If I Said "Pontoon"

Would You Associate It With The Card Game?
If so, it shows what a degenerate gambler you are, because it's not what I meant.  For one thing, Conrad is known for having tight control of the purse strings, and throwing money away without having anything to show for it goes very much against both the grain and his principles.  Art?

"3 useful rules for playing the game of pontoon" said the description on Google

     I've got 3 Useful Rules for you: don't play pontoon; if you do, don't play for money; and if you do play for money, make sure it's for pennies.
     Okay, that's what we're not talking about.  What we are talking about is "The Hood Battalion" again, that interesting work by Leonard Sellers, concerning that battalion's role in the performance of the Royal Naval Division.  Their first port of call - literally! - was at Antwerp, where they were sent in order to forestall the Teuton's invasion of Belgium and threatening encroachment upon the port.  Art?

RND men in the lines outside Antwerp (note their distinctive hats)

     In fact their arrival was too late and too little, as the Teutons were very close to Antwerp by this point, and in considerable force, too.  The Belgian army was pretty much spent, being exhausted, outnumbered and outgunned, and the RND couldn't hold the line of forts outside the port either completely nor for long.  They had only been in the line a short while before they were forced to retreat to the west of Antwerp, and if Art will do the honours -

You need to look at right-centre

     By this time the Teutons were at Fort 4, and the only route of retreat was across the Scheldt over a line of rather fragile and definitely flammable pontoon bridges.  One team of volunteers from the RND stayed behind in a Belgian fort to keep it's guns firing, which is one of the pluses of having recruited from naval crews (canny with guns and all that).  Nor was that all.  Promiscuous Teuton shelling had set alight the petrol tanks visible on the map, meaning the RND had to endure a trial by fire in merely getting past them, a task made extra-specially exciting by the shells exploding among or in said tanks.  Art?

The pontoon bridge in question

     Fortunately for the RND's retreat, the Teuton guns didn't have the observation to be able to hit the pontoons, and those blazing petrol tanks weren't close enough to pose a fire hazard, or things would have gone from hairy to desperate.
     So there you go - pontoon.
     There is more to be told of this episode, but not in this post.     Okay, motley, we have duct-taped you into immobility with only your nostrils left open, and we are now going to stick you in a parcel full of foam beads and - mail you to Australia!

Good luck motley

A Symptom Of Morbid CuriosityAn admission, should you need it, that Conrad is indeed a creature of - er - unusual concerns.     Okay, I have been watching "Justified" in a binge-y manner, and am now into the second half of Season Five, and I have to wonder about Cousin Johnny.  Art?

Johnny, as was

     Now, in Season One - oh, hang on SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT! - Ol' John gets a barrel of buckshot in the belly at point blank range, and after that you don't hear from him; the implication is that he's stone dead.
     However -

Not dead after all.  Or, as they pronounce it in Harlan County, "dayad"

     We never get to hear exactly how he survived.  His recovery is an authentically slow process, since it's Season Five, or four years after his shooting, before he's walking around unaided by even a stick.
     Conrad, being of an inquisitive turn of mind - okay, okay, also rather morbid as well - wonders if being shot at point blank range didn't have something to do with surviving the shotgun's shot.  He got in in the guts from only a couple of feet away, meaning that the shot didn't have chance to disperse any, and thus not inflict a wider wound.  Any of you out there qualified to offer an opinion in forensic pathology are quite welcome to chime in.

We want answers!

You What?
It ought not to come as a surprise that Your Humble Scribe is a dinosaur when it comes to fashion, youth, youth culture or any combination of the two.  This is a badge I wear with pride.  So, when I caught the following sidebar title on the Beeb's webpage - Art?

"I arrived to queue all day and still didn't get theYeezys"
(Upper starboard)

     - my response was "So what?"  Conrad does not know if Yeezys are flared denim loon pants, sandals made from recycled tyres, Disney princess dresses or a new variety of mobile phone that sits up and begs in addition to making a cup of tea.
     DO NOT KNOW!  DO NOT CARE!  Whomsoever will have to live with the pain of being Yeezyless from that day onward, in addition to being the butt of Conrad's scornful dismissal, which probably hurts just as much.*

Conrad, with his dismissive face on.

Finally -
The Great British Summer is here, and you can tell because of all the rain.  Yesterday it was briefly sunny, in a mocking fashion, as I stood at the bus stop en route to work.
     Here an aside.  My relentless campaign to get rid of Saturday working is - well, it's not working, frankly.  I need a bit of statistical analysis to manage to put an argument together, and with the wallboards dead for two weeks, I don't have the numbers to crunch.  O well.     Anyway, back to the rain.  By the time I'd arrived in Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell, so had the rain, and though it paused briefly in the afternoon, by mid-afternoon it was back again, in full force.  Art?

Thus

     I know what you're thinking - "O he's just re-using that photo from earlier in the week".
     Sadly not.  In that one the cloud base was even lower.  Art?

     Welcome to the City of Grey and the Great British Summer!




*   Yes, I could Google the term.  But I shan't, because I'm lazy and horrid that way.