From Beetles To Burrowing

At First I Was Going To Loudly Shout "NO!"

"We are not talking about moles!", and then I remembered that we're alluding to Thunderbirds later on, and abruptly shut my flapping piehole.  Okay, imagine an insect that burrows, if you will.  Not yesterday's weevils, as they only dine on the surface of foodstuffs, rather than digging into their depths.

CAUTION!  Not suitable for using as a textile

     Here an aside - do keep up, this is excellent mental exercise! - "moleskin" refers to a woven textile fabric made from wool, not the hides of small nocturnal creatures, which makes sense, as one has never seen a mole farm depicted in print or pictures.  Although there was that children's book which had a mole city described therein - "Molanium the mighty, with twenty tunnels blessed" - and there was a plot by rats with gunpowder bombs - honestly, I'm not making it up!

Proof I am not raving

      Where were we?

    O yes -  Burrowing.  This is a band, led by and formed by Liam, whom I used to work with, ably assisted by another ex-colleague, Ian (he of about half-a-dozen different bands including Claw The Thin Ice).  Both are spit-hot musicians, rather frustrated by the lockdown but still making music.  Art?

     Conrad has probably been watching too many Youtube clips of 'post 10' working wonders with his rake, because that cover art certainly resembles a culvert in my eyes.

    Anyway, should you wish to test the sonic waters, they have a couple of tracks you can sample for free on 'Bandcamp', whatever that is (open-air music festival?), and the album itself "Weight" is out soon so you don't have to - <ahem> wait for long.  They say you can "Downlode" it and it also comes in a "Steaming" version, which comes as a surprise to Conrad since he thought all modern music was electronic or electrical in nature?

Ah, what do I know.  Diesel or petrol, mate?

     What's that song by Blue Oyster Cult? - "Cities On Flame With Rock And Roll" - yeah and you can see why.  
     Motley!  Crank up the turntable and put on something by <thinks> either The Velvet Underground or <thinks further> The Flamin' Groovies*.

On The Very, Very Wrong Tracks*

No!  Nothing to do with music.  Put moles and music out of your head.  No, for today we are going to look at another potential Darwin Award winner, a lady in an automobile who was either tired of living or felt so entitled that she expected the trains to stop running.  Art?

     Our heroine parks up at the roadside.  She's Belgian, and so are all the other people seen in these photos.  She is parking because railway workers have piled up a barrier with matting and gravel, preventing access to the IMPASSABLE railway crossing, which is closed, with warning and diversion signs, thanks to the work being undertaken there.  Is our heroine downhearted, let alone diverted?  Not a bit of it!

     Note the barrier made of sections of track matting, which have been removed from the tracks to permit work to be carried out.

       Having shifted some shizzle, our heroine now ventures over the gravel barrier.  Before any of this started, she had seen a train whizzing past the crossing, so she knows there are trains running here.  Does that dissuade her?  Not one iota!

     Stuck.  In fact, jammed so fast the car won't move anywhere.  But the trains can!

     Yes, they had to stop the trains and use a crane to remove the car.  That caption is Flemish for "Observe the idiot", and the news site that reported this in Flemish said she'd spent longer shifting the bits of barrier than it would have taken her to drive the diversion route.

     Tsunamis and trains; two words beginning with "T" that are unforgiving at speed.

I Did Threaten You With Thunderbirds

One consequence of having a mind like a skip is that memories of forty years ago continue to bob to the surface, like fermenting flotsam, as with those scary collectible cards I mentioned.  Another recalled image is one of the pages from a Thunderbirds colouring book, toward the end, featuring a jet aircraft and what the caption would have us believe was " - an atomic tank".

Well, this is kind of tank-ish

     Of course this volume is too obscure to have any existence anywhere on teh interwebz; all I recall of the tank is that it was squat and had a circular theme to it.  Not anything like contemporary atomic tanks.  Art?

A prototype

     This is the Chrysler TV8, which carried the crew, ammunition and engine in the enormous turret, designed to give sufficient bouyancy that the whole thing could float.  The engine was projected to be a fission plant, located at the rear of the turret, and the gun was a puny 90 m.m. weapon firing conventional ammunition.

     BORING!  It ought to have had a much larger weapon capable of firing nuclear shells, thus being 'atomic' in both senses of the word, because heck why not!  It would also be a real dilemma for the Sinisters if these things ever intruded upon the sacred lands of Holy Mother Russia (sneaking ashore from the Black Sea, perhaps).  Art?

     If you destroy a conventional tank, you get smoke and flames at worst, and perhaps the ammunition 'cooks off' in the heat.  With the TV8 ("Terror Vehicle Hate"?) you'd get a giant cloud of radioactive fallout as the reactor burns, and perhaps a 'fizzle' explosion due to damage to the cooling system, not to mention any unfired atomic shells exploding thanks to the heat.  You can hear the conversation even now ...

     "Congratulations Officer Gopniki!  You have successfully destroyed ten capitalistic invading capitalistic armoured fighting-in-a-capitalist-style vehicles."

     "Thank you, sir."

     "You have also fatally contaminated one hundred and fifty thousand square kilometres of prime farmland for twenty thousand years.  Take him out and execute him."

Drinking the fallout away.
(Sinister radiological protection advice: "VODKA!")

What's Wrong With This Picture?

I shan't place bets, because you'd lose, as 1) I am extra-specially clever and 2) Have a home ground advantage.  Art?

     The answer would be that the first volume you can see there is from Becke's "Order of Battle of British Divisions", being the index volume, and all the rest are, of course - O so obviously! - Osprey publications.  Durr.  Go stand in the corner until you evolve a bit more.

     Hang on - are all the fans of the ballfoot game still chuntering on about the ghastly consequences of reducing the Premium Lager team total down to - what was it again?  81?  Something like that <looks at the BBC website's sports pages> O lord aloft, are they ever!

Looks harmless, doesn't it?
WRONG!

     Let us move swiftly along and away from these sad, sad people with no life**.

Finally -

O Treacherous October!  Yesterday, as an example, the morning began with bright blue skies, lots of sun and an invigorating chill in the air.  By mid-afternoon it was back to having all the lights on and, looking out the kitchen windows, you'd think you were living at the bottom of a lake.

"An estate agent prepares for a viewing in Chelsea, 2032"

     Those folks with the surname "Gill" have the right idea ...

*  Do you see wh - O you do.

**  What?  What are you laughing at?