Lightning Skrikes

If Any Of You Protest At The Spelling -
 - then you will be EXTERMINATED.  That is all.  
     "Skrikes" is English slang, derived from "Skrike", which means "To whine and complain in an annoying manner".  If a passing motorist drives through the rain-filled gutter and drenches you with a vile grey slurry; if your dehumidifier has not been working at 100% and some of your closely-nestled books have a touch of mildew; if you have to dismount your motor vehicle's nuclear howitzer because the trunnions are shot - then you do not complain.  Because that would be Skriking.

Close enough

     Complaining is very much frowned upon in the Pond of Eden; if life deals you lemons, you use them to savour your Dover sole, or flavour your Earl Grey (taken, of course, without milk or sugar), or use their zest in a cake.  If you -
     Hang on, where were we?
     Oh - right - Lightnings.  You know, the phenomenally rapid interceptor jet, which we last left Wing Commander Holden stooging around in, above RAF Lyneham.  Art?

ART!

     He's probably off mooning over that Mara Corday calendar Christmas present.  I knew it was a mistake to give him a dozen high-quality large-format photographs of the sulky silky seductress clad only in lingerie and looking wistfully at the camera - er - or so I was told - O look! a flying saucer!

Made up of ZOOM

    Taffy might well have had cause to skrike, as there he was, aloft in an aircraft he had never flown before, unable to eject, unable to communicate with the control tower, unable to saute a dish of mushrooms in a white wine sauce - dammit, the man was at the end of his tether!
     Except not, thanks to his experience  in landing small propellor planes.  These were, admittedly, about a tenth the mass with a tenth the speed of his strap-on missile.  This experience did allow him to land on the third attempt, when he deployed the braking parachute as seen above.
     "Hello!" thought Taffy.  "This runway continues to shorten before me.'
     Skrike, skrike, PANIC!
     It did indeed, because, unbeknownst to Taffy, his timid propeller plane training had caused him to land the Lightning nose-up, which meant tail down.
     Tail being where the braking parachute box was located, past tense - Taffy had accidentally knocked the box off.
     Since you've seem XM135's picture at RAF Duxford, you know that it survived.  There were only about 100 yards left until the end of the runway, mind.

Lyneham from the air

     "Oodles of room!" I hear you chortle.  Not really - Taffy had barrelled down 2,510 yards of runway by the time his steed came to a halt.
     All this traumatic terror took a mere 12 minutes, but it doesn't half make for an entertaining tale!*
My, what a striking sunrise!  I feel inspired -

 

"The lark is on the wing, the snail is on the thorn -

And here is horrid Conrad, a-scowling at the morn."**

"Ecod" Hmmmm.  This not what you were expecting, gentle readers, for I know what you thought it invoked - Art?

2 terrible puns for the price of one

     Your humble scribe has a faint memory of playing this many years ago, and not being impressed that much.
     Anyway, that, typically, is nothing to do with the real subject matter of this item.
     "Ecod" is an exclamation as used frequently by the character Jonas Chuzzlewit, a man of coarse habits and low character, in that interminable tome "Martin Chuzzlewit" (Conrad has reached page 556!). 
     What does it mean?

Nice try, Art, but WRONG.

     It is, apparently, a variant form of "Egad!" which is a further variant of "A God!" and is considered a bit of a wimp amongst exclamations.
     So now we all know.
You WHAT!?
We all know Conrad by now: a horrid boor with no sense of smell and who hates all musicals.  As a thumbnail sketch that's as close to perfection as you can get. 
     Another modern-day phenomenon that irks me to the point of myocardial infarction is - the dancing show.  Any one of them.
     WHAT IS THE ATTRACTION!
     Your modest artisan is still convinced that "Strictly Come Dancing" is all a hoax perpetrated simply to annoy me, and that one day the BBC will come clean and admit this.

TANK!
(Come on, did you really think I was going to put up a photo of <shudders> dancers?

    
O Goody!
As we already know, Conrad is a terrible human being - see above item for an admission of same - and thus he was rubbing his large, impressively taloned hands as he espied the ballfoot game results of last night.  Because they had enabled Have Your Say, which meant the usual torrents of barely-censored excoriation, hundreds of them.  Hundreds!

Makes this look tame and drinkable

     It's almost too much a temptation; one keeps on reading the next ten comments, and the next ten, and the next ten.  Truly, the less pleasant side of Hom. Sap. is great fun to observe.
     You're going to ask which game and which teams, aren't you? 
     To which I must sincerely reply, sorry, absolutely no recollection. 

The "Theatre of Screams"

I NEED To Know
Not "Want", NEED! 
     I refer, of course, to that most excellent of television space-operas, "The Expanse", which is currently filming Season 4.
     Here an aside.  You can get down on bended knee and tug your collective forelocks in gratitude that Jeff Bezos, who is insanely rich due to teh interwebz (or something) decided to pick up the series when those bafoons at Netflix cancelled it.
     The thing is, it's a little hard trying to find out when Season 4 will be out and what platform it's going to be on.

Tell me more, you pikers!

     Doubtless there will be <cough cough> -te torrents available, which is good, as I don't want to line Mr. Bezos' pockets any more than they already are.***


*  Unless you are Taffy.
**  As ripped-off from Browning. DON'T tell anyone I recited <shudder> poetry.
***   Lined with palladium.