Armstrong Whitworth!

I Know, I Know

It sounds like an artificial curse, akin to that one dreamt up by whoever was trying to promote Cresta, way back in the Seventies - "Rimsky Korsakov!" - 

Because OF COURSE one associates froth with polar bears.  Obviously.

     - which I'm kind of surprised didn't lead to a diplomatic row with the Sinister Union via their embassy.  Although, given that this was the height of the Cold War, they'd probably all been declared persona non grata and kicked out of This Sceptred Isle.  Art!

Hmmm I speak the truth

     The Sinisters hated when this happened, because it made them look weak and vulnerable, and MI5 hated it, too, because they were thinking 'O great now we're going to have to deal with a new collection of complete strangers', whilst their competitors compatriots in MI6 pointed and laughed.

     Er - where were we?

     O yes!  Armstrong Whitworth were an aircraft manufacturing company, who produced the 'Argosy', which is kind of what we threatened you with yesteryon, except not quite like this.  Art!

     A bit of a behemoth, it could carry up to 70 troops or 12 tons of cargo and was widely used by both the RAF and civilian operators for a good 30 years, which indicates how robust and functional a piece of kit it was.

     That's not all, gentle reader.  The term 'Argosy' is also an archaic term used to describe a fleet of merchant ships, which is probably why some bright spark at AW decided on such a name for their plane.  It is derived, not as you might expect, from the Greek city of Argos, but rather from the Renaissance city of Ragusa, where we get the root "Ragusea".  Art!

     So there you have today's title, and you're welcome*.

Empire State Jigsaw

Ah yes.  You ought to remember that Conrad was gloasting on Saturday about his acquisition of same.  Spirits in the Sekrit Layr were somewhat lower today as I have been examining the pieces and the instruction pamphlet.  Art!

     Whoever donated this had only managed the 44 pieces around the base, which Conrad immediately broke up and separated, because utilising that would be cheating, which is jolly not on.  Not only that, the Instructions go to great pains to emphasise that pieces with a red dot present are not part of the puzzle.  They seem to be sprue parts that were in between the actual puzzle pieces when the whole thing was a giant flat array.  I have been shovelling dozens and dozens of these non-valid pieces into a tin.

     Then there are the instructions.  Art!

     They say to assemble the sub-structures flat, before attempting to <ahem> get them erect, and those cardboard cut-outs in the box lid are the internal supports the whole thing needs to maintain structural integrity.

     Conrad suspects that completing the puzzle is going to be relatively easy compared to assembling the whole tower.  WSS.  Art!

A venue Your Humble Scribe has ascended

Conrad Is - As Per Usual - ANGRY!

Those of you who do not wish to endure another Codeword screed CAN SIT BACK DOWN AND PAY ATTENTION ANYWAY!  

     Thank you.  Your distant descendants will thank you when they avoid forced labour in the uranium mines, believe me.  ANYWAY let the rancour commence.

"FENUGREEK": <long list of swears redacted>ing me?  I have never seen this as a solution in either a Cryptic or a Codeword, which is telling in itself.  Let me see: "An annual heavily scented Mediterranean leguminous plant with hairy stems -" according to my Collins Concise.  Hairy stems my hairy white posterior!  WHAT ARE WE SUDDENLY ALL BOTANISTS NOW!?

"Fenuhellenicrepublic" doesn't have quite the same cachet

     "MYOPE": Yes, my 'ope was to solve this one without recourse to either my Longmans or the Collins Concise.  What on earth is 'myope' when it's at home?  Or even out visiting?  

     Ah.  Apparently anyone suffering from 'Myopia' (as in Your Humble Scribe) is a 'myope', in that they are shockingly short-sighted and need spectacles with lenses like Coke bottle bottoms to see clearly.  Art!

This myope is - beyond hope

"OXBOW": You need not fear that bovines are rising up in revolt, armed with missile weapons.  This word, apart from utilising two of the least-used letters in a Codeword**, refers to a geographical feature that Conrad remembers from his long-distant lessons in geography. Art!

      That horseshoe-shaped lake is an oxbow lake, formed when a river with lots of loops and whorls manages to cut off one of said loops and whorls.  as you can see in the centre of the picture, all it takes is for a trickle of water to cross that very narrow neck of land and Hey Pesto! you have an oxbow lake.  An interesting hydrographical feature THAT HAS NO PLACE IN A CODEWORD!

     Excuse me, I think I need to go sit down before the red mists descend.

Number Five Is - Well, It's Not On Life-Support

If you have been following the blog then you ought to be aware that Conrad has been itemising the five Imperial War Museum venues across This Sceptred Isle.  Number Five is the IWM at Trafford, based here in Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell, and surprise surprise! Conrad has visited this venue quite a few times, because it wasn't that far from Connexions Salford when I worked there.  Art!

     To be honest it was rather a disappointment.  They don't have that much kit, or at least they didn't.  One of the highlights was being able to ascend seven storeys to a - searchlight.  Fans of searchlights would no doubt be salivating at the prospect; the other 99.9999% of us, not so much.  They did have a quite useful bookshop on the premises, which is what I came to visit back in the day.  That, of course, was eleven years ago before Amazon Prime.

     I may well pop along to see what's what, and if they have more up-to-date kit.

Finally -

Oooooh the raw naked temptation!  Conrad is sitting mere inches from the battalion war diary of the Second Battalion The Lancashire Fusiliers, which he downloaded at least a decade ago from the Archives at Kew, and printed off free of charge thanks to Connexions, who were most generous about it. If they ever knew in the first place, that is.  I think I need a project that involves making extensive annotations again, which I've not managed since "Field Guns In France".  It's the only way to be sure.

     This only came up thanks to "Have His Carcase" and my musings on same.  What a tangled web we weave, when the cross beams have gone askew on the treadle 

*  I have drunk Cresta in the past and don't remember a thing about how it tasted.  Also the process that made it so frothy is probably illegal now because nobody else is doing it.

**  I shall cruelly leave you to guess which two.