Grab Your Coats

No! Nothing To Do With "The Fast Show"
Especially since he was on his own and that title refers to the plural. Do keep up!
     I came across this little gem of an item yesterday, whilst reading up about the Guy ARMOURED CAR WHICH IS MOST DEFINITELY NOT A LIGHT TANK WITH WHEELS <ahem> just so I get my point across, okay? 
     I think we need a picture as exemplar.  Art?  Art, you coal-eating sloven, wake up!



The mighty Guy, with puny civilian car for scale

     You may not realise it, but back in the summer of 1940 people in the Allotment of Eden were worried that the next bunch of tourists might bring tanks and guns with them - Herr Schickelgruber was not wanted on these shores. 
     Anyway, there was the Coats Mission, the name for a mixed bag of military units led by one Major Coats, all centred in the centre of that modern Babylon, London.  One section consisted of Guy armoured ca - excuse me, ARMOURED CARS - with their guns removed.  This freed-up a lot of room internally, especially since they didn't need to carry boxes of ammunition, which was all to the good, as they were intended to evacuate the Royal Family if the Teutons came with bucket and spade (and tank and gun).

Fit for a King - literally!

     There were several safe houses located across the Allotment for the emergency residence of HM King and Queen; if it came to the worst, then they would have been taken by Guy to Liverpool and evacuated to Canada, escorted all the way by the Coats Mission.  Less a case of grabbing your Coats than being grabbed by them.
     Of course the worst never happened (phew!) but it's interesting to see Perfidious Albion, noted for being woefully unprepared for war, getting it's planning in first.
     Right, motley, I have the butter and jam - do you want strawberry or raspberry?
"Dark"
I have been watching this Teuton drama after a gap of several months, which was a mistake, as I'm now a bit vague about what's been happening: it's a complex web of interconnecting stories and it doesn't baby you with captions or subtitling.  By now two small children have vanished without trace, and the mysterious stalker chap now has a name - "Noah".

Exactly so!

     The series shifts between 1986 and the present day without telling you which is which, a tad sneaky and forcing you to keep paying attention.
     So far we know that time-travel is involved, and that a cave system underneath the local power plant is possibly the location where Things Man Was Not Meant To Know are taking place.  And, tellingly, one of the characters mentions that the events of 33 years previously are being re-enacted again, that being the time taken for an exact overlap in time to take place.

A typical cheery scene

     It certainly is dark, in tone and presentation; one gets the impression that the sun never shines in this part of the land of Teutons.  And the opening credits sequence, with mirrored images gradually shifting about, is verrrrry unsettling.

The Beeb And It's 100 Epoch-defining Novels
Well well well.  Today we take a look at the "Adventure" category, something manly and robust and nothing to do with the earlier chick-lit drivel.  Bring it on!

Adventure

City of Bohane – Kevin Barry

Eye of the Needle – Ken Follett

For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway

His Dark Materials Trilogy – Philip Pullman

Ivanhoe – Walter Scott

Mr Standfast – John Buchan

The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler

The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins

The Jack Aubrey Novels – Patrick O’Brian

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy – J.R.R. Tolkien

     If by the "Jack Aubrey" novels they mean that Napoleonic naval warfare stuff, then I've read the first one.  Hang on, let me check -
     Yes it is, time to go Green on it's ass!
     I don't think I'd enjoy EOTN as I am far too big a hair-splitting pedant to get over any inaccuracies or omissions in the text, and if these are too egregious then the book itself would be badly damaged as it impacted the nearest wall on a regular basis.  THG - I dunno, are these targeted at Young Adults?  Conrad a bit too: long in the tooth; full of bitter cynicism, to enjoy them. 

This looks interesting.

     Tomorrow we tackle "Life, Death And Other Worlds".  I bet you're quivering with anticipation even now.  Quivering*!

Evidence Of Having Entirely Too Much Time On Your Hands
Just as a bit of a filler item, Conrad absently Googled "Huge Lego Builds" and was immediately whelmed by an array of immense bespoke images, of which this one rather stood out.  Art?

And how long did it take you?

     I am fully aware of the hilarious irony here present as BOOJUM! slates someone for wasting time, but come on, really!  How much time and money did our artisan expend creating this article?  (Hint: it consumed 90,000 pieces)
     With staggering mendaciousness, Your Humble Scribe is going to see if there's a Youtube clip of this thing in action, because.

The Weirdest Films Never Made
More reference to Auntie Beeb.  It's okay, I pay my licence fee**.  What they mention further down the page is the Alejandro Jodorowsky version of "Dune", which he tried to get off the ground long before David Lynch did.  Since it would have come in at 14 hours long, we can presume it would have been edited down a bit.  He did manage to get the collaboration of some very high profile artists - Pink Floyd, anyone? but funding proved problematic and the film rights expired before he could shoot anything.

Concept art by H.R. Giger
(No, I've no idea what it is, either)

     This would have brought the "Dune" attempts to three, as there was a television series about a decade ago, and you can bet someone is going to try and either repeat that format or - make a new film.
Finally -
Jim, as I like to call him, was banging on about - James Holland, the fresh-faced author of military history, that's who - was banging on about the casualty rates amongst the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry tank regiment on his talk about XXX Corps on the podcast "We Have Ways ..."
     Hang on, thought Conrad.  That regiment's name sounds familiar.  It was probably mentioned in "British Armour In The Normandy Campaign" - oh, and "Tank Action".  Art?

My edition

     So I dug it out of my Book Mountain, and am going to re-read it and <quivering with excitement> MAKE NOTES!

     Thank you.  That is all.

*  Then again, it is rather cold.
**  I think.  Then again, nobody's ever prosecuted me.