Conrad Czechs It Out

 NO!  That Is Most Emphatically NOT A Typographical Error
I hate it when you narrow your eyes in that stilted way, purse your lips and shake your head in disapproval, mostly because it makes you look as if your bowels are giving you trouble.
     Czechia, or the Czech Republic, is a nation with a long history, during which it was composed of Bohemia and Moravia as well as Slovakia, except it's almost impossible to make puns out of Bohemia or Moravia.  Art?

Literally Central European

    All you Christmas carollers out there are going on about a Czech monarch when you sing "Good King Wenceslas", you know, and yes, Pilsen and lager are synonymous.  One of the very favouritest things for Sinister soldiers on occupation duty in Czechoslovakia was their noble and excellent lagers.
     Of course, this post being by Conrad, we cannot get away from TANK for long.  Here's an anecdote about the Ruffians, the Czechs and the Sinister Invasion of 1968.  The sly Czechs, knowing what an affinity for alcohol, especially spirits, the Ruffians have, promptly ensured that the gates to all breweries and distilleries were left open.  Immediate problem for Ruffian officers as hundreds of their men end up stupified by drink.

Sinister diplomats in action

     More recently, in the Eighties, five Ruffian conscript soldiers were discovered comatose through drink in a wood.  Their tank was nowhere to be seen.  They had, in fact, sold it to a Czech scrap-metal dealer for a crate of vodka.  Their fate is not recorded.
     Also, Mister Chamberlain and the appeasers really shot themselves in the foot when they sold the Czechs down the river at Munich, because the Teuton forces that consequently invaded everywhere in 1939 and 1940 had 25% of their panzers taken from Czechoslovakia.  Shot in both feet and then feet shoved in mouth, one feels.  Art?

Panzer 38(t)

     I've mentioned this before.  The design was so sound that, even after the tank became obsolete due to it's small gun, the hulls continued to be used for self-propelled guns and tank destroyers.  There's a couple of 'em mocked up in "Saving Private Ryan".
     Anyway, none of that has much to do with the subject matter I should have been talking about, which, if Art will pause in gorging on a plateful of coke -

Tah-dah <drum roll>!

     The initial difference is £0.65, although some of that is because the Staropramen comes in a 660 millilitre bottle, and the Czech Lager is in a 500 millilitre bottle.
     Here an aside - we've not had one of these for a while, have we?  Please note that the Czech Lager comes in a pint bottle.  A PINT.  A PINT BOTTLE.  CONTAINING A PINT. You do not go up to the bar in an Allotment pub and ask the server for "Five hundred millilitres of Smith's bitter", do you?  NO!  Damn and blast all Metric measurements!
     <short pause for pulse and blood-pressure to return to normal>
     The idea is that I shall drink and compare the two different brands of lager, and see if there is any difference.  
     Yes yes yes, I could have just put that at the beginning of this article.  But there is a word count to hit.

See?  It's not just Conrad at it

     Cor blimey, those clouds outside look positively stormy!  Motley, you'd better come inside unless you want to get wet.  Look, I toasted us some crumpets -

Topical Or What -
More about the Toddbrook Reservoir dam, because usually the weather here in the Allotment of Eden is either bland or disgusting, rarely is it ever exciting, so we have to seize the occasion when it happens.
     Okay, so yesterday and today, fire-crews - who seem to be the go-to people for any miscellaneous emergency - were pumping water out of the reservoir in order to lower the level.  Art?

Sorry about the interference patterns

     They have lowered the level by five yards, which isn't bad going, yet still not sufficient.  Their target is eight yards.  This will do two things: 1) reduce the water pressure on the dam, thus meaning less stress for the damaged part, and 2) give any rainfall a hard job in terms of raising the water levels dangerously high.  Art?

RAF diplomats at work

     That's another four tons of reinforcement for the damaged retaining wall.  If the water levels do rise and come over the spillway top, at least there is protection for the clay core of the dam.
     Seeing all this activity brought back a quote from Gene Roddenberry, who had something to do with an obscure cult television series way back when.  "Did aliens build the Pyramids?" he began.  "No, human beings did, because they're clever and they work hard," he finished.
     Fingers crossed for Whaley Bridge, folks.

Of Course, It's Not All Bad News
"Nice weather for ducks," as the saying goes, and it's also a Lemonjelly track if I recall correctly -

Proof, in a creepy kind of way

     The CEASELESS EVER-POUNDING RAINS have ensured that our national flora has been well-watered, and nowhere is this more evident than the beating heart of Little Sodom (Royton if we're being formal), and the old Health Centre site.  Art?

    It's not really evident in this shot, but there's scads of orange blooms now, which weren't there a couple of week ago.  This really is a charmingly bucolic sight, and there was another couple taking photos as I walked past.

And Because Everything Is Linked To Everything Else -
You may recall reading about the British Dam Society earlier today, because I wrote about it.  Very British, don't you think?  Well, the Britishness doesn't stop there, for there is also a Gloucestershire Beekeepers Association.  If they have associations for each county, then -

 - there ought to be a national one, to oversee the whole country <Googles for a result>
     
     There you go.  For, who pollinated all those flowers you see in the middle of Little Sodom?  None other than the industrious bee.
     Tomorrow Your Humble Scribe will be tootling off to work in that might post-industrial city of Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell, whose symbol is -

Told you.  Everything links.

     Cheerio!