Arsine Winger

<sizzling in background>
That, may I warn you, is my connection to the National Grid, which I have pirated for the purposes of FRAZZLING TO A CRISP ANYONE WHO MENTIONS SPELLING.  Yes, indeed, my splenetic ire can travel down electric wire, directly into anyone I choose, and make them expire.  
     Thank you.  That is all.

A dreadful warning

     For Lo! we are back on the subject of DANGER!, as Your Humble Scribe has an unhealthy interest in anything which hopefully ticks any or all of The Three Boxes:

• Is it incredibly toxic?
• Will it explode at the slightest, or even no, provocation?
• Is it horribly radioactive?

     Plutonium is a good fit for this.  However, it's been covered endlessly in all kinds of media, and we too on the blog have prattled on about it.

It's almost boring

     Anyway, let us instead look at an arsenical compound, namely Arsine.  This has the chemical formula AsH3, and is a gas at room temperature.  Not just any old gas!  Art?

First Unpleasantness use of nasty stuff

     It is highly flammable, so you have to be careful not to accidentally ignite it in the lab; of course you wouldn't be sat smoking and flicking your Ronson alight to impress the girls, because that would be stupid; no, we're talking about static electricity being an ignition source.
     Mind you, if Arsine was drifting around the lab, you'd be dead in minutes.  This stuff is lethal at very low concentrations, and you'll start to feel atrociously ill if there's as little as one part Arsine for every two million parts air.  Typically it smells of garlic, though nobody has yet explained who volunteered this information, since if it's in sufficient concentration to be smelt, you'd be approaching the Pearly Gates wearing a puzzled expression.

Minimum safe distance from an Arsine lab accident

     However, despite being spectacularly horrid, Arsine was never used as a poison agent in the First Unpleasantness, because it's flammability made it as wretchedly dangerous to the theoretical user as much as the metaphorical victims.  Nor is that all, since it can also spontaneously ignite in air; you'd look a right bumbletuck if, upon releasing volumes of gas from cylinders in your front-line trenches, they were all blown up by a chance explosion before the gas crossed your own barbed wire.

Art!  What are you playing at?

     It turns out that arsine is the base for "Lewisite", technically Chlorovinyldichloroarsine, which was created by the - South Canadians!  I knew that, just not what the stuff actually was.  It was never used, since nobody in the Second Unpleasantness wanted to make things even more awful than they already were, but you can bet your bottom groat that had it come to gas warfare, the air fleets of the Allies would have been dishing Arsine out in bombs.  Which is where the slightly-strained title of today comes from.
     I also apologise for Art, who seems to have replaced his pash for Mara Corday with Pamela Anderson.  I'll go run 250,000 volts through him.

Mara.  Yes, she is very, isn't she?

     No, motley!  We are not going to a ballfoot stadium.  For one thing, they're all closed.  For another, Conrad cordially detests ballfoot.  And - 

No Apologies
Your Humble Scribe rather left you in the lurch yesteryon, didn't I? after going on rather about verdigris and how it was the patina left on copper that makes it look green, and which is most effusively not the substance involved in making perfume.  Art?

(Insert feeble pun here)

     The word I was after was "Ambergris", another "Gris" derived from French - "Amber Grey", and this stuff is quite horrid in origin, because it comes out of one end of the whale (nobody's that sure which for obvious reasons), and stinks to high heaven at first.  After a few seasons bobbing about on the briny deeps it matures, you might say, and instead of smelling like a sty after the pigs have had a bout of the squits diarrhoea*, it begins to smell quite pleasant.  
     And this is where the perfumiers come in.  It was used in perfumes of old to enhance their staying power and make people smell nicer for longer, which meant perfumes were expensive, because ambergris itself is rare.  It's only produced by 1% of sperm whales, and only sperm whales.  Art?

NOW WASH YOUR HANDS!

     That there piece, weighing in at 2lb 4oz, went for £11,000, which is a pretty penny, considering.  If there were stand-up comedians in the eighteenth century, you can bet one part of their routine would be mocking the lords and ladies wearing perfume, considering where the base of it originated ...

<sniggers>

Spare A Thought For Richard Dean Anderson
He's a South Canadian actor <Googles hastily to ensure he's not really Canadian phew no he's not>, now into his seventies, who is probably appreciating the down time from having retired from the acting game.  Art?

Richard

     He played the lead character in "MacGuyver" and Colonel Jack O'Neill in the "Stargate SG-1" television series, and between the two series they span 17 years.  That's a long time in television series, so one can only hope the chap got a big enough payslip ("paycheck" in South Canadian) as compensation.  Conrad has only a passing acquaintance with either series but does remember being impressed how MacGuyver prevented a nuclear power plant meltdown with a bar of chocolate.

"Obviously, plain works better than milk for preventing explosions, Vulnavia."

     - I think.  It's been a while (actually about 30 years) and my memory's not what it used to be.

Finally -
Just an observation.  Lockdown?  Sitting in my comfy chair in the Sekrit Layr, Conrad can see Rochdale Road beyond, and - there's never a gap of more than a few seconds between people out having a stroll, walking the dog, taking kids to the park, seeing if the local telecoms masts are still aloft and intact - .  Hmmm.  Oh, the masts are okay, I spotted them whilst doing the weekly shop last night on the way home.  On the way home past endless pedestrians, I ought to add.
     Where was I?
     Oh yes.  All those "psychics" out there -

Hooray for Adam!

      - how many predicted the Coronavirus Crisis, hmmm?


*  Spelled it correctly first time!