Of Fire And Ice

Don't Panic, There's No Songs*
Pay attention, after you get yourselves a cup of tea and a biscuit, since this might take a couple of minutes to develop.
     Okay, let's go to the ice first.  If you live in those pampered southron Elysian fields of the Ice-Rink of Eden, then you may be entirely unaware that blizzards of Arctic intensity have been belabouring our northern climes.  As much as in inch - or even two! - of snow has created utter chaos on our transportation networks.
     On the other hand, it does look attractive.  Art?

Royton, bordering on Narnia

     Some of those amongst us, having an inbuilt fir-coat - only joking, do you see what - O you do - inbuilt fur-coat, are not at all fazed by snow, since it is so novel.  It only occurs on one or two days out of three-hundred and seventy,** after all.  And so they go walloping over and into the drifts, due to said novelty, until - 

"Mum!  This stuff is wet and cold!"

     I can also add a couple of photographs I took at my bus stop, which were to be used as evidence were the managers to quibble when Conrad turned up for work five hours late.  Hey, it's a long commute when you have to walk for twelve miles!

The majestic downhill
(Insane jogger just visible right of bus stop pole)

Uphill

     So there you go.  The "ice" part.
     Now, not so much for the fire next time, as the fire right now.***
     Actually a "right now" composed of "oh about forty-eight years ago now".  You see, at that time the mighty Beeb would broadcast a series of foreign television programs dubbed into English, over the school summer holidays.  This is how the insular English learned of Yugoslavian horse stables, and their encapsulation of the human condition ("White Horses"), not to mention small idiot French children wandering about in an environment HSE would faint at ("Belle And Sebastian").

The Vulcan Neck-Pinch: How To Practice

    It struck your humble scribe that there was another such series, one about Crusaders in the desert -

No, Art, no.  But I won't Tazer you this time.

     Crusader knights in the deserts of the Holy Land (a.k.a. Outremere), if I may be very specific in order to spare Art another Tazering.  Herewith the "Fire" part of today's title.      Who made it?  What was it about?  Where was it filmed?  Most importantly, what on earth was it called?  Because it's about 48 years since I last watched it.
     "Thibodeaux, Knight of the Desert" boldly announced my memory.  "Filmed in Israel".
     Ah, but no!  Art?

Proof I am not raving
(this time)

     Welllll the name is close enough, I think, after the passage of almost a geological era.  Okay, okay, so it was filmed in the Maghreb - the desert regions of Tunisia and Morocco, ex-French colonies.  Not, notably, in Algeria: since Ol' Thib was made in 1968, the Algerian civil war was a bit too recent for comfort.      There you go, another sterling Intro, built out of <thinks> Neutronium For The Mind.
     Okay, time to hurl the motley down the ski ramp on it's belly and see how far it flies off the end!^
"Declension"
Aaaaand once again I must apologise for random word salad popping up in my mind.  Bad Oscar!  Naughty Oscar!  No witty bon mots for you!
     Until I looked it up, Conrad had the vague suspicion that the word was to do with astronomy, which gives us an excuse to wheel in a relevant picture, when Art has finished  sucking the marrow out of his nuclear fuel rod -


Colliding galaxies - 52 million light years distant

     Sadly it is nothing of the sort.  Instead it is something unspeakably dull to do with Greek and Latin gramm ebw5g

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- whoah, sorry, I fell asleep from boredom there.

That Reminds Me -
Earlier in the week <code for "I can't remember when and cannot be bothered to check - the horrid truth courtesy Mister Hand> I put up a picture of a Valentine tank, which I shall endeavour to bring back up.  Art?

Picture!  Tell your story!

     This is a British Valentine TANK, originally from the 17/21st Lancers, the "Death or Glory" boys themselves.  It was captured by the Teutons, and it can't have been that terrible a TANK, objectively, since they used it until it was knocked out in 1943, in Tunisia.  Note the prominent crosses, since the somewhat nervous crew didn't want to be fired on by their own side; that bison outline is the divisional symbol for the 10th Panzer division. 

A poorly Panzer

     This TANK  appears to have been hit by gunfire, with a fire then breaking out about half-way down the hull; you can see where the road wheel's rubber has been burnt.  This must have been an instantly disabling shot, as the tracks are still intact; if it had been what todays imps call a "mobility kill" then one of both of the tracks would have unravelled behind the beast.  The tow cable on the front glacis is still in place, so they didn't try to salvage this TANK.  Note also the absence of hideously mutilated bodies and the open driver's and commander's hatches, which implies the crew got out alive.
     There you go, a little forensic analysis, and probably enough TANK for you today.

That ugly beast, the bison

A Lack Of Laconic
The penny drops!  Conrad is now 55% through that door-stopper of a novel by Chas. Dickens, "Martin Chuzzlewit", and I begin to realise why it's so long:  Mr. D. wrote the thing in instalments, to be published serially in the newspapers.  The longer the story, the more he raked in, the fiendish capitalist rascal.  Chapter 26 is a case in point - pages and pages of exposition and dialogue and narration, all to introduce Jonas Chuzzlewit and his new bride, Merry, right at the end.

I see through you, Chas.

     I looked upon my To Read pile with a touch of apprehension this morning, for By Bergonzoli's Electric Whiskers!  that edition of "Nicholas Nickleby" is even longer than MC.
     Oo-er.



*  George R. R. Martin reference for you there.
**  In metric.
***  James Baldwin reference for you.
^  I know, it's not definitively established if motleys possess a belly.  Roll with it.