The Higher The Wire Supplier

Try Saying It Out Loud

Preferably not in public lest you alarm people.  Conrad learned this the hard way whilst travelling in to work on the bus - laughing out loud at the comedy stylings of Thomas Pynchon tends to induce alarm and worry in the travelling public.

     So!  We are jumping back into that montage of desert vistas as seen in "The War Illustrated" because Your Humble Scribe very cannily loaded a skeleton Draft outline at home before enduring the six and a half hour journey to work, including two photographs, which I cannot do when in the office.  

     No! this is not a Ford CMP (Canadian Military Pattern) being attacked by the world's slimmest snakes.  It's a signals truck, and those are telephone cables and to judge by the number this is a higher formation headquarters that it's servicing, because (by deduction) only a formation of that size would have so many people needing to use telephones.  Don't sneer!  You can't intercept and decrypt a telephone message with the consummate ease with which you can a radio signal.  By this time the British had wised-up to their abysmal radio security and were taking measures to stop the bally Hun from eavesdropping.  Ideally the wiring would be suspended on poles to avoid traffic driving over it, but this isn't Europe and there's an infinity of open space to move around and avoid cable-killing.

Apologies for the page artefact -  I don't want to press down on it too hard
(As I am so kind and gentle)

     This particular engine of destruction is the 6 pounder anti-tank gun (no Continental metric nonsense here!) which had begun to appear in numbers for the battle of Gazala.  It was a quantum level beyond the old 2 pounder, able to turn any Axis tank into a colander at ranges of up to a mile off - and was a very unwelcome intruder on the battlefield from the Axis point of view.  Our crew above have hung rags on the gun-shield to break up the outline a tad.  If this failed then it was still light enough - just - for the crew to heft it physically out of harm's way.

     And I think that's enough of ordnance and engines of unpleasantness.  Art!

     

Okay, last one, honest.  This is a 'Portee'.
And they should absolutely NOT be fighting from the back.

"Midnight Mass"

Conrad is now three episodes into this recent Netflix horror series, and gives it a cautious thumbs-up.  However - and you knew that was coming, didn't you? - it does add in a couple of hoary old horror tropes.  Sadly I cannot add in a Snip since I am working in the office, so just imagine a street full of abandoned old houses falling into disrepair -

    And here comes Sturges, the town handyman, all alone, in the middle of the cold dark night.  The front door of one abandoned spooky old hovel creaks open invitingly -

     At this point Conrad would be a blur on the horizon, as would most sensible people.  Not Sturges.  O no.  He boldly approaches the house and enquires within, to an ambiguous verbal response.  Then he GOES INSIDE.  'It's in the script'.  Yeah right.  He stays there until he witnesses a Sinister Something rear up in a corner - and if Your Humble Scribe had been stupid enough to have copied his actions up to this point, he would then be demonstrating the art of back-pedalling at one hundred and thirty miles per hour.

"I know - let's investigate spooky old houses in the dark!"

     Sturges gets purges.

Frank's Cranks

For Lo! we are back with that visionary artist Frank Tinsley, whom has the benefits of being safely dead and thus unable to sue, yet also prolific during his time on this mortal coil, so we have lots of art to choose from.  And today we have - 

You cannot deny it has a "Thunderbirds" look about it.

     It's not clear why it is linked together as with a series of railroad wagons, because this connection would be stressed with the pitch, roll and yaw of such a vehicle; much more sensible to have three separate vehicles with 

     ANYWAY the detail Frank has added in here is the use of "rolligons" rather than conventional caterpillar tracks, which, if Art can get off his permanently  polished posterior -

     These 'wheels' are described as 'limp blimps' - for an artist Frank had a way with words - and you can see they distribute weight so efficiently they can run a person over whilst they complete the crossword*.  They will deform to allow level  passage over uneven terrain, unlike a track, which would possibly tip your vehicle over at worst and spill your passenger's martini's at best.

"Shoshone"

Ah yes, thank you random words bobbing to the surface of your scrivelling scrib's subconscious.  This one came into view this morning for absolutely no reason whatsoever.  Conrad is not entirely sure but suspects it's an Indian tribe of some description, and will have to resort to checking teh Interwebz as his Collins Concise is residing at home.  Art!

How to look stylish whilst wearing a turkey

     What do we have, O Collins Concise? (for I am now at home in The Mansion).  "Shoshone": 

     Ooops, nothing.  Bad Colliins Concise!  How dare you <sighs and Googles>: Yep, Native Americans, whose name comes from 'sosoni' meaning 'tall grass' and they had an interesting, if bloody, history, far too long to go into here.  Based mostly in Idaho and Wyoming.

     Of course the really interesting question is - why their name ever popped up in Conrad's brain?

Finally -

I know you sceptics like to have proof of any assertion that Conrad makes, even though he has the face of an honest man**.  You will recall that the local micro-climate in Gomorrah-in-the-Irwell is frequently foggy and soggy, and the only reason it's not boggy as well is because the landscape is armoured with concrete and paving slabs.

     So!  When I say that the weather can be so bad that the clouds have come down to ground level, I am neither joking nor exaggerating.  Art!

There you go

     Told you so.

     And with that, Vulnavia, we are done.

*  And leave them alive.  This point is important.

**  It's in a plastic bag in the freezer.