A Concrete Caisson Is Not A Fruit

You Cannot Eat It, Nor Put It In A Suit

It is, in all, a great unwieldy brute.

And is industrial-looking, not cute.

     This, of course - obviously! - has nothing to do with my jigsaw, which has marched on by leaps and bounds and I'll put up a photo shortly.

     Conrad's curiosity was piqued by a news item on the BBC's website, about a group of four children who were caught by the rising tide off Southend.  They were spotted and rescued by an RNLI hovercraft, and besides being chilled to the bone were unharmed.

     Why were they out on the sands?  They had decided to walk out to what the Beeb dubbed "Mulberry Harbour", which is accessible at low tide.  Art?

At low tide

     This is indeed a part of "Mulberry", the concrete caissons that created the artificial harbour "Port Winston" on the Normandy coast.  That above sprang a leak whilst being towed, so it was ditched off Southend, and it's remains are visible about a mile offshore.  Art?

The worst possible distance to be ...

     It is possible to reach the caisson when the tide is out, IF you know what you're doing.  Knowing when the tide has gone out and when it returns is critical, as is knowing there are channels between the wreck and shore that fill up and cut the unwary off.  If you get trapped on the Mulberry itself, then you've got a twelve-hour wait until the tide goes out again.

     Conrad realises this sage advice is probably wasted on 99.999% of our readership, yet you never know.  

Emphatically NOT a good idea.

That Reminds Me ...

 - Of Fritz Leiber's sci-fi classic "The Wanderer", wherein the titular planet suddenly appears in close proximity to Earth, triggering all sorts of natural disasters - earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions.  One character, after an evening session in a pub, decides to walk home to Wales from Somerset.  Art?  Map!

To explain -

     I know, I know, it's a long way round on foot.  Our friend plans to take a shortcut, as the waters of the Bay have all receded, so he can cross the sands.  I think you can see where this is heading ...  Problem the First: those waters are going to come back, and this event takes place at night, so he'll get no warning.  Problem the Second: he gets half-way across and finds that the River Severn is still running, in spate, even, and he'll drown if he tries to cross the raging torrent.

     It does not end well for him (Spoiler below)*.

The copy I had

     Generally speaking, mucking about in deep water is a very bad idea unless you happen to be in a boat, with a proper crew.

     I shall now stop being your Dad.

The Jigsaw: State Of Play

I can feel your urgent anticipation from here.  Yes, really.  Okay, Art?

Ta-dah!

I reckon there's about 200 pieces on the board there, meaning I only have to poke through 800 in search of more matching ones.  Of course, the problem is that I have no self-restraint and have to force myself not to "try one more little bit" which ends up lasting for three hours.

Conrad Is ANGRY!

Yes yes yes, angry is pretty much my default state.  I mean I am angrier than normal.

     "What has provoked an outpouring of your Frothing Nitric Ire, old chap?" I hear you say.  O I thought you'd never as!  The MEN and their Codeword, predictably.  Art!

You see?  You see what the chiselling bumbletucks are trying?  Actually that's a bad photo as it's nearly impossible to see the bit where they charge you a pound for their "random extra letter clues".  I bet they give you Z, B, J and X, too, the snivelling bafoons.  What next, MEN?  Giving only one letter as a clue?  That letter being either Z, B, J or X, I bet.

     Bah!

Hogg-Tied

Because a chap named Hogg invented the horn antennae, for use in radio astronomy and satellite communications.  Earlier this week we looked at the immense "Big Ear" telescope, and now we're going to look at the Holmdel Horn Antenna.  Art?

Behold!

     It does kind of look like Heath Robinson invented the world's largest ear trumpt - which is not a bad analogy.  This thing is gimballed to rotate axially and is on a movable base, so it can be aimed at any part of the sky.  The advantage of being such an odd shape is that very little extraneous input is acquired; you get what you aim at and nothing else.

     Eccentric-looking it may be; ground-breaking also.  Using the Holmdel Horn, the background radiation that pervades the universe was discovered in 1965.  This immediately confirmed the "Big Bang" hypothesis and put the "Steady State" one in the rubbish bin, incidentally earning the discoverers a Nobel Prize (messers Penzias and Wilson).  Art!

The boogie-woogie bugle boffins

     Excuse me, I need to go turn the oven on.  Those chicken drumsticks won't cook themselves!

     <Blimey, 35 minutes to cook?  I'd have put it on earlier if I'd known>

Finally -

Nearly at the Compositional Ton.  What shall we finish with?  Aha -

     O Marketa!  What unusual Czech words do you have for us today?

"Zamraceno": cloudy weather or a person who is not smiling.

     How very apt!  For the sun has gone in - I think my commenting on it being present at all didn't go down very well.  And you know Conrad - born with a scowl on his face: a face not made for smiling, as I like to admit (and scary when it does).

The proof

And with that we are done, done, done!

*  He drowns