Camelot, Or What?

And If You Even Begin To Think This Is About That Musical ...

Then my Remote Nuclear Detonator will get a try-out!  Go on, I dare you.  

     In fact, is it that musical which features in "The Golden Turkey Awards?"  Why yes it is.  Your Honour, I rest my case.  I did a bit of due-diligence there, to make sure I got the right tome - after all, it might have been in "The Fifty Worst Films Of All Time".  The latter was published in 1978, so it could do with a new edition, hmmm?

"Godzilla Versus The Smog Monster" - another achingly awful contender

     Your Humble Scribe has seen the above, and it is pretty ghastly.  Godzilla is clearly overmatched yet the inevitable tussle between both monsters is interminable and takes up at least 87 minutes of the running time*.
     Well, as usual we seem to have taken a detour to Loony Land within seconds of departing from Sensible Station.  What we are supposed to be addressing, of course - obviously! - is Arthurian legend.  Some would argue 'tis but a hop and a skip from Early Modern chivalric romance to contemporary Nipponese kaiju, but you tend to find them confined to rubber rooms without access to edged cutlery.

CAUTION! Questing Beasts are emphatically not kaiju

     Where were we? O yes -

     Sir Tom, in Book Eleven of "Le Mort D'Arthur", finally gives us a real-world equivalent for the mythical Camelot - Winchester.  

     Ah, not so quick, Sir Tom.  For later scholars debate exactly which location Camelot sat at.  My "Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable" lists Camelodunum as one possible site, because there is a vague linguistic similarity.  Art!

An early iteration (Colchester)

     But!  It has also been assigned to Caerleon in Wales - and again to Cadbury Castle in Somerset.

Cadbury.  Not very chivalrous, is it?

     Don't go away yet - there's also Camelford in Cornwall, which is where Tintagel Castle resides.  I'm not going to put Tintagel up again, we've had it already a couple of times, go Google it if you're that interested.
     It's unlikely that we'll ever determine exactly where and which Camelot was located, unless someone can persuade a handy Time Lord to loan out his TARDIS.

     That's not all.  Sir Tom has consistently mentioned the country of "Logris" in his text, without explaining where this is, whether it's mythical or factual, not to mention the variant spelling.

     "Tell us, O Aged White-Haired Pundit, tell us!" I hear you chorus.  "For we want to know, and also "Wolf Hall" is on soon so a certain degree of celerity is appreciated."
     Pausing only to appreciate your taste in televisual drama, I shall.  Logris is England, which we are only told about three-quarters into LMDA.  Interestingly enough, the origin is Welsh <insert tired joke here> and from the author Geoffrey of Monmouth, who used the Welsh word "Lloegr" a century or so before Sir Tom put quill to parchment.  Art!

     There we go, from Kaiju to Kamelot!  Now we all know a lot more than we did five minutes ago.  Hooray.  Motley, would you like some ice cream?

The Seeds Of DEATH!

No, I am not referring to the BBC's premier dramamentary series "Doctor Who", although if that got any of you to click on the link - hah! - and Your Humble Scribe always confuses "The Seeds Of Doom" with "The Seeds Of Death".  Art?

 
     Memo to self: Death and the made in monochrome.  This was one of the first video releases of the Eighties, no gaps or editing, and in a fairly decent copy, too.  It's not obvious from the above, so allow me to inform you that it featured the Ice Warriors.  Art!

How to scare cats the Ice Warrior way!

     Okay, enough tangential scrivel.  The title is, frankly, stretching thing, which means a little explication is due.  Seeds; you got that bit, didn't you?  From seeds come flowers.  Still with me?  Good.  What can you make from flowers? (apart from rose-petal tea)?  That's right: garlands.

     Enter Herbert Garland, in peacetime a dull and workmanlike metallurgist in Cairo.  Art?

The spitting image of Flambeaux in "Father Brown"

     In wartime, come late 1915, he invented the 'Garland Mortar', an improvised piece of kit designed to throw improvised bombs at the Turk on the Dardanelles peninsula.  Art!

     For a hastily-improvised weapon it looks quite adequate (given time and wear).  They were sent to the Australian and British troops at Anzac and Helles, and went down a storm, firing the 'Jam Tin Bomb'** out to a couple of hundred yards.  It was rare for an improvised weapon like this to be so successful in the trenches, certainly this early in the First Unpleasantness.  Art!

There's one in the background

     The Ockers loved them because the barrel was fixed and to get extra or shorter range, you had to cock the weapon up or tip it forward, meaning it's use was a positive art, akin to cricket.  We don't have any word on what the Turk thought of them; probably "Kanli cehennem!"
     I thought I'd bring this to your attention as I've never heard of this weapon before, and you must be aware of my unhealthy interest in things that go BANG.


A Bit Of A Reach

Your Humble Scribe has been vaguely aware of the HiRISE satellite project in orbit around Mars for, oooh, ages and ages.  Not until I got a link from 'Skeptoid' did I bother actually looking up the host website at the University of Arizona, which has collections of images taken since 2006.  One selling point is that they have a gallery of 3D images - if one possesses a pair of those red-and-green spectacles.  Art!

The item responsible

     I've only skimmed the website, so I cannot report in depth.  What I wanted to look at with a skeptical eye was their hokey anacronym "HiRISE" because as the title says, that's reaching.  It stands for "High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment".  How long did it take them to brainstorm that one***!  Have a picture to while away the hours.

The Martian moon Phobos

Finally -

Riz Ahmed!  A British Asian actor whom Conrad has seen several times already, without realising it.  You can forgive me for "Rogue One" because it's such a buzzkill downer of a film, more depressing than "Grave Of The Fireflies", and "The Night Of" sounded worthy but dull, and which one was he in "Four Lions"?

     Yes well here he is in "Sound Of Metal".  Art!

     He not only looks the part of a rock drummer, he learned to play drums for the role.  Conrad considers him someone worthy of a bit of attention due to that alone.  This is probably late-breaking news for some of you as the film came out in 2019.  Cut me some slack, I'm nearly a pensioner.

I think with that we are very well done, Vulnavia.  Let's go get some ice-cream, if the motley's not guzzled most of it and fallen into the tub in an ice-cream stupor.

*  That's what it felt like.

**  I kid you not.

***  I have to admit feeling a bit of jealousy here.