Quiver With Gear!

No!  I Haven't Just Mis-Spelled Yesterday's Title
You'll see.  This Intro consists of a lot of mental leaping around, which is healthy exercise for your flabby intellects, which normally sit and fester looking at a mobile phone or "Love Island" at a pinch.
     Recall, if you will, the Ondes Martenot, that intriguing and unusual electronic instrument from the late Twenties, which at first glance appears to be an electric piano.  Art?

An Ondes, with it's various speakers

     The whole keyboard can be loosened and allowed to move slightly from side to side, which allows a player to introduce a vibrato effect.  Not bad for 1928.  There is also a ring on a wire in front of the keyboard that can be used to create sounds instead of the keyboard.  Art?

With Braille keyboard below

     It got used a lot in science-fiction and horror films, such as "Heavy Metal", "Ghostbusters" and that iconic titan of entertainment, "Doctor Who And The Daleks", which is where we go off at a tangent.
     Who composed the score for DWATD?  Why, none other than Barry Gray, who had actually studied the Ondes under Maurice Martenot.  You know, BARRY GRAY, the notable theme composer of futurologist Gerry Anderson's televisual guesses at what your our future would look like.  Ol' Baz owned an Ondes himself, which can be seen on stage here - 

Slightly starboard of centre

     This is the Charles Hazlewood All Stars Collective, playing Gerry Anderson themes.  Classy stuff!

The King of Gear

     That above is from a website devoted to Radiohead and exactly how they create their soundscapes, which is relevant here because their keyboard player, Jonny Greenwood, is a big fan of the Ondes and plays them lots.  So, there you have the "Gear" of today's title, and don't forget that a vibrato sound is a quivering one.
     Motley!  We need to test this Atomic-Powered Clay Pigeon Hurling Device.  We'll stand over here to remotely trigger it, and you can stand right next to it and load the clays.  Yes, we are shouting - you're half a mile away.

To be honest, this looks extremely dangerous.

Conrad's Mind
Yes, yes, yes, I can see your scornful retort - "A nice place to visit but I wouldn't like to live there" or "Psychedelic rubbish-dump full of dancing weasels" or "It's stupid and it works and yes, it's still stupid" or  ENOUGH!  <narrows eyes menacingly> 
     What?  No, I don't have the sun in my eyes - o let's just get on with it!
     About fifty years ago Your Humble Scribe read a novel for young adults that has stuck with him ever since.  It concerned the adventures - perhaps misadventures is closer to it - of an anthropomorphic cat in a world of similar cats.  Nothing too remarkable there, hey?

Continuing the music theme

     Ah, but but but.  At the end of each chapter you could choose what misfortune did or didn't befall the hero, and move on to the next chapter, or one later in the novel.  This precedes the wildly popular "Choose Your Own Adventure" tranche that came out several years later.
     The thing is, I couldn't remember the author or the title.  A bit of a problem, I think you'll concede.
     Your Humble Scribe did recall that the end of one chapter had our hero about to be made to walk the plank, into a sea hotching with hungry sharks.  O noes!  What to do, what to do?
     Well, according to your choice, if you had Our Hero walk the plank and go into the sea, the packets of instantly-germinating turnips he was carrying about his person instantly germinated.  Doing what it said on the packet.

Look don't complain to me about Deus Ex Machina, I didn't write it

     Confused, the sharks go for the bobbing turnips, allowing Our Hero to swim to freedom.
     If you chose not to have OH walk off the plank, then he mournfully wishes a plaintive goodbye to his school chums and teachers - at which point the pirate chief whips off his false eye-patch and reveals himself to be an Old Boy of that very same school, thus jibbing at the scandalous notion of sending OH off the plank.

"Shhhh!  He still thinks he's on the deck!"

     Using a combination of structure and turnips and sharks, and also the dim memory of "Jim Starling", I tracked it down.  Hoorays all round.  Art?

Success.  And - see that cover illo?

     By a curious mental confluence, the author is also the author of the "Jim Starling" novels - E. W. Hildick, who, unusually for a children's author from the Allotment of Eden, also did very well in South Canada.
     <sits back and looks disgustingly smug>*      Now, if only I could remember the title or author of that other novel from way back when, about an orphan and a pirate treasure ...
I Tell Of Telpherage
O sweet Serendipity, how do I love thee.  That's rhetorical, no need to wait for an answer.  Yes, whilst looking up "Telomere", I came across "Telpherage", which I'd previously tried looking up as "Telepherage", and got no results <sad face>.
     If I may quote from Wiki - you don't mind as long as I attribute, do you, Wiki? -

"a transportation system in which cars or other carriers are suspended from or run on wire cables or the like, especially one operated by electricity"

     The reason I sought was because I remember reading somewhere - the details are hazy as it was many, many years ago - that H.G. Wells claimed to have invented a telpherage system for use by the armies of Perfidious Albion in the First Unpleasantness.
     Art!  Illustrate us a telpherage system, quick smart.

              

     As you can see, telpherage systems were nothing new, they'd been around for centuries, and you may have partaken of a ride in one yourself in the guise of a cable-car.   So, not so novel.
     The thing is, Your Humble Scribe has read more books about the First Unpleasantness than he cares to remember, and nowhere is this telpherage system mentioned.  There is an aerial ropeway that was invented by a clutch of Royal Engineers, which is claimed to be oh-so-successful, except, again, I've never read about it.  Did it actually exist?  Did it operate at all?  Was it as successful as a single report claims?  Who knows!

Aha!

     This reprint of the original might very well have details within of telpherage schemes, successful or otherwise, but the cheapest edition comes in at £27 for a Naval and Military Press reprint.  There were only 1,000 copies of the original ever printed, they are rare and expensive things - well over £200 for the single one on Abebooks, whereas "Lucky Les" is available for less than £8 with free postage.  I know which one will be getting ordered soonest ...

I think that's enough wildly abstract wibble for today.  Back soon with more scrivel from the loon!


*  Creative sabotage courtesy Mister Hand!