Lightning Strikes Another 273 Times

Confession Time

No!  I did not sink the Titanic.  That was an iceberg.  Of course, the swivel-eyed loonwaffle brigade probably assert that it was either aliens or the CIA, even if there's no proof of the former and the latter didn't come into being until after the Second Unpleasantness.  Common sense not common amongst loonwaffles.

     No, what I wanted to admit was a guilty pleasure in enjoying "Murder She Wrote", because it's in the genes: once you become middle-aged you HAVE to read and watch murder mysteries.

Jessica demonstrates the Batticaloa Brain-Pinch murder method*

    Here an aside.  All those Dot Sayers murder mysteries?  Gone to the charity shop, because once I've read it I won't forget how it was done, nor by whom nor why.  Retentive memory, you see.  A blessing and a curse.
     Take the episode I've just been watching. The killer murdered their victim in the first-class section of an airliner.  WHY?  There is a strictly limited circle of suspects and they can't escape.  If I were  - 

     Hmmmm, getting a little off-topic there.  And Conrad is pretty sure you don't want to know how to carry out an undetectable murder using succinyl cholinesterase ANYWAY back to MSW.

The cold cruel eyes of a killer codeword-solver

     As you should surely know by now, Conrad loves a bit of number-crunching, and MSW is no more resistant to this than anything else.  Jessica Fletcher, as played by BRITISH actress Angela Lansbury, resides in what I dub The Murder Capital Of South Canada: Cabot Cove, population 3,560.  Art!

Long out of date, I'm afraid

     Not that original a thought, others have been here before.  Still others have calculated that 274 murders have occurred in tiny (yes), quiet (debatable) peaceful (definitely not!) town of Cabot Cove, which comes out at an alarming 7.5% of the town population.  One out of every 13 people, in fact.  Even the worst third-world drug-ridden slums aren't that dangerous.  The cost of living must be practically free, or there are springs that issue forth beer and wines, or the air prevents aging or - there must be something that keeps people there, surely?

     I mean, you could expect to put up with a single murder in such a small town.  The following 273?  Unless - ah! got it.  Once a dozen murders take place the normal people begin to move out, and murder groupies start to buy houses.  It's the only explanation**.
     Motley!  The suspects are all gathered together in the parlour so I need someone something to play the part of victim.

More Crunching Of Those Delicious Numbers

Forsooth! for I am nearly half-way through "Transportation On The Western Front" and deadly dry stuff it is too.  Be glad that Your Modest Artisan is reading it on your behalf, for it has mostly concerned TRAINS so far.  So many trains!

Note the mix of hats and helmets
(Implying pre-summer 1916)

     The other principal method of movement for the British Expeditionary Force in 1914 was the horse, as I may have mentioned, with motor vehicles coming a distant second.  Not only were there not that many of them, there weren't that many drivers, either, as ownership of a car back in Blightly was limited to the well-off.  So!  When the four infantry divisions (plus the independent 19th Infantry Brigade amounting to about a third of a division) plus a cavalry division went to France in 1914 they took 1,200 motor vehicles.  Art!

     That's for the whole BEF.  Consider that a single infantry division at that time had at full count just shy of 5,600 horses, and the cavalry division had 9,800 and you see the numbers do indeed speak, verily, of Dobbin as the prime mover.  Motorisation proceeded apace - and we shall come back to this.  Also, take note of that picture above.  We shall come back to this, too***.

More About Trains

Steam trains, to be specific, as today's models are all stinky diesel or crackly electric ones.  A good sixty years ago they were a major infrastructure feature of Perfidious Albion, before car-ownership was widespread and the creation of motorways was in it's infancy.  

     Cue artistic endeavour in attempts to persuade the public to travel by train.  The BBC recently covered an advertising and ephemera haul found accidentally in an ex-railway employee's attic.  Art!

     People pay a lot of money for articles like this: £1,200 in fact.  So if Dad ever worked on the railways, it might be an idea to sort out the junk in his attic (lest Darling Daughter be tempted to do this, be careful, there are booby traps).

And Still Bricking It Down Under

No!  Not in the slang sense of "Being a big scared wuss", rather "Making enormous structures out of Lego".  Art?

A Brickman creation

     Yes, another creation from Brickman and team, and this picture really doesn't do it justice, since there are no puny humans for scale, and I couldn't find a picture with any of you us alongside it.  It is 9 feet tall, and no I couldn't find out how many bricks it uses.  Several hundred thousand at a guess, and again it's not readily apparent but this thing glows in the dark thanks to internal lighting and transparent bricks.  I can tell you it was part of an exhibition that took 4,200 hours to build and totalled 2,000,000 bricks.  Is that good enough?

Finally -

We only need a short article to hit the Compositional Ton, after which I think a shave and some scoff are in order.  I deliberately bought some ingredients on the weekly shop that allow me to use recipes from Marguerite Patten's "500 Snacks and Suppers" and I've done two so far, which were pretty tasty and filling.  Who knew that creamed spinach on toast was a thing?  Or Scrambled Rice And Bacon?

     Which of course has nothing to do with what I wanted to say, which was - er - sorry food again - to parse the phrase "As sure as eggs are eggs".  Which means "To be indisputably correct and true in every regard".

     Yes - but why EGGS? exactly?  Why not a lump of granite or a grilled trout or a De Tomaso Mangusta running on high-octane petrol? (see not everything is about food).

     My "Brewers" has an interesting theory.  The phrase may be a corruption of the logician's posit "Let x equal x", which is intriguing and which has less cholesterol.

     See?  Laurie agrees.

     And do you know what?  We're done.  Done done done!

*  This may not be entirely accurate

**  That, or aliens.

***  I can see you twitching with excitement at the thought.