Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher

No!  I Am Not Referring To That Soppy Love Song 
By some darts player, if I remember correctly.  I'm a bit hazy on the details, not being particularly attentive when bland songs from the Sixties get excessive airtime in this, the Twenty-First Century.  Honestly, we can put a man on Mars, but we cannot come up with better radio playlists?  

Remarkable!  A pop music career and a professional athlete.  Where did he find the time?

     And that's not all I've got to yark on about today when it comes to sports.  I am currently nibbling away at a very difficult Cryptic Crossword in my Reader's Digest compendium.  Let me show you the - sorry, what's that?  No, we haven't put a -
     OKAY FORGET I EVER SAID THAT OR WROTE IT <damn chronometric confusion> er - what I meant was "We will put man on Mars" sometime in 2034 - er - perhaps 2034 -

What it will may look like.

     Back to the crossword - the clue was "Vain court star in America (7)".  Of course I deduced that the "America" bit was "US" so we had U _ _ _ _ _ S, and I went all about the houses until deciding that what they meant as "Vain" should have been "IN vain", or, in other words, USELESS.  
     So, then, what the blue blinking brainstorm was SELES?  I Googled it, just to see if there was anything to find and Hay Pesto! - Monica Seles, Yugoslavian tennis star of the Nineties.

     HOW THE FNORPING BUMBLETUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THIS!!

     It's a measure of how cross I was that you get two exclamation marks there.

Monica.  And no, you do not get to see her immodestly short skirt.

     Where were we?
     O yes, the Krasnoyarsk Dam.  Art?

Sic

     As you can see, it blocks the river completely, so shipping cannot get through it, or else it would be a bridge.
     However, those Ruffians can be pretty smart cookies when untrammelled by idiot politicians breathing down their necks.  They realised that they could build a ship lift that would physically transport vessels in a moving dock, up over the dam and down the other side, allowing riverine transport, hooray!
     Whilst quite elegant in theory, the practice was quite daunting.  But they did it.  And now we come to today's title, except for "Love" please substitute "Ship Lift".  Art?

     Here we see a barge loaded with Big Heavy Industrial-Looking Things, being floated into the mobile dock, with the dock in it's submerged position on the downriver side of the dam.  Art?

     The mobile dock now moves backwards up the railway.  Art?

     Looking up the ship lift railway from the downstream side as the dock sloooooowly moves upwards.  Note the trees to the side; it appears to be autumn.  Art?

     
     This is the faintly terrifying prospect from the road beneath the dock as it moves slooooowly forward.  I don't know about you, but the sight of something that massive at least fifty feet overhead gives me the billy crins.  In fact I think my billy crins have billy crins.  Art?

      Another moment of existential terror.  Here the whole enormous dock is rotated through 1800, so that when it descends the upstream side of the dam, the barge will be able to float out without any kind of tricky manoeuvring required.  Art?

     Here the dock is on the upstream side of the dam, as you can see from the view to port.  I have a close-up for you -

     See that small box-like structure slightly north of centre?  And the indistinct vertical blob next to it?  That's a puny human, for scale.  Just so you know how freaking enormous this thing really is.  Finally -

     Fully immersed, the dock is now able to let the barge float free, with the assistance of a couple of tugs.
     Now, you can't have followed any of that and not been impressed, can you?  I think we might come back to ship lifts, they're impressively big engineering thingies.  I wonder how many others there are across the globe?
     Motley, let's re-enact this using the stairlift and a barrel of water*!

Excuse me, I just have to add this in here in order for it to make sense on Facebook.  Art?

I really don't have to tell you who this is, do I?

     If you're unsure, just think of someone who hates Japan so much that they regularly stamp it flat.  Turning it into an - er - Japancake.

If I Were To Say "Pole Barn" -
You would, given that this is BOOJUM! expect some cheesy pun or picture along the lines of that below - Art?

Behold the barn

     Actually - NO.  I came across the term in an r/AskReddit post about Prorevenge (which is a quantum level below Nuclearrevenge), where a builder had skipped out on completing a pole barn for the poster, who was a farmer.
     A pole barn, it seems, is (usually) a wooden structure that doesn't need a foundation; it is based on posts that are individually set in concrete, meaning it can be erected on all kinds of land unsuitable, or just really expensive, for a full concrete foundation. The rest is made of wood panelling.  Art?

Pole barn carport.

     And now we all know more than we did five minutes ago.
     Oh, that revenge poster?  Through remarkably persistent detective work, they tracked down the errant builder and offered them a choice: finish the barn or face prosecution.  They completed the barn!

And Now - An Internet Cliche
I shan't apologise; in these dark times even a smidgeon of amusement is welcomed.  So, for many years a set of small cookbooks have stood upon our worktop, being more a decoration than a resource.
     Until last night, when I took out the "Potato" one and looked through for recipes I could work with.  Hay Pesto - Spanish Tortilla!  Art?

Those are the recipe books in the background.  Note gap because "Potato" is out being used.

     And you know what, it was pretty tasty.  Also veggie, for those out there who like that sort of thing.
     Also, whilst on the subject of food, and in exactly the same spot, the literal fruits of my shopping endeavours this morning.  Art?

     So we now have SEVEN onions and SEVEN tomatoes!  Truly, my cup runneth over.  Or - well, my cupboard, anyway.

This will all make sense on Facebook, honest.
       





*  What can possibly go wrong?