Ripped Raw From The Headlines!

Perhaps

This blog, incidentally, is coming to you unusually late on a Sunday because Your Humble Scribe did overtime until 14:00, which is when I'm normally well into creating another masterpiece of wit, wisdom and whimsy.  BOOJUM! in case that wasn't clear enough.  Do keep up!

     I took a few photographs last night, from the BBC website, which is why you get today's over-the-top description.  Let's get going with a bang.  Art!

German tourists leave souvenir behind

     I realise there's nothing to give scale here, so let me inform you that this rusty beast was nicknamed a "Herman", after the corpulent head of the Luftwaffe, and comes in at a ton of HE.  It was most certainly not inert, because the Loggies who boxed it in filmed the moment of detonation: 

     The buildings here give a sense of scale.  That's a big bang. Despite all the precautions taken, it still damaged windows and brickwork, because high explosive does that kind of thing when you set off large amounts of it.  Now, this particular bit of ordnance was only 80 years old, so consider what the unexploded shells lying underground in France and Flanders are going to be like after 108 years at a minimum.  Art!

     I am minded of the commentary by N & M Press on the above, where you can see French peasants selling unexploded shells dug up on their farms, to itinerant tourists with more money that self-preservation skills.  Old ordnance that might be dug up, and not be in a good mood about it, when ploughing by tractor meant French and Belgian farmers had a large slab of armour plate behind their seat - "just in case".

     There we go, enough creative juice squeezed from the tissues of that headline.  Motley, that tea was poisoned.  The antidote is in the fridge.  However, you now have to get from your sunlounger to the kitchen door, and there are mines under some flags.  Go!

The Eagle Has Landed And The Sweater Has Arrived

Your Humble Scribe does mention that it feels as if we are living in a science-fiction film at times, because streaming television and camera drones, not to mention Hermes.  NO, not the Greek god of transportation, whom often tussled with Conrad when I was travelling into Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell by bus.  This Hermes provides a collection and courier service; you register at their website, fill in details of what you're sending, print off a label they send you and drop it off at a nominated shop.  Art!

     Darling Daughter has just confirmed she got the above, which was laughingly described as 'far too small' for Conrad's modest frame.  It's exceedingly warm, so completely useless at present in our unseasonal heatwave.  Just wait.

     I realise this isn't big news to many of you out there, but this almost-pensioner feels a sense of proud and heady achievement.

You Can't Scale Flames

A truism in the old film business, where you used real effects because CGI didn't exist.  You can't scale flames or water, they obey their own physical rules.  Let us once more beat "Dalek's Invasion Of Earth 2150" with a big stick and see what falls out of it.  Art!

     The motorised-dustbin's spaceship, which is a pretty cool model, made sinister by the sound effects they play when it's in flight.  Nothing about it obviously says "Dalek", although it's patently not human in design, either.  Next!

     No, the extras are not bolting to get at the catering truck first.  These are the slave workers and Robomen - who are apparently now given free will by deus ex machina, it seems - running to get out of the mines they have been digging.  Conrad is pretty sure everything above the trees is a matte.  Note the Dalek building at upper starboard.

     Well now, it is consequences time.  The surviving Daleks seek to flee in their spaceship, which is seen here succumbing to the <insert nonsensical mumbo-jumbo about magnetism here>.  Oh, and remember what I said about scaling flame?  Hmmmm check out the frankly unconvincing fires where that building once stood.   Check out, also, the model which now occupies the foreground.

     That is the remains of the Dalek spaceship, because it was made out of super explodey material which ignites and self-destructs whenever the script calls for it.  Don't get me wrong, I love this film, yet it has flaws.

And claws

Conrad Is Puzzled

Which means he probably disapproves of a thing and cannot understand it's popularity - like Alan Carr or Strictly Come Dancing, both of which are going to be nuked into a glowing vapour when I take over.  I think Carr will be first, because doing-in Strictly might warn him.

     ANYWAY I was mystified by a photograph on the BBC website (thanks for today's inspiration, Auntie) which seemed to show a golden egg.  Art?

     Reading the blurb proved that it was, very much indeed, a golden egg.  A publicity gimmick by Cadburys, it was created to be hidden and encourage people to go out and hunt dragons seek treasure (sorry, easily confused).  Whoever was selling it made out well, someone with more money than cold, hard dragon-hunting skills sense ponied up £31,000 for it.  Well done, you now have an egg-shaped lump of gold.  Conrad's immediate question "Can you eat it?" being answered with a resounding "No", all interest is lost.

Only costs 25p and is miles better for you

Finally -

Conrad would like to further put your mind at ease about Planet Earth being vulnerable to asteroid or comet impact.  Yes, these happened all the time during human pre-history; we now have the technology to predict impactors and take measures to divert them.  I glossed over a few methods yesteryon, forgetting that there is also the possibility of using a high-powered orbital laser to blast an incoming Near Earth Object.  Not in the cinematic sense of literally blowing the NEO to pieces <glazes over imaginging this in real life>, rather in consistently and persistently heating one spot to cause outgassing, which would divert it.  Art!

Probably not quite as dramatic as this

     And with that, we are done!