How Shockingly Lax!

I Refer, Of Course
To my conduct last night, because when I should have been working on blog content, I was instead doing a Codeword, then reading "Captains Outrageous", then watching The Chieftain discuss the arcane subject matter of autoloaders for tanks - pretty much everything bar creating BOOJUM!
    
     Consequently, I find myself sat in the office on a lovely bright September morning, one of those rare mornings in Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell when being on the seventeenth floor means you can see all the way to the horizon, staring at a blank screen with over a thousand words to type.
     Fortunately inspiration is not lacking.  For one thing, I was flicking through my Collins Concise (which has been getting so many mentions of late that it ought to have a Contributing Editor credit) after looking up "jetsam" when what caught my eye but -

This

     "J.C.B." and they capitalised it, so I shall, too.
     Here we come to one of those little differences that makes the South Canadians regretful that they ever threw off the mantle of being a British dominion*.  We here on the right side of the Atlantic call the above a "JCB" or a "Digger", whilst the South Canadians call it a "Backhoe".

NOT THAT KIND OF DIGGER ART!

     <short long pause as Art is Tazered into a more sensible frame of mind>
     "JCB" stands for the creator of said company's initials, one Joseph Cyril Bamford; though if I were he, establishing a manly construction equipment company in 1945, I would have left out the "Cyril" as it sounds a bit effete.
     Why our trans-Atlantic cousins call it a "backhoe" when it plainly lacks a hoe is anyone's guess. 
     Okay, motley, time to have a snowball fight with frozen TNT**!

The Talking Bus
Actually more like squeaking, squawking bus.  One thing about First Bus, you are rarely without some form of entertainment regarding them; though if you regard being on tenterhooks as regards whether or not it turns up as being "entertainment" is another matter entirely.  They certainly, however, maintain an array of sonic abuse that the Chemical Brothers could sample for variety under "Found Sound".

The boffins at work

     There was that bus with the talking windscreen wipers, and another with dog-whine doors, and last night we had the Squeaking In Tongues version.  With this particular beast, there was a problem with the suspension over a rear wheel, and it squeaked unceasingly for the whole journey when the bus moved, not three feet from my ever-attentive ears.  EEKskweekEEKeekSKWEEKeekKREEKskweekeekkreekSKWEEk - You get the idea.  O how grateful I was for my I-pod, for Your Humble Scribe likes a quiet work environment on his way into work.

Revenge, sweet revenge!

     How many people can make a squeaky bus last for 159 words?  It's a gift, I tell you.

You What?
I have just finished "Rumble Tumble", Joe. R. Lansdale's (for we must distinguish him from all the other Joe Lansdales, mustn't we?) fourth volume in the simultaneously silly and sordid and occasionally extremely violent adventures of Hap and Leonard.  Hap, true to form, ends up being unlucky in love, although this time he doesn't fall into water.
     Anyway, Ol' Joe introduces a device and an occupation that had me scratching my head in bewilderment, wondering if he was merely making something up out of whole cloth.

My edition!

     When Hap and Leonard catch up with Herman, the ex-Bandito Supremo, he's the proud owner of a giant vacuum device, built into a truck.  And what does he vacuum up with it?
     Gophers.
     That's right, the infamous little prairie dogs who dig tunnels non-stop, and whom are the bane of cattle ranchers across Texas, since said beeves are constantly injuring themselves by stepping in the gopher holes.
     Well, such things exist for real.  Art?

Sic.
(Or suck)

     Rather than then killing them, Herman sells them on to a distributor, who pays about £100 per gopher, which then get sold on to the Japanese as pets.  This part I can't vouch for, as the novel is almost 20 years old and the Japanese fad for prairie dog pets may have waned since then, though given how sceptical I was about giant gopher vacuums, I'm willing to take it on trust.

The enemy!

I Can Now Tell You -
 - without having to kill you afterwards.  Which would be a shame, as I like having lots of live readers.  I won't go so far as to call you fans, we're not that close.
     Anyway, yesteryon I mentioned Tangmere RAF Station, stalwart survivor of the Battle of Britain, and 161 Squadron RAF, who were described as a "Special Duties" squadron.  They were based away at different stations, but staged through Tangmere as the accommodation for spies and secret agents was located there, and it was nicely located on the south coast, convenient for commuting to and from Occupied France.  Art?


A Lysander

     Originally half their aircraft were the Lysander, as seen above, which had convenient short landing and take off abilities, as well as lots of room for SOE and SIS agents and their radios, guns and explosives, with which they were an infernal nuisance to the occupying Teutons - just when they think the country's pacified (or terrorised, whichever is closer to the truth) along come people who blow shizzle up, or peach about troop train movements that the RAF can come say hello with bullets.  Oooops!

Preparing to cause shizzle to explode

Oooh, nearly at Compositional Ton.  We only need a short item to get there -

Finally -
Well, we have finally finished squeezing the last elements of horrid humour from the dessicated corpse of "Rapunzel" - the story not the lass, I hasten to add, we're wicked but not that wicked, and I enjoyed beating the story with a metaphorical club so much I'm going to do it again and again.  With a different story, I also hasten to add, as doing the same thing eighteen times in a row would probably be less than popular.

And with that, we are done!

*  Shut up.  I can dream, can't I?
**  I don't think this is actually dangerous, but stand well clear just in case.