The City Of Bee

No!  This Is Not Something To Do With The Strugatsky Brothers
Although I admit it does have the ring of one of their novels - "The City Of B, surrounded by an inescapable barrier that lets anyone in - but nobody out" and which is a sly, subtle and underhanded critique of the Sinister Union that the censors were too stupid to pick up on -
     Enough of what it's not.  What I refer to is the city of Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell, this blog's hilarious nickname for Manchester.  Art?

The view from my bus stop

     GOTI is currently the host for the "Manchester International Festival", which has been going for about a week, with another week to run.  The trouble about finding out what's happening is that details of events are scattered o'er the internet; home base, though, seems to have been established in Albert Square - named after the German consort of Queen Victoria back before the Teutons were attempting to take over the world - so Your Humble Scribe decided to venture there this bright-ish Saturday morning.
     Conrad got to the venue rather too early, despite the best (or worst) efforts of First Bus.  Art?

Two competitors practicing "Fence-pushing", the latest Olympic sport
Oh, and a broken-down bus, too.

      After crawling at less than walking pace between stops - seriously, a red-headed lady walking past the previous bus stop as we halted there overtook us before we reached the one above - the bus stopped.  For good (or bad).  I did overhear the driver of the bus who picked us up informing the dead-bus driver that there was water leaking under the engine.  This is the fourth First Bus that I recall breaking down on me.  The universe is clearly trying to tell me something.
     Anyway!  Albert Square at 11:15.  Art?

It's causing of-fence, so people were MIFfed.*

     It would seem that nothing happens until 12:00 mid-day, so Conrad went off to Didsbury, as he had discovered a bookshop there that was worthy of his patronage, which is a whole other story.  Didsbury, for those of you unfamiliar with the geography of Greater Manchester, is well to the south of the city centre.  I didn't take any photos of E. J. Morten's, so you'll just have to take it on trust.
     Two and a half hours later, I am back at Albert Square, where things had picked up a little.  Art?

I think that was some sort of disco

     Suddenly I felt faint.  Hunger!  The stomach must be assuaged, so I queued at a stall which dubbed itself "Firebird Hope", probably an anagram of some sort.  Art?

A fire and some birds; not much hope about queuing, though.

     Your Humble Scribe scoffs at that chalked sign, which fibbed about the wait being "10 minutes or less" which by wild coincidence is one of the slogans lies that First Bus uses.  After a good 20 minutes I finally got my chicken bun - Art?

With bag for scale

     It was actually jolly nice!  Of course, Conrad having an enquiring nature, he just had to ask the lady serving these that, since his ticket was number 4089, did this mean they'd sold over 4,000 meals?  She nodded with a satisfied grin, as well she might - guessing at an average price of £5 per meal, that's over £20,000.
     This, therefore, is why I got back late to The Mansion this afternoon and had to put out a bit of fakery, i.e. links to previous BOOJUM!s that went out on the 13th July across the years.  Which, contrarily, has racked up a lot of views.

Conrad - not happy at your contrariness

     Okay, motley, time for some fish and chips.  Piranhas and granite masonry debris!


"Big Week" By James Holland
As you should know by now, IF you have been keeping up to date (your distant descendants will thank you, trust me), Conrad has An Abiding Interest/Overweening Obsession/Creepy Focus (delete where applicable) in military history, primarily land-bound.  Thus aerial warfare is rather a novelty with him, which is why he chose the above work.  That, and I've already got a few of Jim's previous works, and been moderately impressed by 'em.  Art?

My edition

     I'll do a critique of this in detail at a later stage.  No, what I wanted to focus on was Jim's mention of a device that I've never heard of before, a "Dalton Computer".  Given that the events described occur in 1944, this cannot be a computer as we understand them today, and indeed it is not.  If Art will put down his fork, plate and pile of coke -

The very thing

     It's a species of slide rule, as used by the navigators aboard RAF bombers to work out calculations that kept them on the correct course.  This is a lot more complicated than you  might think, because of factors like wind speed.  How strong is it, first of all?  Which direction is it coming from? - because if from ahead, it will slow you down; from astern, it will speed you up; from either side, it will push you off course.  And, inevitably, the wind speed and direction change over the course of the mission.  This is all before your pilot has to take evasive action thanks to flak, or fighters, or cloud, or other bombers cutting you up.  

A 10-ton Flying Mallet

When they say "computer" what they mean is "an artefact that a human will use to manually compute a calculation".
     Of course, it doesn't need batteries and cannot be hacked by the opposition, so it's not all bad news -

Finally -
As is not exactly news, Conrad just loves those Icelandic scamps Sigur Ros, and today he was playing an album of their's that's hard to describe, because the title is "()" and none of the tracks have a name.  No official name, anyway - the band and others have dubbed every one of them subsequently, which takes away a bit of the mythos in my opinion.** Well, I have played "Untitled #6" about 6 times today, and if any television producer is looking for an epic theme tune, you only need pick the 3 minute out-play of 'Untitled #6'.  It really is up there with "Echoes" or "Pounding".
     Iceland - a population of only 338,000.  How do they produce wonderful music in such large amounts?

Reykjavik and background scenery

*  Sorry.
**  The only one that counts.