Haul
It finally arrived!  Conrad had been sitting and broodingly darkly - I know, I know, how can you tell the difference? - about the non-arrival of a book he'd ordered.  Art?

Stop complaining and turn your head at an angle

     Yesssss, at last!  From the shipping label it appears to have gone from Holland to Germany before arriving in the Pond of Eden.  This means that my collection of text volumes of the Official History Military Operations, original iteration, is now complete.  Of course, that does leave a slew of appendices, not to mention half a dozen map-sets, and another five volumes published by HMSO in the late Eighties, so my labour of love is not over yet.
     I'm so glad you allowed me to share this moment with you.**




*  To which the answer would be a loud "No!"
**  Not that you had much choice.