Mine!

Not In The Way You Were Expecting

Which, to borrow a golf analogy I am merely parroting without having the slightest bit of insight about, is par for the course.  

     Conrad, you understand, is not laying claim to overseas territories such as the Sanjak of Novi Pazar, because when he takes over EVERYTHING will belong to him.  No, I refer, of course - obviously! - to the process of extracting minerals from the earth beneath our feet, a process known as 'mining'.  Art!

     Let us begin with a stern warning: OLD MINES ARE DANGEROUS.  What you see above comes from the BBC and an article about two people falling into an abandoned mine-shaft in Wales (hence very probably to do with coal).  One person has been badly injured, which is understandable if you look at the second picture and work out where they have fallen from and to.  That entrance looks like it might be that of a cave, which one would expect to run level and flat for a while.  Sadly not.

     If you have been keeping up with BOOJUM! recently then you will recall the visit made by Martin Zero <pause for a moment's appreciation of his urbex skills> to the mines around Burnley.  Art!

A capped mineshaft

     This is a coal-mine shaft that has been 'capped', which is to say sealed-off with a cover that prevents the ingress of outsiders, in the interests of safety.  One wonders why the shaft at Port Ysgo was not similarly sealed, or at the very least marked off with signage.  Conrad suspects law suits ahead.

     Motley!  Get yourself protected, cap-a-pie!

     Of course, what do coal mines do but supply fuel to power stations?  Which -

     - have COOLING TOWERS!

"The Last Train"

An absolute gift of a title to those who detest the rail authorities here in the Pond Of Eden <grits teeth so hard they squeak> which we will not be going into.  This was a post-apocalyptic television series from 1999, about a group of wilfully disparate survivors who wake up decades after an asteroid impact has devastated Planet Earth.  They are trying to reach a sanctuary in Scotland, established underneath a power plant for cosmetic disguise.  And what do we have at power plants?

     COOLING TOWERS!  Art?

     Your Humble Scribe cannot find any more images from this long-forgotten series that feature the COOLING TOWERS! except to say that they form a large part of the background to the last episodes of this series.  Not to mention being part of the ingress/egress arrangement for the gigantic survival bunker beneath the feet of the characters you see above.  I would have to find episodes and take photographs to do it justice.  Which may happen*.

"Have His Carcase" By Dorothy L. Sayers

There, we shall keep the shade of Dot at bay by including her middle initial.  Believe you me, a mention on Facebook or an ectoplasmic print on Instagram and these ghosts are putty in your hands.  

     What Conrad wanted to bring to light are a couple of references to the Chief Victim, and a girlfriend, which are both rather obscure thanks to the source novel being about ninety years old.  Such information may baffle you, gentle reader, because you are not as widely read as Conrad, who is of -

     ANYWAY we have a coroner's inquest into the deceased, where they blithely state: " - the deceased was a Russian by birth, and therefore excitable, and liable to be overcome by feelings of melancholy and despair - suicide was of frequent occurrence among the members of that unhappy nation."

Vodka is never mentioned.  Not once!

     One feels that this is a stereotype of the Nineteen-Thirties that has evolved over time into the Gopnik, crouched on his haunches swilling cheap vodka, reciting Russian rap lyrics (if they even exist?) as he tokes on a machorka cigarette.  Your average gopnik, swilling and smoking his life away, might well contemplate the bankrupt future his country has under Tsar Putin and decide to end it all**.

     The 'girlfriend'?  We shall save her for later.

"Lord Peter Wimsey and Bunter were masters of disguise"

More Morbid Minery

You ought to be aware by now that Conrad is 1) A massive coward and 2) Quite massive full stop.  Thus he jibs at dangerous hobbies such as potholing, and comes over quite faint at the merest suggestion of aqua-potholing or scuba-cave diving.  Imagine how much worse such an environment must be if 1) It happens all of a sudden and 2) You were never expecting it in the first place.

     Enter the Knox Mine disaster, an event which happened over in South Canada in 1959.  Art!

     The cause of this disaster was naked greed, as the Knox Coal company directed miners to dig out and under the Susquehanna River in pursuit of coal seams, against both the law and mining safety protocols.  If excavating under a river-bed, then the overburden needed to be 13 yards thick; here it was eroded down to 2 yards - at which point the river ended any arguments and broke into the mine.  What is eminently unamusing here is that 12 miners were killed, and their bodies never found.  It took days for the whirlpool on the Susquehanna to be stilled, by which point they were dumping whole railway cars into the hole to block it.

     Surprisingly there were indictments and punishments for this gross moral turpitude, as the pattern since and before is for some local politician to forgive and allay, allowing the guilty party to get off with a feather across the wrist and a $100 donation to charity.  Apparently six miscreants went to jail.  I think we may come back to this, as tracking down ex-cons is entirely practicable in this the twenty-first century (I've done it before and it was - illuminating in a bad way)

Finally -

Now that the pistachio harvest is in, the Voivode can relax, safe in the knowledge that neither Tsar Putin nor Thomas Pynchon can interfere in his Sanjak's daily routine.  This state of affairs is reliant upon the Sanjak's resident <ahem>  superhero, супергайка! , being present, and there may be a delay as he gets his certification for Flying, Solo, Non-Mechanical notified.

Which cello-playing young lady does this remind you of?

Shelly!

*  Or, it may not.

**  By emigrating to South Canada.