Tricks In The Old Dog Yet

Ha!  Take That, Technology!
<snaps fingers at technology>*.  You will recall my bewailing the inability of my mobile phone to properly link with my laptop; it would charge up yet insist that there were no photographs present.  "This folder is empty" it lied.
     A bit of focussed digging on teh interwebz reveals that there's a set of options about exactly what your mobile does when attached via USB to another device.  I got the Notifications screen up and ticked the "Transfer" box and all was as before, both hunky and dory.

Dory

     So, you get to see the Abebooks Retro Monster montage that was hiding on the phone.  Art?

     There you go.   You've seen a couple of these in close-up, now you get to see them in Cinerama. And you're welcome.

Another Reprise
Again, Your Humble Scribe was earlier wittering and chittering about his latest book purchase, except it was a map set, dating from 1930, which he couldn't show due to NO PHOTOS.  The second map set that accompanies the Official Histories of the First Unpleasantness in France and Flanders, which, if Art will put down his plate of coke -

One of 26 maps present in the case, above

     Like many of these map sets, this one appears in pristine order and has probably been very little used, if at all.  It was, again a frequent occurrence, a library copy, in an institution known as "Scottish Command".  Art?

     The maps look to be in pretty good nick for all that they're 89 years old.  Again, as with other map sets, it's the case itself that soaks up the damp, dirt and punishment, which is exactly what it was designed to do.

What Art was eating, lest you misunderstand.

More Of Matters Martial And Marine
If I were to say "Scapa Flow" you might well exclaim "Bless you!" thinking that I'd sneezed.  Not so.  This enormous natural harbour (and THAT is the correct spelling, Thanks Very Much) in the Orkneys was the Royal Navy's base during the First and Second Unpleasantnesses.  Art?

The Flow, with ships

     We focus here on a story from that font of all that's fit to be writ, the BBC, and now that we can merrily slap down as many photos as we like that are found on my phone, Art?

     Contrary to what you might imagine, said battleships are in fact Teuton ones, dating back to the First Unpleasantness.  You may wonder why these big metal boxes are so far from home, and the answer has nothing to do with magic red shoes.  Since the Teutons had lost the First Unpleasantness, spectacularly so, their entire Grand Fleet had to ignominously sail to be interned at Scapa Flow, where they did what they'd done for practically the whole war - sit at anchor.
     Yes, they did come out for the battle of Jutland, and then they ran all the way back home and didn't dare come out again.  In fact, if they hadn't been so close to home in the first place, a lot more of their ships would have sunk on the way back.  One feels that the Kaiser didn't really get value for money from the Grand Fleet.**

"Form line ahead!  Engage the enemy!  Cross the "T"!" and other naval-sounding stuff

     Anyway, the Teuton Admiral in charge of the Grand Fleet had it scuttle itself, and 52 battleships, cruisers and destroyers went to the bottom of the Flow.  Yup, Kaiser Bill was probably shrieking to the heavens when that happened, after all the time, resources and money he'd put into his pet project.** I mean, some civilians killed by shelling at Scarborough, a drawn battle and a mass scuttle - hardly the stuff of legends, is it?
     Cut to today.  That BBC article details that three Teuton battleships are up for sale, asking prices beginning at something like £185,000.  You cannot refloat them, and their condition after 100 years on the ocean floor would probably preclude that anyway, though you may be allowed to salvage individual items.  You wait and see, there'll be some anorak out there, equally as sad as Conrad but with enormously deep pockets who will purchase these things.

Don't laugh, it could happen.

A Bit Of Etymology 
This is a bit self-referential, but so what?  After all, it's not as if you have to pay to read this scrivel, is it?  And coping with the wild shifts in subject matter is useful mental training.  So, I want - what's that?  Why no, I hadn't planned to stick in a big chunk of one of my Doctor Who fanfictions, which have incidentally been highly praised  b Oh get on with it you prating self-congratulatory hypocritical sack of slurry! 
      WHAT THE HECK!  Is that treacherous toad Mister Hand interrupting again?  I swear -
     "Hunky Dory" as mentioned right up there at the beginning, meaning "All well and good".  It's a phrase from South Canada, mid-Nineteenth Century, of speculative origin.  Brewer's says it may be a corruption of the Dutch word "Honk" which variously means "Station" or "Home", thus to be satisfactorily at home, meaning in a good place.  The Dutch, you see, being quite prominent in the settling of South Canada.

Then there's this

     David Bowie, in his androgynous phase.  Which word, "androgynous" or "having both male and female characteristics", is derived from the Greek, you know.  "Andros" meaning "Male" and "Gynakon" meaning "Female".  And it has one of those classic questions in one track title, "Is There Life On Mars?", which we can pretty well answer definitively "No", though at the time David recorded HD it was still a moot question.

Finally -
I only need a short article to hit the ton.  So - Aspergillus!
     Another one of those words that pop up in my mind, this time whilst walking Edna in the mid-afternoon sunshine - words I thought I'd never write again - shortly before she encountered a batch of sagging helium balloons behind someone's front gate.  She stopped dead, not liking them one bit.  The wind moved them and she liked them even less!
     Anyway, Aspergillus.  I vaguely conceived it as being a fungus, and I was close.  It's a type of mould, which you might encounter on bread or on walls (as mildew).
           



*  Hurts self, cries pathetically - the horrid truth courtesy Mister Hand!
**  Tee hee!