Tanks For The Memory

<Squints Warningly>
Yes, just sit back down and be advised that today's title is a pun, not a spelling mistake.
    To what do I refer?  Why, none other than that memoir of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, "An Englishman At War".  I have reached the early months of 1941, when the ex-cavalry unit, now trained as gunners, had been split up and sent to Tobruk and Crete.  I used "Tanks" in the title because after another fifteen months they eventually become an armoured unit.  Not enough tanks to go around, you see.  Art?

Shiny happy people.

     One of the interesting things about this memoir is that the author of these edited diaries, Stanley Christopherson, makes no bones whatsoever about his judgements on people.  Normally in works like this if an officer gets slagged-off it's "Lieutenant Whathisface" or "That Major from the Greys", all safely anonymous, bland, unlikely to trigger any legal response and - rather dull and anodyne.
     Stanley, on the other hand, is explicit in naming people.  One of these example officers is Henry Trotter, whom Stanley disliked with a passion.  He even call him  "Henry Bl***y Trotter!" with an exclamation mark at one point, when it looks like Henry might be promoted to become his superior officer.  Art?

That's Henry in the middle, Colonel Flash Kellet to port.

     Henry was very wealthy, and his sole occupation pre-war had been riding to hounds.  Stanley accuses him of being illiterate, which sounds a bit unlikely, and of being both childish and foolish, which sounds a bit truer, and of only being interested in Henry Trotter, which sounds dead to rights.  Stanley was also rather too fond of Henry's wife, Rona, whom he mentions a lot in these early years - taking her out to dinner, dancing with her at nightclubs after stuffy old Henry had gone to bed, etcetera.

I think this is the couple at their wedding.

     Henry vanishes from the SRY history in late 1941 - I know because I cheated and looked at the index - when he gets invalided home with a bad leg.  After that - well, who knows?  One presumes that Stanley never intended these diaries to be published or he would have been in rather hot water, as getting dangerously close to a fellow officer's wife is a big no-no in peacetime and even more so in war.
     Then there is Peter Laycock - but enough vicarious slander and libel for one day.  I think we shall revisit this topic again at a later date.
     Motley, shall we go down the stairs backwards on a tray with a greased underside?

Perhaps not

Speaking Of Stairs ...
Yes, back to that short list of caricatures the BBC were running about stereotypical book covers.
     Here an aside.  I find it most disheartening that the BBC has not put up any sporting webpages that feature Have Your Say, since a gleeful enjoyment of other people's misery and venting is a splendid way to pass the time.

A sad, sad Conrad.

     Anyway, back to books, and their covers.  Art?

Have we covered this already?  I hope not

     The Beeb critics point out that, for a psychological thriller, you need a stairway and a protagonist walking up or down it - no greased trays as that would affect the gravitas - and a sombre lighting effect in play.  Then you have to have the word "Lies" in the title, as in "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy".  They even provide evidence that this cliche is present in the real world.  Art?

No!  No trays!  Stop harping on about trays!

More Of Lifts
For ships.  Or, in this case,  boats.  We are returning to Belgium again, because damn! they like their boat lifts.  Way back in the nineteenth century, when the biggest canal barge would mass as many as 300 tons, they needed a method to get barges up a total rise of ninety yard rise in the land.  Rather than have several dozen locks to manage this, the canny Belgians decided to build a boat lift.  In fact they built four along the Canal de Centre, but we will only concentrate on one today.  Too much ship is bad for you.  Art?

Grock the lock

     This is a wonderful web-of-steel construct that is now a listed building, and a jolly good thing too.  The thing is, it's not used all that much so footage of it in action is a bit sparse.  I shall do what I can to elicudate.

The view of one lock from above

     The idea is that the boats or barges steer into the lock from either upstream or downstream, the lock closes and then ascends or descends, the lock opens and the vessels float out.  Obviously this particular lift is quaint and old-fashioned compared to monsters like the one at Krasnoyarsk, but then it is 70 years older.  Art?

Different lock, same principle.  Here you see a lock in the raised position from downstream

     Need it be said, the designs are copies of originals that were created in Perfidious Albion.

Here's A Question -
Posed on the BBC website, directed at all the fans of the ballfoot game who are experiencing a lack of life thanks to all games being banned.  

     "Can you name all the Premium League's top scorers?"

The ballfoot game's first mutant signing

     NO.
     To elaborate, no I cannot.  I do not care about this culpable deficiency, and do not feel that I am missing out on life in any way.     I think one reason why I'm reading so many r/AskReddit posts is because of a lack of Schadenfreude in the BBC's Have Your Say.  So it's their fault.

Finally -
I keep managing to avoid putting up another image from Abebook's feature about "Retro Monsters", mostly because it's the last thing I come to, but also because of the title - "Lord of the Spiders", as Your Humble Scribe is even more of a coward about arachnids than he is about everything else.  Art?

Ugh!

     These things look like a cross between vampire bats and the most repulsively fat-bodied spiders around.  Plus, given that they are Martian spiders, I bet they can grow to at least three or four times bigger than the biggest Terrestrial spider.
     <shivers in fear>

     And with that I think we are quite done enough!