Trapdoors

NO!  Nothing To Do With The Repellent Spider Species

As you should surely know by now, Conrad is both a massive coward and scared of spiders beyond reason, more than any person except Jayne, whom cannot remain in the room with you if the word "Arachnophobia" is mentioned.  If there was ever an arachnophobic version of the film "Arachnophobia" made, it would be all of twelve minutes long.

And this guy would be in six of them

     ANYWAY that has little to nothing to do concerning what we are gathered here today for, which doesn't have anything to do with that hilarious children's television program "The Trapdoor" which Conrad is eminently familiar with, since it was one of Darling Daughter's staples when she was young and cute.  Art!

     The premise is that Berk (the big blue blob above) lives in a castle, and in the very bottom-most deepest darkest dungeon, there is a trapdoor, which keeps out innumerable hideous creepy-crawlies, which are forever trying to get in.  Conrad would have sealed it up with 2,500 tons of concrete, but your view may differ.

     No, what we are here for today is an historical archaeological excursion into the hydrodynamic history of Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell, which, for the purposes of this Intro, we shall call "Manchester".  Bring on Martin Zero!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3fqrmSkFjmkGGBPkoBO1GQ

That's his Youtube link, which I would encourage you to follow.  Martin looks at industrial archaeology across Greater Manchester, and one of his pet passions was a peculiar remnant from the dawn of Britain's Industrial Revolution; the Lock 89 trapdoor on the Bridgewater Canal.  Art!

The Bridgewater

     When canals were introduced they raised transportation by a quantum level, because you could move freight in immense amounts as compared to the primitive road system of the day, and you could do it both cheaply and efficiently.  Bear in mind this is a century before the railroads begin moving lots of heavy things very quickly.

     So!  Canals are constructed from the early eighteenth century onwards, including Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell, where they are overlaid on a palimpsest (again another word you didn't expect to hear today) of the city's recent history.  This includes the River Tib, which used to run across what would become Manchester, and which was culverted and roofed over in order to be able to keep building above it - similar to a fair few rivers in The Mother Of Babylons ("London" if we're being formal).  Art!

Crediting this to Martin Zero

     That thin blue line is the River Tib, which is completely hidden from view today, and you can see where it intersects the Bridgewater Canal.  That blue circle depicts the near-legendary trapdoor.

     And what's this?  A mysterious arrow chiselled into the very masonry of the Bridgewater Canal?

     Incidentally, Conrad would caution against swimming in this canal, no matter how hot the weather.  Many, many years ago when I worked on the archaeology dig at Castlefield, some of my colleagues had (months) earlier cooled off by having a dip in the canal.  They became very ill.

     Motley!  How do you fancy a Bridgewater cocktail?

The Word Is Absard

NO!  That is not a typo or spelling mistake, it is in fact an hilarious pun worthy of the very highest appreciation, or at least an amused snicker.  As we have done here on a few occasions recently, Conrad has taken aim at three words that sound similar: Bustard, Mustard and Custard.  Now you know where this item's title comes from.  Without further ado -

"BUSTARD": WASH OUT YOUR DIRTY MINDS!   This is a species of European bird, noted for it's long legs, long neck and speckled plumage.  The name comes from Old French "Bistarde", which itself derives from the Latin "Avis Tarda", meaning "Slow Bird".  You will note the transposition of "V" to "B", which happens a lot in heritage languages - this is why the volcanoes of South-Eastern Europe gave it the name "Balkans".  Art!

It's not slow - it's deliberate

"MUSTARD": Aha, another one with a Latin root <hack spit>.  The essential mustard is a paste made from ground seeds of the plant, which used to have grape must added to it, for whatever reason, being thus known in Latin as 'Mustum' and which the Old French called "Moustarde".  Art!

"French"?  "Yellow"?
(Bites tongue REALLY HARD)

"CUSTARD": You ought to know what this is, Conrad mentioned it enough when he was making ice cream, as it forms the base for many varieties <drifts off for a moment contemplating pints and pints of home-made ice cream> ANYWAY it appears to be a Late Medieval or Early Modern transfer of description, from "Crustade" which was a type of pie.  You can well imagine someone pouring custard over a shepherds pie in 1547, and then being taken outside to be burnt as a witch.

A croustade.  Which seems to have been partially-burnt already

Dane Ault

You won't recognise this name, because I didn't and I'm incredibly better informed than you are, so let me enlighten you.  His name came up on the list of those going to be present in October in Portland, attending a screening of "The Thing" (world's scariest documentary!) and being available afterwards for signing stuff.  Art!

     Hilarious stuff indeed, using the tropes from the Second Unpleasantness in order to create mock recruiting and propaganda posters for The Empire.  Of course Conrad has no interest in serving under a skull-crushing totalitarian dictatorship (I nicked that from Philip K. Dick), but I am always open to learning from them.  Why invent the wheel when you can steal the design from somebody else?

     Dane is just one of ten artists on the Artists Signing Event in Portland this autumn, so we shall definitely revisit others on that list.

Finally -

Today I finished Peter Hodgkinson's "The Battle Of The Selle", a Helion publication that is possibly a Master's thesis which has been put forward for publication as an independent work.  It is very high-quality, being hardback, with glossy paper pages, and a series of maps in the middle that feature colour - always handy when trying to delineate lines on a map.

     "The battle of the what?" I hear you jib.  Yes, one of the last major actions fought by the armies of Perfidious Albion in the First Unpleasantness, only followed by the Battle of the Sambre.  Art!

     These are battles that are entirely absent from public consciousness about the First Unpleasantness; mention the Somme, or Passchendaele, and people will suck their teeth and mumble direly.  Mention the Selle or Sambre, and they will look at you with goggle-eyed incomprehension.  Yet - as those in the know never tire of saying - the Hundred Days campaign from August to November 1918 was a series of mighty victories achieved by the British Army that have never been  equalled before or since.  

Present in both the First Unpleasantness and "Star Wars"

     Whoops, got a bit wordy at the end there!  Chin chin old chap.