The Rake's Progress

I Was Just Inspired

 - which means I now have to subsequently do some digging about said inspiration, as these things that arrive out of my mind's left side need a bit of support.

     Okay, you may be aware of a series of prints by Hogarth, dating from the eighteenth century, which are titled "The Rake's Progress".  Art!

     Conrad is not going to put up all eight, as that would create a blog at least 7,000 words long, what with pointing out the details in Ol' Hoggy's creation.  The idea is that Tom Rakewell inherits his miserly father's fortune, and then sets about blowing it all on gambling, whores and crack cocaine high living.  He burns through the whole lot and ends up in a lunatic asylum; quite a downer and probably not what you were expecting, hmmmm?
     Of course, having introduced this, we promptly skip away from it, since it's not what the blog's about.  Then there is the 1945 film of the same name, starring Rex Harrison, which Conrad has actually seen.  Only once, a long time ago, but it still counts.  Art!

     In this film we see Rex Harrison's character, Vivian, behave like a completely unprincipled bowel-movement for most of the running time, trusting to his charm, good looks and family money to get him out of trouble (debt, philandering, pregnant women, angry puppies).  He finally finds redemption in making a doomed last stand, holding off the Teuton hordes single-handedly as his company escapes, all the time whilst quaffing champagne (if I remember correctly).  

     

     The South Canadians did NOT approve of his behaviour and thus changed the title, because hanky-panky outside of marriage in 1945 was a big no-no.

     ANYWAY that's still not what the blog's about today.  If you have been following us with any regularity then you know Conrad follows the Youtube channel for 'post10', whom is a South Canadian dedicated to unblocking drains and culverts in his locale.  No, he doesn't get paid.  Yes, his Youtube channel has advertising and you can send him money if so taken, yet he does what he does out of sheer public mindedness.  Art!

Not all heroes wear capes

     Very unusually, Post (not going to use his real name) was stopped by the police before he got to clearing clogs, as he was carrying a rake and they wanted to know what his intent was.  A quick Google would have confirmed the truth.  Once free to rake, he goes at five huge culverts that have been blocked over time by twigs, branches, tree trunks, leaves and silt.

     You can judge how much crud has built up here by scaling the culvert pipes against Post himself in the one above.  Does this matter? I hear you ask.  Well, yes, because if the water's not going through the culvert, it will back up and cause flooding.

Water beginning to run freely

     Compare water levels here.  Cleared channel to starboard, blocked channel to port.

     

     This is rather risky, as Post is standing directly in the in-flow which has dramatically increased due to his removal of the clogs, so there is a possibility of his being forced off his feet.  This didn't happen in real life, but indicates the kind of risk he undergoes in his civic volunteering.  Not to mention armies of spiders.

     Motley, you look a bit under-entertained.  Feel like exploring a culvert under the motorway by torchlight?

Bitten By The Coincidence Hydra - AGAIN

Your Humble Scribe must have especially tender and tasty buttocks, as the Dog Buns! beast above has fastened all fifty-five fangs in there, ferociously.  This takes a bit of preamble, so bear with me.  NO!  Not the creature, the phrase.

     BOOJUM! has, of late, been prating on about foxes, which naturally led to wolves, and "Wolfie" Smith of "Citizen Smith", whose catchphrase was "Freedom for Tooting!"

     Our trans-Atlantic cousins may be surprise to know that "Tooting" means more than merely blowing your horn.  It is also home to Tooting Bec Underground station, which urbane Youtuber Jago Hazzard covered in one of his informative videos.  Art!

     Jago explained about the Underground's designs, which were created by architect Charles Holden.  They seem so commonplace nowadays that it takes rather a leap of the imagination to understand that they were designed.  Of course their awesomness is wasted on the southron jessies that use them daily.  Jago pointed out that the ticket offices for Tooting Bec are all deep underground, so the station above ground is merely a kind of cover for the escalators that reach those subterranean depths.  Art!

     As we already know, the odd name comes because the Norman monastery at Bec owned land in the area, for whatever convoluted reason.

Talking About Going Underground

I was going to post about Nemesis and Torquemada and 2000AD, and then thought to check and yes, I've already done an item on them.  April last year.  Art!

O well

A Holocaust Hobbit-Hole

Hobbits, as we are well aware, live underground.  That's Point One.  Point Two is that, in the event of the Third Unpleasantness ever kicking off, This Sceptred Isle would be the unwilling recipient of a whole mess of Sinister "Buckets Of Instant Sunshine".  To avoid being rendered into a vapour, a whole array of underground installations were - er - installed, across This Sceptred Isle, the better to carry out their functions.  In the case of the Royal Observer Corps, said function was to monitor for nuclear detonations, yield, location, airburst or groundburst, wind direction and strength and report into a central network that would plot these events nationally.  Fun job.  Art!

     Here we see the ROC St Agnes site, which is a small wired enclosure, an entrance shaft and a pokey little room at the bottom. I'd not call it a "bunker" myself, to be honest, because that's frankly a little grandiose.  Nor would I be interested in paying £25,000 for it, which is the asking price.

Finally -

I have spared you any great insight into "The Mandalorian" as I've still not finished watching Season Two, but now that we are 12 episodes in to both seasons, you may need to get a bit of prep in for Conrad's yarking and barking.  There's a lot that could be done in analysing this show, as Jon Favreau has nods and winks to the original film trilogy and any number of spaghetti westerns, and Clint Eastwood, and sci-fi tropes -

"Don't play with your food."

     See you on the other side!