Looking To The Future

NO! Not Inspired By The Lyrics Of Slade's Christmas Song
The title of which I forget, because I'm getting old and forgetful, to the point of forgetting that I'd already used the word "forgetting" -
     Where was I?  O yes.  The future.  Allow me to add in a quote from that immortal classic "Plan 9 From Outer Space":  We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.*

The very definition of a good bad film

     You remember, that one where Bela Lugosi died a few days into filming, so they used someone else who held a cloak across his face to disguise the fact that he wasn't Bela, despite being considerably taller.
     Anyway, this isn't about that, so forget** it.  What I wanted to focus on was some content generated by the BBC's website, in addition to that other site about the 51 best sci-fi books of all time.  You will have to talk amongst yourselves as I need to use my camera to upload a couple of photographs -

<audience talks to themselves about cabbages and presidents, as kings are no longer PC>

Some industrial machinery to keep you occupied

      

     Welllllll they are pushing it a bit here, as they reference Jules Verne's "From The Earth To The Moon", since the protagonists in that work don't actually land on the Moon, but merely orbit it, making it more similar to Apollo 10 than Apollo 11.  Plus, the vehicle they travel in is launched from a giant gun, which in real life would have turned the inhabitants into a thin layer of hamburger spread across the bottom of the shell.  A minor plot point!
     And now back to that list of 51 best sci-fi books.  Art?

Surprise surprise!

     Yes, Your Humble Scribe has read the book.  Heard the radio series first, of course, and seen the television show and the film as well.  It was one of those rare things, a successful sci-fi comedy, proving that it could be done if you were clever enough.
     That's enough of the future for now.  Motley, let's rewatch "The Time Served Machine" again!

Back To Tank!
You remember this, Conrad was banging on about this book by Ken Tout of the Northamptonshire Yeomanry yesteryon, and that Jim and Al (from podcast "We Have Ways") both swore blind it was one of the few books having an exclamation mark in the title that was any good.  Art?

<no comment needed>

     Anyway, although I can't transcribe the whole spoken extract, as it was over quarter of an hour long, I can summarise the salient points about it.  Ken's troop of tanks are waiting to make contact with Teuton "Hornets" (radio code for panzers) and he describes the orders and reports going by radio amongst his own crew, the rest of his troop of three tanks and the squadron.  Their tactics are the same as those mentioned by David Render and Stuart Hills, of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry:  the 75 m.m.-gunned Shermans "pepper" three Tiger tanks with High Explosive rounds, forcing them to operate 'buttoned-up' with all hatches closed.  Art?

Buttoned-up Tiger

     Their squadron's Sherman Fireflies, armed with the frankly scary 17 pounder gun, promptly destroy one Tiger.  The other two have no idea where the fire is coming from, because once buttoned-up their visibility is very restricted.  Not only that, any direct hit from an HE round would shatter their optics.  In the space of a few minutes the other two Tigers are brewed up as well, so gunner Joe Ekins personally destoyed 2.5% of all the Tigers in Normandy***.
     We now shift away from the subject of TANK, for which some of you will be grateful.

"Vagabond"
For once Conrad is not complaining about crossword clues or answers, merely commenting upon one.  This is the answer to crossword 76 in my Collins Big Book Of Crosswords, and  had the clue "Traveller (8)", and, as my mind hops about like a string of firecrackers in a furnace, I wondered where it came from?

These vagabond shoes.

     The origin is from Latin <hack spit the zombie language!> and the word "Vagari" meaning "roaming", and from there to "Vagabundus" meaning "wandering".  The Vagus nerve has a common root with this word, since, as I recall from biology, it wanders all over the body.
     And there you have it, BOOJUM!'s didactic charter satisfied for another day.

Vagabonds

Sorry, Back To The Future
This only just struck me.  See those tramps above?  They have a stick with all their worldly possessions held within, known as a "bindle".  Maybe it comes from "bundle"?
     Anyway, let us abruptly jump subject matter and refer to James Blish's magisterial "Cities in Flight" series, which, if Art will stop sucking at that nuclear fuel rod like a dog with a marrow bone -

One of my favourite covers

     As you should know by now, these novels centre around cities that have gone "Okie"; they become wandering spaceships, having left a depopulated and depleted Earth to look for employment amongst humanity's far-flung worlds.  Each city tends to have a different set of specialist skills, which they put to use for payment.
     However - and you just knew that word was coming, didn't you? - some cities go rogue.  Rather than do the hard work in order to earn payment, they attack, plunder and destroy other Okie cities, earning the name "Bindlestiffs", from the vagabond slang for a vagabond who stole the bindles of other fellow vagabonds.  The worst of these bindlestiffs is probably the city that renames itself the "Interstellar Master Traders" - but that's another story.

Scranton goes Okie!

Finally -
I've finished this rather early, so it's time for a toasted egg sandwich, a pot of Darjeeling and then a trot for Edna - gotta keep them step counts up!


*  Hopefully.
**  That word again.
***  Max Hastings weeps in a corner.