A View To A Kiln

Conrad's Not About To Apologise -

For harping on about "Bleak House" yet again, although he is at about 87% through the housebrick-thick novel (930 pages loooooong), and HURRAH! the murder of Tulkinghorn has finally happened, at page 700, which overturns the dustjacket assertion of his "soon" being bumped off.  

I think the artist had been drinking or smoking Something Illegal

     Mind you, if this had been an Agatha Christie novel (though she had the good grace to keep her's to a much tidier length), then the murder would have taken place on page 75, everybody would have been brought together in the dining room on page 900 and the villain uncovered - with their blurted and lengthy complete confession in front of Inspector Japp of course - on page 928.  Then either a) Miss Marple would have had a cup of tea and a biscuit, or b) Hercule Poirot would have gone for a gourmand's delight.

EXHIBIT ONE: A Mouldy Jam Sandwich (the murder weapon, Your Honour)

     Anyway, what Your Humble Scribe wanted to evoke with today's title was - there cannot POSSIBLY be any connection with a James Bond film today - a sense of Victorians burning stuff.  Brickmakers feature as minor characters in BH, you see, hence that first rather hallucinatory picture, which appears to portray The Revolt Of The Brick Kilns.

     Back to burning.  One of the minor characters in BH, whose name I will not give away because we wish to avoid SPOILERS, is found to have died thanks to being burnt to a remnant.  The room they were in is covered in soot and a vile greasy film, and the remains are a charcoalled cadaver shrunken on the floorboards.  There is localised burning yet the room remains mostly intact and unburned.  Dickens mentions a famous case, that of an Italian aristocrat who appeared to have undergone Spontaneous Human Combustion: Countess Cornelia Bandi.  

Bleak House: Guppy and Weevle make An Hideous Discovery

     Her mortal remains were found much as in BH, with only the extremities of the body remaining intact and very little fire damage in the room, but a lot of soot and again that horrid greasy liquid residuum*.  In common with nearly all such alleged SHC cases, the victim was old, infirm, drunk off her bottom, alone and with an ignition source close by.  Rather than her gin-sodden carcass suddenly bursting into flames thanks to alcohol saturation, it is more likely that she suffered either a stroke or heart attack, died and came into contact with the flame of an oil lamp.  This commenced the "wick effect" which you can look up yourself, or Google for it.  Art!

Or EXPERIMENT WITH PIG!

     Conrad does not have an extensive knowledge of the interior of brick kilns, nor any other kind, and what prospect they offer to the human eye, yet I - what's that?  "A View To A Kill"?  You're kidding.  Tell me you're - hang on, hang on, why have a dog and barque yourself -

     Dog Buns!  What are the chances of that happening?  <does some hasty scribbled mathematics on the back of a Post-It> ah, right about 1 in 2,857,942,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, give or take a few decimal points.  So it cannot be my fault, the end.

A barque.  Sea what I mean?

Bitten By The Coincidence Hydra AGAIN

Your Humble Scribe has managed to escape the beast above for some while, though I seem to have come within it's scope when "I Shot The Sheriff" came over the horizon.  So, perusing the pages of BH, written as I remind you almost 170 years ago, what Victorian phrase popped up?  Art!

Bottom starboard

    Conrad is vaguely aware that there is a phrase associated with the game of bridge that involves "Trumps" and that is as far as his gaming knowledge goes.  Is there a singular version? Does this refer to the Biblical "Trump" as in "The Last Trump"? which is supposedly the loudest sound ever**.


More Of Those Darwin Award-Winning Prospectees

Yes it's true, Husker Du.  Conard almost fell out of his chair laughing at the sheer limb-endangering horror of home-made appliances designed to chop up timber and lumber, if the two types of wood are separate (Conrad a bit hazy on the difference).  The most dangerous ones seem to be those with a rotary action where a Whirling Blade Of Death is the killing joke/wood chopper.  Art!

     Conrad, ever the man of good taste, dubs this one the "Headsplitter", because as you can see from this shot, bending down to retrieve wood puts your noggin directly in the line of fire.  I do notice that - safety first! - the operator has chosen to wear a protective woollen cap, guaranteed to allow his head to be buried in one piece if things go wrong.  Also, woollen gloves, because they are the most effective textile there is for soaking up blood.

     Here the Headsplitter effortlessly cleaves a log in twain.  Note the absence not only of guards or gates or guides, but of even a mark as to where the log ought to be positioned.  Where's the on/off switch?  If anything goes wrong, can the operator reach it from where they're standing?  If not, do they have a first-aid kit to hand?

     Er - quite.  Bits of plastic sheet and string in close proximity to lots of moving parts.  What could possibly go wrong here! <thinks> well the plastic sheeting implies that this kit needs to avoid water, so in addition to everything already present, how does electrocution grab you, Vulnavia?

"Barrier Reef"

Mention of a "Barque" bestirred the mental midden that is my mind, and I bethought myself of a children's television program from the Seventies, which the spoken narration informed us was about the " - adventures of the barquentine HMAS New Endeavour".  It boasted about being in colour and filmed on the Great Barrier Reef.  Art?

     Supposedly about a bunch of scientists, Conrad remembers it as being stultifyingly dull.  No aliens, no monsters, no killer robots, no nuclear explosions, no mermaids and no time-travel.  Yes yes yes, in colour on the Great Barrier Reef, but you can't eat that, can you?

Finally -

Ho-hum, dinky-dum.  Back to the routine of work again, after a nice break.  "What did you do?" they will ask.  "Had a lie-in, drank tea for England and PLOTTED WORLD DOMINATION, thanks for asking," will be my response.  Although perhaps omitting that last bit.  Don't want to worry people.  Enslave them, yes; send them to the organ-banks and the uranium mines, yes; but with a song in their hearts***!

*  One of three words in the English language with a double "U" and I'm not telling you the other two.

**  Insert obligatory Bach Chamber Quartet joke here

***  NOT from a musical.