The Bonnet
One could be forgiven, if only just, for thinking that Conrad was going to do an article on ladies Easter fashions, even if it is summer. A wet, clammy, grey misanthropic summer, yes, but still - summer. No I won't capitalise it, that's my petty revenge. Ha! Take that, August.
A bonnet of blood?
No, Your Modest Artisan refers to the bonnet of a car; what our benighted cousins in South Canada hilariously call a 'hood' , because OF COURSE you'd immediately associate a vehicular sub-component with a "Thunderbirds" villain, it's so obvious one wonders why it took so long. Art!
Before you ask, because he has to wear one in winter weather, since he lacks any protective barrier on his bonce.
ANYWAY we are talking about cars, and specifically those used in one of the best car chases ever filmed: "Bullitt", since Conrad feels like it. Art!
It's very well done, in part thanks to the score, the sound effects and the screeching stunt work. The tyre-shredding 90-degree turns were done by pro stunt drivers, Steve McQueen doing most of the rest. When you see him in his Mustang doing 100 miles per hour, that's really Steve McQueen doing 100 miles per hour. One wonders if the film's insurers were brought fully up to speed on quite what Ol' Steve was doing. Art!
It also succeeded thanks to the invisible prep work done on the Mustang and Charger, which sounds like random word salad to Conrad. Judge for yourself: "Balchowski prepared both vehicles and their back-ups. All the suspension parts were Magnafluxed to check for weakness, and Balchowski reinforced all the lower control arms. For the Charger, he twisted the front torsion bars up for a little extra ground clearance, added Koni shocks, and swapped in NASCAR-stiff rear springs. The Mustang had it's shock towers reinforced and bridged. Heavy duty front coils were installed, and a thicker anti-roll bar was added, along with Koni shocks.*"
Kreplach! Does any of that make any sense to you?
You don't need to know or understand any of it, frankly, to enjoy the film.
O, in case you were worried about the motley being sent out last night - yes, they really were car brake-lights, and the creepy critter crawling around was Jenny in the back garden. So all is sweetness and light once more, or as much as it ever gets in a domicile that sports an Upper and a Lower Dungeon.
The Upper Dungeon: an artist's impression
I, Claude
Conrad shall finish the potted biography of Claude Rains, by jumping backwards and returning to his post-First Unpleasantness career. He was a tutor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at that point, and was very much in demand thanks to his generous and outgoing ways. Some of his students went on to become noted (and knighted) thespians in their own right, such as Sir John Gielgud - who called him "enormously helpful and encouraging to work with."
Tacky but fun
Sadly he never appeared in "Doctor Who", because that would have been the dramatic icing on the cake.
Gephyrophobia
Just imagine, there you are, driving along, idly pretending to be Steve McQueen, and you drive onto that very long bridge that crosses the river, and as you get to the other side suddenly there's no bridge any more and you go flying off into the water ...
Quite enough to give you a fear of bridges, hmmm? as that's what the title means. Conrad has to confess to a certain vague unease when crossing the Trafford Bridge, mostly because it's so un-necessarily high, and is always slightly relieved to reach solid ground on the other side, solid ground that won't suddenly vanish as you drive over it.
Which brings us to the collapse of the I-40 bridge in Oklahoma, where it crossed the Oklahoma River. Art?
The cause of the collapse is immediately obvious; a pair of barges went off course when the pusher-tug's captain suffered a blackout brought on by myocardial problems. The bridge piers that were hit had not been strengthened against impact as riverine traffic was supposed to use the two adjacent piers. Fourteen people died and eleven were injured before traffic could be stopped.
I am obliged to the "Plainly Difficult" Youtube channel for bringing this scary event to my attention and also for making the next crossing of the Trafford Bridge an even more unsettling experience. Art!
Deliriously high
The video over on Plainly D. has a lot of ghoulish comments about what other bridge disasters he should cover, along with a witness to the barge veering off course as he and his uncle travelled over the Oklahoma River. The uncle, a veteran of the US Navy, observed that either the shipping channel had changed or someone had been drinking on the job ...
"Rutabaga"
More food questions for you. If you live beyond the shores of South Canada, then you may not be familiar with this article. Conrad recalls it being mentioned once or twice in the short stories of Damon Runyon, as when a person was rather maliciously described as having " - a face like a rutabaga".
Well, now the truth is out. It is what we here in This Sceptred Isle call a 'swede' and which is known by a myriad of names elsewhere. We call it a swede after it was introduced to Scotland from Sweden. Art!
You can see by this that Damon was being quite rude, albeit in his understated Prohibition-era argot.
Finally -
Egad! The day is running down, thanks to a late finish at 18:00, doing the weekly shop and having to face a giant pile of dried laundry that now needs sorting and neatly stacking. I've also been flicking through my Nigel Kneale biography, which involves looking at the pictures before going through the text, and have valiantly started the Introduction to Bugliosi, notwithstanding the half-a-dozen papers with cryptic crosswords and codewords to be done, whilst also needing to ferret out all the edge pieces of my 3D puzzle.
Better get cracking. Procrastination is the thief of time after all.
Pip pip!
* Courtesy of Motortrend: https://www.motortrend.com/vehicle-genres/bullitt/
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