A Bridging Lone

If Any Of You -
 - wabheaded nadgers* come back at me with "You spelled it wrong" then I will reach down your broadband connection and pull your nostril hairs out, one by one.
     Here an aside.  For a long time Your Humble Scribe was convinced that the cover art from Pink Floyd's album "Meddle" was of a human nose, close up.  Art?  Less coal more goal!

A reasonable assumption

     Yes, admittedly, a rather weird set of nostrils, but what else can you expect from an album that has a long section of electronic whale-song imitations, along with crows and dogs barking?
     It turns out to be a pig's ear.  There's a conceptual absurdist joke in there somewhere that I don't have time to dig out.
     Anyway, that has nothing to do with what I intend to bang on about now, which is What Would Life Be Like If The England To Continent Land-Bridge Was Still There?
     There is only one, so that's why it's "Lone".  Now do you see?

Sic

     Commercially, trade carried out from the east coast of England, and especially from London, would favour the North Sea and it's littoral, since trade eastwards would be a lot harder.  Not impossible, but with shipping needing to head north of Scotland in order to reach the Atlantic, more hazardous and time-consuming.  Or, this is where the ports of Over and Dover come in, because goods are transhipped overland between them. 
     Come the year 1900 (approximately) the new, big-ticket engineering project that Ferdinand De Lesseps undertakes is not the Suez Canal - it's the Dover to Over Canal.

As it might have been

    This would radically transform shipping freight from London and enable the exploitation of trans-Atlantic trade to increase enormously.  Then Ol' Ferdy can go dig up Suez.
     Okay, what I want to approach is the military potential of such a geographical feature, because now invasion to and from England is rendered a whole lot easier.  Because neither the French nor English are slow on the uptake, one can well imagine large earthwork defences raised on the landbridge itself to either prevent or slow down any such invasion attempts.  Over time these would become substituted by stone defences.  Art?

There is a precedent: Hadrian's Wall

     Prefacing the Dover to Over Canal, one can imagine that a defensive "moat" would be built across the land-bridge, to further retard any invasion attempts.  Or it could be mostly dug, with both ends left intact, and in time of trouble said ends are undermined, allowing the waters to flood in - and perhaps catching any invaders, to boot.
     There are other societal impacts that the land-bridge creates, which we'll leave until tomorrow.  I bet you never thought a simple bridge would create such profound influences, hmmm?  Wait until tomorrow!

Back To Baku
There was a ballfoot game that took place in the Olympic Stadium in Baku, Azerbaijan, last week, between - er - Chelsea and some other team.  The thing is, both teams were European, and Baku is in Asia.
     Now, Conrad has nothing against the Azeris, and the fans who went said that the locals were very friendly and accommodating, and Baku is a smart, modern city, but - Asia?  Really?

Baku, 100 years ago.  Those are oil wells.

     Enter the BBC's Have Your Say Comments section on the game - I really should know who the other team were but cannot bring myself to bother - and every second comment mentions how unsuitable Baku was as a venue, and why did UEFA (who seem to be an organising body for European ballfoot) award the venue to Azerbaijan?
     Well, the consensus is that UEFA were bribed.  I think every third comment makes this allegation; you might well dismiss this as one of those silly conspiracy theories that abound in the ballfoot world**, yet stay with me on this.

Baku nowadays.  No, those are not oil wells.

     There are no direct flights from the UK to Azerbaijan; not a lot of tourism going on as yet, methinks.  Any ballfoot fans wanting to travel had to fly or drive or rail or taxi hither and yon, at considerable expense.
     UEFA only allocated 5,000 tickets to each team playing, which is apparently a scandalously small amount - I take this on trust, as I have absolutely no idea myself.
     The actual venue was an athletics stadium, which - this gets technical here, for which I apologise - has a large athletics track area between spectators and the pitch itself.  If Art will stop mooning about Mara Corday -

Considerable gappage

     This kept cameras well away from the action, as well as the spectators.  Consequently if you were watching on television you saw some black dots moving on a small patch of green.
     Hotel accommodation prices abruptly spiralled just before the game, which the cynical amongst you might find a most curious coincidence ...
     Oh, and one commenter pointed out that Azerbaijan is a member of UEFA, so it is perfectly entitled to put on ballfoot games.  Yes, except, as already pointed out, Azerbaijan is in Asia, so that's no mean feat.

The point is made

     I could go on - the commenters did, there were 834 comments - but you can perhaps have a surfeit of scrivel.

     Wow.  I never even meant to comment on that.  Ah, yes, motley, I see you cowering in the coal-shed - did I tell you I'd bolted it from the outside after rattling a dozen tarantulas around in a bucket and dropping them in from that hole in the roof?

Freeze, motley!

Finally - 
Blimey, nearly at count, and we've only done two items this evening.  Quick!  Bring on something light and frothy -
     Okay, got it, except - well, there's nothing light or frothy about it.  Art?
             
                                  Tim, the law-breaker Joel                                            Tim, the law-maker Raylanlac
     I have been watching "Santa Clarita Diet" for a couple of months now, which was my introduction to Timothy Olyphant as Joel, the realtor whose life takes a turn for the strange when his wife morphs into a zombie.  I love the dialogue.
     Imagine my surprise when I see him play the part of Deputy US Marshall Raylan Givens, the laconic, stetson-wearing, deadly-with-a-gun character back in his native Kentucky, in "Justified".  That, folks, is acting.

Tot siens!

*  This is not a compliment.  Just to be clear.
**  Yes, really.