I Know A Bloke With An Artichoke

 That Would Be Me, Actually

And rather than the singular, that ought to read "Artichokes" plural, except I can't describe myself as being the plural of "Bloke" since there is manifestly only one of me, for which you should be sincerely grateful.

     Here an aside.  Whilst talking about the edible thistle, let us now tackle the thorny subject of - do you see what I O you do - the JIGSAW PUZZLE.  Because we've not had a picture of progress to date for a couple of days now.  Art?

Upper port

     There you go.  About 50% done, and at upper port you can see the flowering head of an inedible thistle.  This is what an artichoke looks like when it runs to seed, by which time it is inedibly tough and indigestible.  Those parts that are missing in partially-completed squares are backgrounds of indeterminate blurry green or brown, hard to distinguish and are probably only going to be completed by trial and error when everything else has been completed.
     Okay, so I decided to make Bigos last night, which is a Polish recipe for 'Hunter's Stew' although the closest Your Humble Scribe has come to hunting is stalking pickled gherkins at Morrisons.  I didn't have any fresh cabbage, so canny Conrad compensated by using lots of sauerkraut - positively fistfuls as I squeezed the brine out of it - and a tin of artichokes that had been hiding at the back of the cupboard for a few weeks now.  Art?

Those small roundish objects are artichokes

     They worked pretty well as a substitute.  The only problem being that the recipe is for at least four people and perhaps as many as six, so Conrad is going to be eating bigos for at least another couple of meals yet*.
     

Meanwhile, Back In 1066

Not going to apologise for going back to discussing the Meddling Monk and his nuclear junk.  If you have been keeping up - AND YOU HAD BETTER BE - then you will recall that we left things just as Monky had blasted the incoming Viking invasion fleet with three nuclear warheads (in reality The Doctor and his companions had thwarted this scheme).

     No doubt Monky slinks off thinking his work is done.  NOT SO FAST MATEY!

The Doctor finds a space-helmet for a cow

     In reality the Viking survivors from their failed invasion numbered about 1,000, all of whom die if Monky gets his way.  No children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren thus get sired by these survivors, permanently skewing the subsequent population of Norway.  Nor is that all.  O no.  Because thousands of tons of radioactive seawater will be wafted ashore, to contaminate the length and breadth of Northumbria.  There will be crop failures, mutations and cancers aplenty, which people will doubtless blame upon the supernatural, nuclear fission (or fusion) not being a concept readily understood at the time.  Art?

Now known as "Plutonia"

     It's not unlikely that the contaminated area would be abandoned as it would be seen as 'cursed'.  So we've already messed up Norwegian and Northumbrian history.  Don't forget, in addition, that any English who died at the battle of Stamford Bridge would now survive; if they also survive the battle of Hastings, then even if the English lose you now have generations of offspring whom never existed in reality.

     Then there's context.  Attention would have been attracted by the noise of three nuclear detonations just off the coast, because sound travels.  There would have been eyewitnesses (or at least those not blinded) who would have described seeing three mushroom-shaped clouds ...  And such an awesome event would definitely have been recorded, at the very least in local records.  Art?

Yeah, verily, with nukes

     Which will raise a lot of eyebrows 879 years later when the Trinity test detonation takes place.

Man, that hattan.

     IF it takes place.  After all, we've just witnessed the comprehensive mucking-up of history.  So you see, letting off nuclear weapons as if they were fireworks is not the best way of resolving a problem, is it, Monky?

Conrad's Nethers - The Tastiest Of Morsels

At least I hazard a guess that they are, because the Coincidence Hydra likes BITING THEM SO MUCH <sighs in muted resignation at having such a biteable bottom>. 

     What am I prating about?  Why I thought you'd never ask!  You should recall that yesteryon I briefly mentioned the 'Saladin' armoured car, which is more akin to a wheeled tank than your average lightly-armed armoured car.  Think sledgehammer instead of meat-tenderiser.  Art?

Other traffic WILL get out of your way

     The thing is, I don't think I've ever mentioned the Saladin before, as it is a Cold War-era AFV and Conrad tends to stick to the Second Unpleasantness as this is his area of one-up-on-you-ness.

     However!  There I was on Youtube, when up pops a new notification featuring Mister Tank himself, David Fletcher, whom is (I think) gainfully employed by the Tank Museum at Bovington (known to all trackheads as "Bovvie").  And what is he pimping today?  Art!

     What are the chances of that happening!  There must be a couple of hundred vehicles at Bovvie, making it a fraction of a percentage point that he'd pick this particular vehicle, and out of three hundred and sixty five days he picks within one day of my mentioning the very same AFV.

     Clearly, the universe is trying to tell me something.  Why couldn't it just use Twitter?

Finally - 

Not going to apologise for being a tad tank-centric today.  If we This Sceptred Isle invented them I can at least get some blog traffic out of them.

     Okay, so yesteryon I mentioned "Track And Wheel", a renovation and maintenance business that specialises in British armoured and wheeled vehicles of the Second Unpleasantness, where the "We Have Ways ...." podcast were visiting.

Sorry, only wheels this time round

     One point that Tobin, joint owner, made was that modern petrol is substantially different from the wartime blend; his description was that wartime fuel was a lot "fizzier", and it corroded piping and other bits it came into contact with, not to mention lacking any lead added in to do the anti-knocking job -

      - and there we shall leave it, as we are done done done!

*  Did I say "problem"?  Sorry, I meant "opportunity".