The Curious Case Of The Dog And The Knight

<Narrows Eyes Menacingly>

I'm warning you.  Conrad is itching, simply ITCHING, to try out his Remote Nuclear Detonator (as inspired by Mirror Universe Captain Kirk's version) and if any of you so much as imply a mis-spelling has taken place ...

      

     What?  You were expecting William Shatner chewing the carpet?  No, because today's title is a variation of a well-known quote from Sherlock Holmes (see above).

     Here an aside.  In the First Unpleasantness Basil Rathbone was an officer in the London Scottish regiment, where he led a band of desperadoes known for their skill and adtroitness in trench-raiding.  Art!

Baz in glengarry

    The quote, which I can't be bothered to type out:

    That's a pretty wicked tash, Sir Art.

     ANYWAY what I was actually interested in bringing to your attention was The Questing Beast.  Art!

     That's the wonderfully-realised version from "Once And Future", with Duncan and the world's most dangerous grandmother, Bridgette.  Seriously, don't annoy her or you'll wake up in ER.
     Whizzing across realities, let us now cut to Sir Palomides and "Le Mort D'Arthur" because he is tasked with hunting the Questing Beast in Book Nine.  The QB has the head of a snake, the body of a leopard, the back legs of a lion and the feet of a hart, and it's stomach makes a noise like thirty dogs a-barking.  Nobody goes into much detail about what it eats, though Your Humble Scribe suspects it to be a carnivore.  Typically depicted as a large beast, it must have to consume a great deal of meat daily, and is thus a peril to farmer's flocks and stray travellers on foot, especially those with hearing impairment.  After all, if you heard a pack of wild dogs closing in on you, you'd scarper up a tree pretty quickly, wouldn't you?

Make it a tall tree, hmmmm?

     And thus we have today's title, which I had no idea was going to be a thing until I started typing.

How to scare cats the Mirror Kirk way!

     Motley, would you care to step into this completely innocent cabinet?  Ignore the lettering on it.  "Agony Booth" is - er - Lithuanian for - ah - "Sonic Shower"*.

A Bit Of A Pit

Conrad comes across unusual channels on Youtube, some of which he peruses simply because the thumbnail or title seem interesting, and what you are about to experience is one of those.  From channel "letsdig18".  Art!

     Impressively sunk, I think you'll agree.  Apparently the excavator had been hired by an amateur who was attempting to dig out his pond.  Amazingly enough the engine was still working.

     It's not immediately obvious, but this is the professional excavator lifting and dropping huge wooden 'mats' onto the mud, in order to provide a secure footing for his vehicle.  He dropped them in exactly the right place each time and made it look easy, which is a sign that it's surely not.

     Now he's digging away all the mud around the stranded vehicle, getting as close as possible yet never hitting the bodywork.  He'd already contained pond water with a barrier of mud, so that there wouldn't be any flooding.

     They start up the now-excavated excavator, which runs a bit croupily, but it runs.

     Ninety minutes later - timed from arriving, not from when the video started rolling - both excavators move away from the pit.  Hooray for letsdig18!  Kind of reminds one of Third Ypres with all that mud.

The Story Of A Disappearance

Firstly, a shout back to the Seventies, and a television series called "Warship", a few episodes of which Your Humble Scribe was able to watch when Parent One and Two were elsewhere, as they didn't care for it.  Art!

     One episode was described in the "Radio Times" (a weekly listings magazine that listed only BBC programs, both radio and television) as possibly heralding the Third Unpleasantness, because the titular warship comes under air attack -

     Except no.  The aircraft doing the 'attacking' were that unmistakably ugly aircraft, the Phantom, the one that has been described as "looking as if it got caught in the hangar doors".  Definitely not Sinister.  It turned out to be a live-fire exercise.

Not visible - the anti-submarine mortars

There they are, the rascals!

     The series had been created by one Ian Mackintosh, who had been an officer in the Senior Service, which is what we in This Sceptred Isle call the Royal Navy**.  He wrote novels whilst still in the Navy, and created "Warship" whilst still serving, before retiring in 1976.  He then went on to create "Wilde Alliance", "Thundercloud" and "The Sandbaggers" - I might have seen an episode or two of this latter.

     Then, on 07/07/1979, whilst aboard a plane flown by a friend, a distress call was received by the US Coast Guard.  No trace of plane or passengers or pilot was ever found.  Which is a bit of a way to go, and explains why he never wrote anything after that date.

For those who want to know more

You What?!

Apropos of another Youtube Reddit, the question had been asked of engineers about impossible demands from insane clients, and a commentator came up with a real winner.  They had designed a 100-space car park for the clients, and it needed lamps to illuminate it.  It wasn't possible to connect to the national grid because the client was heavily into renewables.

     "No solar panels, we don't like them," stated the client.  Art!

Cost about £100 each, probably cheaper in bulk

     "We want geothermally-powered lamps!" they brightly declared.

     Geothermal.  In Australia.  Where there is none.  Just to prove a point, the commenter worked out that they would have to dig 9 miles down and build a power station.  For a 100 space car-park.

     The client got solar panels.

Geothermal power plant.  In ICELAND.  Not Australia.

And with that we are done.  And I'm off to make toast, since we have TOO MUCH BREAD, which is my fault as I keep buying it.  It is the Staff Of Life, though.

*  Apologies to any Lithuanians reading this scrivel.

**  Yes, we also have a Royal Air Force.  We do NOT have a 'Royal Army', though some bits of it are called 'Royal'.