View From A Hill

This, I Hope, Will Show You How Clever I Am
For Your Humble Scribe loves nothing more than to bask in the adulation of the adoring masses; at least I think I would, it's never happened yet*.
     Okay, let me hurl you from the comfort and safety of your cosy domicile, into the gnashing teeth of a British winter morning, bleak, black and with rain being driven almost horizontally by the near-hurricane winds.  Have I set the scene with sufficient gravitas?
     Well, then imagine Conrad standing, forlorn, at the bus stop in this atrocious weather, with rain dripping off his nose.  His eyes are cast up to the skies with a curse on his lips.
     NO LONGER WILL I ENDURE THIS!
     My normal bus stop is about thirty yards from The Mansion, but there is a shelter five minutes walk further up towards Rochdale, and I've decided to walk there instead of being turned into a soggy, resentful mass of misery.  Art?

     This is the view at the top of Tandle Hill, which is where today's title come from - partially.
     You see, I remembered that there's also a track by The Chameleons (those sons of Manchester) called "View From A Hill", from their first album "Script of the Bridge".  Art?

Mark, singer and bass player

     It is, in fact, the last track on the album, which is a great collection of songs and if you haven't got it THEN YOU SHOULD DO.  Just a suggestion.
     What's that?  The lyrics?  O go on then.  

Feel myself falling to the ground

Solitary silence there's no sound

Open my eyes and look around

Colours and concepts that confound
All around


Pick myself up and take the air

The fragrance of children everywhere

Slowly absorbed into my square

Debating what is and isn't there
Who cares.


You wait until your time comes round again

     I have no idea of what it means; answers on a postcard to The Mansion or in the Comments.
     Then again - here comes the clever! - there is a short story by M. R. James which is also entitled "View From A Hill".  Subtle as ever, it relates the chilling tale of a visitor to the South-West who stumbles across a pair of "unusual" binoculars and a creepy hill which had been the site of a gallows long decades before.

Nicely done

     Our hero is the unwitting victim of an expired gentleman who, in order to see What Man Was Not Meant To See, had taken to boiling the bo - but that's enough of that.  There's also a BBC television adaptation that, as seems common with these things, goes much too far.
     I think the motley is hiding behind the sofa.  I'll just go slam the door to find out.

Dune You Know The Way To San Jose?
It transpires that San Jose isn't very elevated at all, nor is it very sandy, though it is in Silicon Valley, and sand is actually silicon dioxide.  I was hoping it would be established atop a towering mountain, and then we could continue the "View From A Hill" theme, but 25 yards above sea level will simply not cut it.  The city is surrounded by hills; do you thing that counts?

Look - skyscrapers - artificial hills!

     As you may have guessed, this item refers back to that highly-esteemed and successful sci-fi novel, "Dune".  You only need read that one, anything else that came after is redundant.  Art?

Spice harvester, ornithopters and Fremen

     Well now, it seems that Denis Villeneuve is directing a new film of the novel, due to come out next year; Conrad entirely missed this and might need to Google a bit to get up to speed-  if it is actually being made and is not languishing in Development Hell.  

Mr DV

     I will say this: your production designer and associates are going to really need to bring their best game to the film, which will only relate half of the novel; this will be due to the cost of such a film and as a safety precaution if it doesn't do well (remember Ralph Bakshi's "Lord of the Rings" that got no further than the Gladden Fields?)

Whilst On The Subject Of Sci-Fi And Rebellions -
It seems that the minor but indefatigable and irrepressible forces of the Rebel Alliance have, once again, managed to overthrow the Imperial military machine.  Art?

"Ouch"

     Thankfully it hasn't fallen apart the way that Lego sculpture did, pictured yesteryon.  Conrad wonders if it will be back on it's pedestal tomorrow**!

When Is A PAL Not Your Friend?
When you are trying to dismantle, disassemble or otherwise muck about with that nuclear weapon you found lying around at that accident black-spot on the A625, just outside Saffron Walden***.  Art?

"I dunno.  Perhaps hit it with a hammer?"

         A "Permissive Action Link" is a physical piece of kit within the bomb itself that permits the detonation process to initiate and proceed; were you to foolishly try to dismantle that same nuclear warhead the PALs would disengage and - nothing would happen.  Except perhaps the release of a whole lot of cyanide gas, although this is purely hearsay, and nobody's been daft enough to try it for real.

A PAL

     So much, at least, we know from open-source literature.  The real state of PALs is likely to be at least a decade more advanced than what we are currently aware of, so beware! nuclear bomb stealers, because that 150 kiloton warhead hiding in your boot might very well get disarmed by telepathy long-distance remote-control.  Plus - do I smell almonds?

More Of Jocks
Nothing to do with the Scots nor beef-bag ball bashers, but everything to do with the mobile all-arms flying columns that the armies of Perfidious Albion used in the desert war bit of the Second Unpleasantness.  That is, "Jock Columns".
     Their heyday in terms of effectiveness was most definitely in late 1941 and early 1942, after which they were definitely over-used.  British resources were spread too thinly over too wide an area, "dispersion" the buzz-word.  Art?

A lot of ground to cover

     As you can see, trying to retain Cyrenaica is difficult, as whatever defences you put up can always be outflanked to the south.  As explained by Neal Dando in "From Tobruk To Tunis" (which appears to be a Master's thesis put out in book form), the terrain at El Aghelia varied from good along the coast road, to very difficult in the hummocks and salt marshes, to almost impassable in the soft sand of the hinterland.  Given these constraints it is unsurprising that the Jock Columns were unable to prevent the Axis from advancing.

A bang of brigands
(Like a "band" but much worse"

     One reason there was no lack of them was because it allowed junior officers to go swanning about the blue like modern-day pirates on a sea of sand, far far away from senior officers, red tape, drill and doing as you were told.


                                        General Eric "Chink" Dorman-Smith
                                                              (One of those senior officers)
             

     Okay, I think I've wittered waaaay beyond the Compositional Ton, so - ta-ta!


*  You can prove me wrong any time you like.
**  It was
***  - Your Honour, honestly.