I Missed A Chance

Earlier In The Week 

Your Humble Scribe was fulminating about how hideously unfair it is of the Codeword compilers to use foreign words, and we used HAKA as an example, and then riffed hilariously on how this was nothing to do with illegally accessing computers and networks.  You know, because it's pronounced "HACKER" because I say it is.  

     What have I been watching and chortling over recently? No!  Not David Niven's autobiographies.  "Yes, Prime Minister" for your information.  Art!

Caricatures by Gerald Scarfe

     And what it the name of our fictional Prime Minister?  Why, none other than Jim Hacker.  So, Conrad definitely missed a chance to pun.

     As an aside, let it be noted that this series and it's predecessor, "Yes, Minister", are some of the finest political comedies ever written.  They encapsulate the never-ending struggle between unelected Whitehall mandarins of the Civil Service and callow politicians forever trying to look good.  Also, let it be so noted, that never once do we find out which party Jim Hacker is the Prime Minister of.  The scriptwriters are far too subtle for that.  Art!

     Also let it be noted that Sir Humphrey has to recite a complicated contextualised speech in every episode, delivered without hesitation or error, for which actor Nigel Hawthorne gets a round of deserved applause from the studio audience.  And not a swear word in sight.

Yes, matey, we're #!*`~!ing looking at you

     And, talk about misleading names.  "Hacker" sounds as if he's a variety of political thug, ruthless, calculating and prone to the stabbing-of-backs.  Not a bit of it.  "Quacker" would be closer to the truth.

     Yes yes yes, we are dangerously close to dealing with actual real Politics, so I shall end the Intro here.

     Motley!  Here's a British sword bayonet, there's a pig carcase, get to it and get h

Another Chance To Dance - To THE COMSAT ANGELS!

You know Conrad, along with Mark Kermode, misses no opportunity to promote one of the finest rock bands to come out of this country.  When I take over there will be a Comsat Angels Day and guess whose songs will be on the radio for 86,400 seconds? and it will be illegal to either turn the volume down or your radio off -

     ANYWAY enough of your future fate.  The Comsats - us fans are allowed to call them that - had a single out, "Field Of Tall Flowers" and if Art can put down his bowl of coal -

     I've got it playing in the background.  I can tell what you're thinking - "What brought on this whimsical look back to 1993?" 

     So glad you asked!  Art?

     Conrad is pretty sure this collection of wild flowers didn't just spontaneously germinate.  It's on a small patch of council land at the bottom of Tandle Hill and resembles, suspiciously so, last years blooming bounty that cropped up one the wasteland that used to be the Health Centre.  However it has arrived, it certainly brightens up the landscape.

Another Chance To Dance - To JUSTIN BRONK!

Hmmmm.  Perhaps not.  It just doesn't have the punch of our previous item.

     You may recall the blog doing a brief biography of young Justin, because for whatever reason we were looking at people with the surname "Bronk"*.  He was doing an analysis of Ruffian air power on Youtube, which impressed Your Humble Scribe, because modern military aircraft are quite beyond his purview.  Art!

How to scare cats the Justin Bronk way!

     Hmmmm well looky-here at this BBC webpage, about possible Pakistani drone strikes in Afghanistan.  Whose name crops up in the analysis?  Young Justin's, that's who.

Justin Bronk, of the London-based Royal United Services Institute, doubts if they were.

He points out that the Chinese-made CH-4 uses a Chinese-operated satellite communications network to pinpoint long-range targets.

"The Chinese may be reluctant to facilitate any Pakistani cross-border violations," he says.

"In that case, the CH-4 would need a direct line-of-sight radio control link from a ground station, making it extremely difficult - but not impossible - to operate significant distances from the Pakistani border in rugged terrain."

     There you go, a touch of cold rational analysis about speculations with little factual basis.  And MORE COMSAT ANGELS! well almost. Art!

A CH4.  Just so we're clear

     

     How dare you!  It's perfectly acceptable to up my word count with copied text, because I say so.  Any quibbling and you'll regret it when I take over; only having the Comsat's complete discography on CD AND vinyl will save you.

More Of Martin's Mucky Meddling

I haven't been able to upload any of Martin Zero's subterranean scramblings of late because I've been composing BOOJUM! at work, and the software won't allow me to Snip and Paste screenshots of his Youtube excursions. So back we go to The Devil's Hole!  Which is the local nickname for a culverted stream known as Sheep Washer's Brook.  Art!

     There you have one of the urbexers traversing the disgusting sewage sump; it smelt horrid and the team were checking their gas meters diligently (essential kit when exploring underground) but got no warnings.  Fortunately it was only knee-deep.  Art!

     This is apparently the name of the company who produced all the blue brickwork, "Vitros".  Bear in mind that this is about thirty yards underground, in a culvert that sees people once in a blue moon's blue moon, and wonder at how proud they felt about their product.  Art!

     Even further on.  No end in sight, and they are now traversing ground contaminated with iron deposits, quite possibly because the old Park Bridge Iron Works used to be overhead.  What you see in the foreground is a stalactite with high iron content, hence the brown colour.  Art!

     One section had concrete corrugations for no obvious reason.  Very "Time Tunnel" as I'm sure you'll agree.  Still no end in sight!

"Paging Irwin Allen"- paging Irwin Allen -"

     By this point there were obvious signs of water ingress from the outside world; if you've been following this item from the start then you know that when the team went into the culvert it was raining, which is a potential threat to anyone in a structure designed to collect and channel water.  With no end in sight and no access to any escape route, they decided to call a halt and head back outside.

     Martin Zero - daring the dark, the dank and the rank so you don't have to!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oqx2zFWNmns

     That's the link to Martin's video of this trip on Youtube.

As it used to be

Finally -

Just a heads up for next weekend.  I shall be out at a concert on Friday, and then it's off to Crisis Point on both Saturday and Sunday, so your enjoyment of BOOJUM! may be curtailed.  Don't pout so, I am allowed a social life, you know.

*  No, I don't know why.  Why should I?