Am I Still Cross?

Of Course!

Obviously.  After all, it is my default state.  Today, however, I am going to show you a still cross, at which you can all oooh and aaaah in appreciation in how witty Your Humble Scribe is.

     Before then, I shall regale you with my haul from the Imperial War Museum North, for which I got a £10 discount, being a member you see.  Art!

     I'm sure I don't need to explain about PROFESSOR John Buckley's eminent qualifications for writing military history.  I already have "British Armour In The Normandy Campaign", which is a stern corrective to that hack Hastings, and "Monty's Men" which won awards.  "The Armchair General" is a kind of Choose Your Own Adventure,  where you have to make decisions on key points in the Second Unpleasantness, either following the actual historical decisions made at the time or choosing alternatives.  Art!

Winnie and the Holy Fox

    Such as: who should take over as Prime Minister when Chamberlain resigns?  And no, it's not as simple as you might think.

     "Warriors For The Working Day" and "From The City, From The Plough" have both been lauded on the podcast "We Have Ways ..." and it's no surprise to see James Holland's name in the commentaries on both books.  They are novels written by men who were at the sharp end and who experienced what they write about.  "Patrol" is by author and military historian Fred Majdalany.  Art!

     Conrad is unsure why but used to believe that Fred was Australian.  Well he wasn't: his family were from Lebanon and lived in Manchester, where he worked as a journalist.  His first name was really Fareed, except he insisted on being called Fred.  So people did.  Small world!  When the Second Unpleasantness broke out he immediately volunteered and ended up getting a commission into 2nd Battalion the Lancashire Fusiliers.  Subsequently he fought in North Africa and Italy before being sent to command an Officer Cadet Training Unit back in the UK - quite possibly his OC rotating him out of the firing line.

     I bought this book because I've already got one of his.  Art!

     <sigh> of course having to read these will further delay my progress reading "Reclaiming History"; I've reached the point where Officer Tippet has been murdered and the manhunt for Oswald continues.  100 pages in and only 1/15th of the way there <another sigh>.  

     ANYWAY I did say I'd show you a still cross, and because I am an alien man of my word here you are.  Art!

"The Crusader" by Gerry Judah

     This one is to evince the sense of contemporary conflict across the globe and it certainly has an eerie presence in the underlit Exhibition Hall, being dramatically lit in all it's whiteness against the bleak black walls.

     Don't worry, there's another 65 photographs yet to come.  I bet you can hardly wait, can you?

     Motley!  Don't worry, no need to copy any kind of crucifixion, it's just that I think a game of lacrosse is in order.  No need to put on a helmet.

I may have lied there a little

A Rare Serious Moment For BOOJUM!

You may have heard about the deaths of four paddleboarders in Wales, drowned in the River Cleddau, which was running unusually high and fast thanks to days of heavy rain.  Conrad sat up in shock and astonishment when the BBC website put up a picture of the river at Haverfordwest.  Art?

     That, gentle reader, is a weir, and if this is where the incident happened then things have gone badly wrong.  If you are not in a large boat you've got NO business going anywhere near one of these things - there is a reason canoers and kayakers call them 'death machines'.  If you go over the weir you get stuck in the perpetually looping water on the downside, and you will drown.  There was an incident in South Canada a few months back where a party of inner-tube rafters suffered exactly that fate.  Requisat In Pacem.

"Binzasara!"

It's Japanese, in case you were wondering, and claims to be a musical instrument of the percussion variety.  Conrad noticed it on the same channel that demonstrated what a vibraslap was, so No, it isn't a variant on "Banzai!".  Art!

     You hold it with the backing at top, by the handles, and shake it a bit, at which point it makes a noise like a pack of cards being shuffled, at a considerable distance away.  Conrad imagines you'd need at least ten of them to produce a sound that could be heard by a prospective audience.

"Halloween 3: The Night No-One Came Home"

Yes, more gossip from the pages of "Into The Unknown", my Nigel Kneale biography.  Art!

The terror of pumpkin

     Producer John Carpenter was a big fan of the Quatermass television serials and films, and hired Ol' Nige to write a script, which he did, deliberately leaving out Michael Myers and instead focussing on Celtic folklore and mythology.  The Hollywood suits did not like 'suspense' or 'tension' and insisted there be buckets of gore thrown in, at which point Ol' Nige bailed out.  He didn't want to be associated with the end result and had his name taken off the credits, which is why the writing is credited to Tommy Lee Wallace.  Ol' Nige had a hard time getting his name removed; as the starchy lady he spoke to on the phone pointed out, it was usually the other way round.  Art!

Trust me, nothing good is happening under there

Finally -

I say, it looks as if there's a danger of the weather clearing up.  This will not do!  Mother Nature is doing a splendid job of turning us into aquatic creatures who can survive when the polar ice-caps melt thanks to global warming.  The City Under The Sea is so very obviously at the forefront of this that Conrad feels proud to be a resident.

Not so much entertainment as a documentary

     Yes indeed:  Manchester - leading the way into a wild wet future.

And with that we are done.  Definitely done!