We Seem - To Have A Theme

I Do Apologise, It Happened By Accident

There I was, reading a murder-mystery - which preoccupation overtakes one when middle age arrives - and before you know it here we are, banging on about Things.  I blame it all on Margery Allingham, whom I bet none of you snapping whippers have ever heard of, both because she's a long time dead and she wrote Books, those mysterious artefacts consisting of bound wood pulp smattered with ink***.  Art!

Magersfontein Lugg at port, Albert Campion at starboard

     Conrad is of sufficient vintage to have seen the television series of "Campion" when it was originally broadcast <O horrors!> thirty years ago, which betook itself from a series of Marge's books.  One thing he very definitely remembers is Peter Davison holding forth on the vintage automobile purchased for the show, a Lagonda 16/80.  Art!

"It's a car," said Conrad, hugely unimpressed

     Peter explained that, yes, the car was hideously expensive to purchase.  However, after being used with Extreme Reverence by the BBC for a couple of years, it would have appreciated in value, and Auntie Beeb would thus and then sell it on for a considerable profit*.

     One thing that you don't get from the television series is Marge's prose, which is quite distinctive and most certainly a quantum level beyond the pulp sensibilities of the genre.  Conrad loudly declares that he likes it.  Art!

Hello villains, give up now!

But of course we cannot call a halt here, and have to continue our headlong plunge into Theme, with flowers.  Art!

     Yes, Art, a crossword compilers response, that being the Campion RIVER, which is also described as a FLOWER after it being a hydraulic FLOW - let me get the Tyrannosaurus-rated cattle prod for a minute -
     Okay!  Thankfully you cannot inhale the smell of partially-cooked Art.

     This, gentle readers, is the Red Campion.  It is indubitably a flower, that is to say a blossom on the end of a stalk and not the tributary of a major river.  No doubt you want some Sir D. Atty guff to go with it? <sighs and waits for sympathy; none arrives> well very well then!

     

"Campions, sir!  Faahsands of'em!**"

     Allegedly Red Campion is useful against snakebite, which, frankly, is not going to get tested in This Sceptred Isle, as our local venomous snake, the adder, is so rare that you are more likely to suffer from simultaneous bee, wasp and hornet stings than a viper bite.

However!  A SNAKEBITE - that's another matter.

     What popped up in my malicious mind - can such an unpleasant entity exist, we ask ourselves? - after that but "Oooo - oooo!  Wouldn't it be good if we could add in a comedian with a knowingly effete and ineffectual manner, preferably as effeminate as possible and with a 24 volt car battery!"

     Who came up on Google when Conrad put those search terms in?

Julian Clary HE'S SO SCARY!

     We can thus end this Intro by stating that here we have a Campy 'un, at which point I think we can refer Art to Intensive Care.

Martin's Mucky Moves

You recall that we were featuring that hero of heroes, Martin of the Zeroes, and his excursion underground with a bunch of like-minded urbexers, into the bowels of Sheep Washers Brook.  This is a stream that had been culverted, that is to say entirely covered over, so that Park Bridge Iron Works could be built atop it.  Allow me to illustrate one of the more difficult parts of their subterranean sojourn.  Art!  Get off your bed of idleness sickness and work, not shirk!

Then we move along to further into the culvert, and remember here that this brickwork is about 150 years old, so nothing to sneeze at.  O they knew how to build in those days!  And nobody would be looking at this brickwork construction, apart from an occasional inspection once every year.  Next!

Here the team looked upwards to see how far underground they were.  Pretty far.  Still no end of the culvert in sight.  

And we shall finish this incursion by showing the most disgusting sight of the trip, namely a giant septic tank that appeared to be a sewage overflow.  Art!

     We haven't finished this toxic trip, there is more to come, I'm just not happy continuing after that nauseating-looking sump.

No Ranting Or Tanting - Today

Conrad did indeed tackle the first of Saturday's MEN Codewords, which are usually rule-following and un-exotic, which is good enough, and so this one proved.  Therefore I have no subsequent Frothing Nitric Ire to vent today.  Good news for my blood pressure, rather less in terms of blog content generation <heavy sigh>

More Musical Critique

We had to stop early last time because Ol' Bri had used up his box of tissues, the big sissy.  Man up, Bri!  Even David Gray managed to be more stoic than you.

     ANYWAY

The biology of purpose keeps my nose above the surface (OOH)

I rather suspect that the innate bouyancy of the human body, not to mention the fact that it's easier to float in seawater than fresh, has something to do with your not drowning.

King's lead hat put the innocence inside her, it will come, it will come, it will surely come

I'm sorry?  Where did this mysterious "her" appear from?  Or is this one of the turkeys?  And how efficient is a heavy-metal headpiece as an instrument of surgical intervention?  Enquiring minds want to know! 

King's lead hat was a mother to desire, it will come, it will come, it will surely come

Hmmm not sure about this, surely Necessity features somewhere in this account?  Not to mention that this mystery headpiece seems to be multi-functional in nature.  A mega-McGuffin?

Will a cap do instead?

In New Delhi (smelly Delhi) and Hong Kong

They all know that it won't be long

O how poignant, this from a song written in 1977 and yet it previews, presciently and even provocatively, the situation in Hong Kong today, which is verging on dabbling in Politics, so we shall end today's critique right there.

    And there you have it, snappers of whip.  Pip pip!

*  HA!  I BET YOU DIDN'T THINK OF THAT DID YOU!

**  With apologies to "Zulu"

***  Actually her husband did a fair bit of publishing once she'd popped her clogs