I'll Be Your Octopussy If You'll Be My Beaver-Eel

Of Course, Conrad Has No Idea What "Octopussy" Is

Haven't seen the film and no great desire to do so.  That title seems more like a pun in search of a punchline than anything to do with a plot:  "Look, look, look how clever I am!" "Shut up, Max, you don't get unchained from the typewriter until we get another 50 pages of script" <sound of electrodes buzzing>*.

     Although Your Humble Scribe does wonder if an extrapolated creature from "The Future Is Wild" might fit the bill.  Art?

Meet a "Squibbon"

     TFIW predicates a far distant future where various marine animals have adapted to life on land, and the craftily-named Squid-Gibbon is one of them, able to swoop amongst and climb trees with monkey-like dexterity.  No, strike that, make it "with cat-like dexterity".  Art?

I don't know what they're up to and it's probably best not to ask

     Okay, I shall go and see what "Octopussy" is all about.  Since it featured Roger Moore Conrad expects some eye-rolling one-liners.

     <goes and reads up details on "Octopussy" and blinks in disbelief>

     O my word!  A rogue Sinister general seeks to detonate a Sinister nuke at a South Canadian airbase in West Germany having it smuggled out of East Germany in a circus, concealed in a Faberge egg (I don't think they used enough current on Max).  With a dead clown.  Or a deadpan clown.  Unless that was James Bond.  Colour me confused.

Altogether now: "Nothing is scarier than a clown out of context"

     All part of a cunning Sinister plan to have the West disarm and get rid of it's nukes because this would so oh-so-obviously have been one of the South Canadian nukes going off by accident and there would be a big caterwauling and -

     NO!
     

     First of all, the Sinisters did not let just anyone waltz into one of their nuclear arsenals and pirouette out again, having purloined one of the Big Bang Bombs.  Like all nuclear powers, they were OBSESSIVE about keeping these things audited correctly.  Can you imagine Ol' Leonid, puffing on a cigar and swilling vodka, asking questions -

LEONID BREZHNEV: Tell me, Comrade Marshal General of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces, how many mighty intercontinental ballistic missiles, scourge of the eeeevil capitalistic West, do we have ready this morning?

CMGOTSSRF: Oh, ninety-five, a hundred, something like that.  Maybe even a hundred and twenty.

The next morning

     Not only that, the South Canadians had radioisotope assay equipment that would be able to identify the fallout components of any such explosion AS SINISTER IN ORIGIN.  

     Ooops (go on, give Max another couple of terrawatts), to coin a phrase.  Okay, Conrad is even less likely to watch this farrago.

      Yet what of the "Beaver-Eel". I hear you ask?  Is this another far-future extrapolation that ends up in a nine-ton creature which eats forests by the hectare?

     Sadly no.  Art?

Nine tons, maybe

     Behold the mighty Leyland 'Beaver-Eel', an extempore armoured vehicle as hastily contrived by Perfidious Albion when invasion was imminent in 1940.  The "Beaver" bit seems to come from Lord Beaverbrook, who was responsible for ordering the truck; the "Eel" one can only guess at**.  They were run up with incredible speed to the tune of over 300, armed as you can see with a 20 m.m. cannon (apologies for the metric) and usually a couple of light machine guns, too.  The RAF gratefully fell upon them and used them until the Second Unpleasantness ended for defence of airfields and aircraft.  Art?

Now bordering on Gerry Anderson!

     Now, Your Humble Scribe is pretty well-informed Perfidious Albion's 'Poverty Range' of hastily-created armoured expedients of the Second Unpleasantness, mostly drawn up in 1940 to deal with expected airborne assault.  The Beaver-Eel, I have to say, I had never heard of until the recent weekend and there are only 3 pictures of it on teh interwebz, of which I have used 2.

Now 3

     Motley, we'll give you a fifty-yard start, then we start firing rocks from the Gamage Trench Catapult***!

     Just for your information, Conrad is now 10% of the way through "Bleak House", hooray!  We have had a caustic satirical portrayal of the Court of Chancery in action, Our Heroine's life and times, or at least the interesting bits, and have arrived at Bleak House, which isn't.  And there is some deviltry afoot with Lady Dedlock, too, you mark my words ...

Lady Dedlock?  Some mistake, surely?

Small Typhoon In Nether Wallop

Hopefully you remember Conrad's recent acquisition of a Bodum teapot, and his lamenting that there must be a knack to pouring tea from it, as when he tried, the wretched thing dribbled.  Art!

I am not alone.

     So, I had a nosy at the box, which recommended that one leave a 4 c.m. (sorry for the metric TWICE IN ONE BLOG WHAT LEVELS OF DEPRAVITY IS CONRAD DESCENDING TO!) gap to ensure the tea pours properly.  I made a stab at what 4 c.m. is tonight and - it dribbled a lot less.  More practice required, O noes! I shall have to drink more tea!

I've got your measure, matey

Bringing The House Down

Yesterday we looked at a spectacular demolition fail, where a giant chimney collapsed right on top of the excavator doing the demolition, denting it considerably yet not killing the driver.  We now look at an event elsewhere, one that established a theme in the video on the Woodart Youtube channel.  Art?

     Yes, the excavator doing the demolition work is inside the building it's trying to demolish.  This is an example of the shockingly non-existent safety standards there were in play here.   Out of shot is a collection of spectators with no security, no barriers and not even any facemasks.

     Again, a staggeringly dangerous place to be working.  For most of these clips, the excavators appear to be operating either an industrial-sized drill or a pair of giant pincers at the end of the extensor arm, with which they gradually whittle away at the structure's integrity.  Conrad supposes this method is cheap as you only need one excavator, one man and patience.

     Pecking away at a structure like that is dangerous, because there's no telling when it will collapse, nor what the catalyst will be, nor how it will collapse nor from what point.

     There's no indication as to whether the driver survived or not.  It's unclear as to where the building was supposed to collapse, as there are no taped or fenced-off areas.

     How should it have been done?   Not like this!  A team of demolition professionals with explosives, except they would be costly.  Or partial preparation by stripping out walls and pillars and then a crane with a wrecking ball.  

     You can bet we're going to be coming back to this, just not tonight, for we are done done done!

* Times were tough for screenwriters in the Eighties.

**  There was an admiral with the initials "E.E." involved, if that helps.