Plucking Well

NO!  I Am Not Euphemising A Swear
Sweet Spirits Of Nitre! - a corking exclamation and one I nicked from E.E. "Doc" Smith which surely dates it to about eighty years ago - what must occupy those filthy sewers you call minds that you immediately suspect BOOJUM! of being NSFW?
     <sighs in a world-weary way, coughs up a hairball>
     I am referring, OF COURSE, to the theme tune for "Danger Man", which is an excellent, understated espionage series from This Sceptred Isle, featuring Patrick McGoohan as the titular spy.  Art?

CAUTION!  Black and white may frighten modern children

     I recall one of my parents making an effort to watch an episode and not being very impressed by it, as it wasn't anything like "The Man From Uncle".  In fact it was about as far from TMFU as it's possible to get and still be on the same planet.  A little known -
     But I digress.  I was listening to the theme tune last night, either on Spotify or Facebook, and made a note in my notebook - "MAD HARPSICHORD!".  In fact - 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u6jYfJgj-o

     That's a link to the version I was listening to.  Art!  More art!

Busy being a free man, one presumes.

     There was a flirtation in the Sixties with the harpsichord, for what reason I know not, as the spinet and virginal are also splendid keyboard instruments.  Anyway, the salient feature of the harpsichord is that it plucks it's strings, rather than hitting them, as the piano forte does.  Art?

From the files of the British Harpsichord Society.  Are we all clear now?

     Thus you have the harpsichord's distinctive sound.  And whoever was playing it on that theme tune was giving it some welly, or, to put it another way - they were plucking well.
     Motley, we each have a litre tub of ice cream, a single spoon and I'm starting the clock - NOW

Back To "The Invaders"
You remember, that Quinn Martin production, which Conrad pondered on because it was an entry in that Rolling Stone list of the top 50 sci-fi television programs, and because he watched all the episodes when it was repeated back in the Nineties.  Art?

A perturbing proliferation

     To recap: architect David Vincent stumbles across aliens who are in the middle of a fully-fledged invasion of Planet Earth, working in secret and camouflage towards a master plan that will enable them to take over the London borough of Hackney the planet.  They are careful, to the point of paranoia, not to leave any evidence of their presence behind, as their bodies vapourise into ash when they die.  Similarly, their technology has built-in self-destruct capabilities, so no artefacts remain behind as evidence.
     This means that - hang on, has there ever been another program with an architect as the hero?  Not that I'm aware of, and you can't count "Martin Chuzzlewit", either*.  

He's just designed a shopping mall

     So, as I was saying, you might think that Dave is completely out of luck in taking his story to the authorities.  After all, he has no proof.  There would be circumstantial evidence, and a gradually increasing number of eye-witnesses, yet nothing solid or tangible that he could throw onto a table in the Pentagon.
     However ...
     As the Wiki article points out, the authorities are clearly suspicious that something underhand is going on.  Davey boy manages to get access to military officers with some clout on a regular basis, even near the beginning of the series.  In the second series larger groups are addressed, and military folk who were initially sceptical have definitely come around.  Art!

Like this chap.
("David, I think your mission is almost impossible")

     If the Air Force or NASA thought Dave was just a crank who'd had one moonshine jolt too many, he'd never have got past the front door.  Instead, he gets to the metaphorical penthouse suite on numerous occasions; he is plainly being taken seriously by some people, despite his lack of evidence.
     Conrad has an interesting theory about this - which will have to wait until tomorrow.

O Schadenfreude, Thy Taste Is Sweet
I have to take the sweetness in metaphorical form, THANK YOU DIABETES, and here is one such.
     There is a repellent "psychic" (read: utter fraud) called "Psychic Sally", who uses all the usual cold-reading tricks that fake psychics use, as well as some hi-tec variants - like having information sent to her via an earpiece, from her backstage crew.  This latter was overheard by audience members, who couldn't sue or get their money back because the whole thing has a disclaimer about only being for "entertainment"

Matt Hartless and The Maverick 7 - much more entertaining!

     There's a lot I could say about PS and her fraudulent fakery, and how she avoids being tested or undergoing validation, but HMRC - "Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs" - have had the final, very loud laugh.  They deemed her and her organisation to be fraudulently (that word again!) withholding tax, and they hit her with a £3 million pound fine.
     Ouch.
     In the interests of accuracy, I should explain that it was really only £2.9 million, but what's £100,000 between friends?
     As a whole slew of tax and accountancy organisations positively gloated online "She didn't see that one coming, did she!"  Strangely enough, there were no sympathetic comments that I could find on this judgement, although I'm not going to waste my time trying very hard.

A sea-going tug - almost as entertaining as Matt & Co!

     
Finally -
Still reading Adam Tooze's excellent, detailed, complicated yet very readable "The Wages of Destruction", and at around the 335 page mark, he discusses Herr Schickelgruber's intent to wage war on France.  It has to be made in overwhelming strength, all at once, and risk everything for Germany if it fails, because the resources for a protracted war waged against France and Perfidious Albion backed by South Canada simply do not exist.

Goebbels happy; Schickelgruber sad

     We are talking at the strategic level here, yet this is a distillation and confirmation of what Professor Robert Cimino postulates at the operational level.  Just thought you'd like to know.


*  Dickens in-joke for you there.