I Shall Burn You Black

Don't Worry, It's Not A Threat
Not yet ...  

This will make sense once you read Facebook

     Not at all, in fact, for - who would read these noble lines if you were all toast?   No, I am referring in typical BOOJUM! style to the town of Blackburn, a town of about 120,000 souls in Lancashire, in the north-west of the Allotment of Eden.  It used to be a boom town in the nineteenth century, when it produced oodles of textiles from it's grim northern mills.  Art?

There you go, all dark and satanic.

     "This is peculiarly random, old white-haired biffer," I hear you quabble.  "What brought this reference to an obscure northern town on?"
     I'll get to that in a minute, after I work out your punishment for "biffer".  Before then, let us briefly visit an artefact associated with this town's name.  Art?

Behold the Blackburn Roc!

     This aircraft was built by the Blackburn Aircraft Company, and is widely regarded as being completely useless.  The guns, you see, were in that little turret at the back, which had to be cranked around at the target in order to fire.  I'll bet they weren't synchronised with the propeller, either, so if they fired forward, they'd shoot the blades to bits.  It was used by the Royal Navy either from their own airfields or on carriers, and squadron commanders at the time recognised them as hopeless duds, pleading that they be replaced with Blackburn Skuas.  Art?

Which was marginally better

     None of which is what I really meant to bang on about, it was just a coincidence I felt like exploiting, because that's me getting back at the Coincidence Hydra.
     What the meat of the matter is, is a book of memoirs by a British American author, about his time in an artillery regiment in the Second Unpleasantness.  Art?

Well done, editor - that's an American soldier on the cover.

     Ol' Geo makes it plain in his introduction that he has no time whatsoever for armchair critics of the Canadian efforts in Normandy, and provides an oversight as to what his and his fellow soldier's lot was, which was unpleasant on a good day.  Unfortunately he also repeats several of the old canards about Sherman tanks, which both The Chieftain and Stuart Pender have shot down in flames*.  It's a combination of two editions and comes in at about 1,000 pages.  I have started to read it previously and didn't get that far, but I'm committed now.

Gun, limber and Quad

     We shall most definitely be coming back to an appreciation of this memoir.  One thing I did take away from the Introduction was the number of guns on call for the British Americans when in action.  The 2nd Canadian division, of which the author's artillery regiment was a part, summoned 24 guns per regiment.  The whole division could put 72 guns on an "Uncle" target and do it within three minutes, which is mighty quick work.  If they were feeling irritable and vengeful, they could put a "Victor" shoot on a target, with all the guns of an Army Corps, which amounted to 216 guns.  Under this kind of firepower, targets just tended to Go Away.

One of the Corps' heavies: a 5.5" sending a hundred-pound HE hello.

     Okay, motley, let's play Danger Scrabble - for every point you score, you knock back a shot glass of gin!

Conrad Is Angry.  ANGRY!
Beyond my normal level of simmering, all-encompassing, bilious hatred, that is, for - why yes, this is about a Cryptic Crossword answer, how did you guess?  Ah, the throbbing temple veins and froth on my lips, right, right.
     "The boat's account will give you the bird (8)" was the clue, and I had no idea what it could be even though I had three of the letters, until looking up the solution in next day's Metro.
     I'm not going to tell you the answer, either, because I'm feeling extra-specially horrid.

This Bus Is Dead -
 - it's wrong in the head.  Whilst Conrad was indulging in the wildly interesting and entertaining sport of Waiting For His Connecting Bus, he noticed a stationary 409 in the bus stop opposite.  This bus stop is recessed away from the main road, so drivers use it to pull in and waste time if they're ahead of schedule, which by the law of averages is bound to roll around once every eighty-seven weeks.  Art?

 

     The problem?  That object just to port of dead centre, a yellow mirror on a black frame.  The chap just visible in hi-vis clothing got a ladder out of his van, pulled the whole frame off, removed the mirror, got another frame from his van, put the mirror on that frame, hammered the frame into place and then he was off.
     Of course, it simply could not have waited until the bus got into Ashton Bus Station, oh no, because - er - because - ah - because that wouldn't have inconvenienced enough people**?

Still On The Subject
One of the features of First Bus having amended the 182 and 181 timetables is that they are now worse than before, not merely in terms of frequency or actually doing something conceptually mind-blowing like turning up on time, but in the size of the buses being put into service.
     Your Humble And Annoyed Scribe is now keeping a log of what's gone wrong with the service for a future letter.  Since "It's ****" offers nothing constructive, I shall point out that at rush hour, at peak times, when there are the maximum number of passengers waiting, the bus is inevitably a single-decker.  Art?

No.  But I am feeling merciful and will leave it and Art's tender hide untouched.

     This is the conversational topic of choice amongst passengers waiting at the stop - the correct stop, I hasten to add, since three weeks after the change there are still bus drivers who have no idea where to go.  
     Then what do I see in the Cryptic Crossword answers?

     I think the universe is trying to tell me something.  Dear universe, can you make it easier on both of us and use social media instead?

     And with that, we are done!

*  A topic-appropriate metaphor
**  Well, it's a theory