The Bath Buns Of TERROR!

Not A Headline You Ever Expected To Hear

After all, a Bath Bun is about the most innocuous thing you can find in one's kitchen.  Lest you be unaware of exactly what one is, allow me to cattle-prod Art into wakefulness and illustrate the point - 

Hardly terrifying, hmmmm?

     Conrad himself is a stranger to these buns, because you can bet your last pound that they are simply hotching with sugar.  Sweet, hmmm?  Ah, but, you see, we are going back in time to the Victorian era, when practically everything they ate was adulterated, frequently with heavy metal toxins.

     Foodstuffs were given a coating of various chemical compounds in order to improve their colouration, without any care about the consequences of such food-fiddlery.  And here we come to those Bath buns.  They were enthusiastically scoffed by a batch of schoolboys and a pair of adults, all of whom were immediately stricken with agonising stomach pains.  It was touch and go for one of the greedier schoolboys, who had gobbled his way through three of the buns against his compatriots one. Art!

     Because nobody died, there were no prosecutions.  Farr, the confectioner responsible for providing THE BUNS OF DOOM, was wont to glaze them with Lead Chromate, another heavy metal poison we've met before.  Art!

     Doubtless it lent them a nice buttery tinge, a picturesque touch you could enjoy as they poisoned you slowly.  Why did THE BUNS OF DOOM poison their consumers quite so quickly?  Because the silly-billy chemist who supplied Farr had sent him yellow arsenic sulphide instead, duh!  I bet he felt a fool!

     So the next time you hear a person wax lyrical about 'The Good Old Days', recall that they might have been old but they certainly weren't good.

     Motley!  Time for you to test the Turnip And Tater ice cream.

Now For A Nicer Topic

For Lo! we are back on the subject of historically-relevant photographs, these being the runner-ups as displayed on the BBC website.  Art!

Courtesy Michael Welch

      All we are told is that you are looking at Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, and indeed you are.  Whoever designed this very obviously had a thing about turrets. All the turrets all the time!  A turretless castle in an horrible crime!

     Let me see if I can dig up a little more information for you.

     Ah!  Designed by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, it was the embodiment of the Teuton 'Burgenromantik' movement, where royalty with deep pockets re-modelled castles to make them more castle-y.  There's a whole list of castles in the lands of the Teutons that underwent such a process, and we may come back to them.  

     Old Luddy popped his clogs in 1886, after which the castle became a major tourist attraction, with millions and millions having visited.  Art!

All the turrets!  All the time!

From The Delightful To The Dreadful

Yes, thrillseekers, it's back to "Tormentor" and another extract where Luma kicks back at life and destiny.  Once again, NOT THE USUAL FLUFFY NONSENSE!

That barbed reply silenced several of them, except for the aggressive one, who moved in front of Louis and pushed him back forcefully with both hands.

Perhaps the teenager expected a thirty-something teacher to back off, to try to move around the human obstruction, avoiding trouble with a gang of potentially violent teenagers.  His expectations fell far short of Louis, whose day-long simmering hatred at the whole world finally boiled over.  He threw a punch with all his weight behind it, connecting at an angle with the teenager’s nose, which snapped like a piece of toast and sprayed blood over the pavement.

‘My ******* nose!’ howled the boy, bent over and clutching both hands to his bleeding, battered face.  The rest of the gang froze in amazement and horror.  Their prospect of malicious amusement at another person’s expense dwindled into a possible bloody ruck with a maniac.

Knowing that he was outnumbered five to one, and that these chavs probably carried knives, Louis jumped up the front steps and picked up the nearest stone from his garden rockery.  He turned, in time to swipe the nearest jaw with the granite chunk, causing an shouted exclamation of pain.

The cocky teenager, who staggered away blubbering with pain, and with a steady trickle of blood running between his hands, was Louis’ next victim.  He smacked the boy across the back of the head with the rock, hard.  Cursing came from the other uninjured teenagers, none daring to get close enough to rescue their friend or put themselves at risk.

‘Congratulations!’ snarled Louis, grabbing the whining boy’s tracksuit top and dragging him backwards.  ‘You have just encountered  a man who officially Does Not Give A Toss!’

     Of course there are consequences for Luma, which you can ponder upon before tomorrow's thrilling installment.

The Severn Bridge Disaster

You ought to be able to remember that historic photograph of two barges that collided and sank on the River Severn in 1960.  Art!

     There is more to the story.  The barges had been sailing up the Severn when a sudden dense fog descended, and this, combined with a strong tide (a constant peril on this stretch of the Severn), drove both barges into the piers of the Severn Railway Bridge.  Two spans of the bridge collapsed, debris falling onto the barges and causing their flammable cargoes to ignite, resulting in five deaths.  Gas supply to Wales was cut off since the mains pipe had been laid on the bridge, meaning bottled gas for customers for months.  Art!

     There's still more to this story, which we are going to come back to, O yes indeed!

More Astronomy Of 1963

Yes, we are re-visiting the end credits of "The Outer Limits", with it's bleak, dispassionate theme tune and disconcertingly unworldly astronomy photographs.  Thanks to finding an astronomy afficionado, it's possible to put a name and description to these astral bodies.  Art!

CAUTION! Objects in your telescope may appear nearer than they are

     This is the galaxy M31, better known as Andromeda, widely held to be one of the most perfect examples of a spiral galaxy and definitely a thing beauty.  It lies two million light years away, so you're not going to commute there to admire it anytime soon.  The version we see at the end of TOL is in black and white, and doesn't have the definition of this shot.  In fact Andromeda, if you use a wide-angled telescope, takes up as much of the night sky as six full moons, so you can appreciate what a whopper it is.

Finally -

Hooray!  Your Humble Scribe has finally gained access to the requisite databases that he needs in order to actually perform useful work functions in The Dark Tower.  I have to admit I've felt rather a fraud for the past 2 weeks, with no ability to edit anything and instead sitting with other gainfully employed folks, slowing them down as they explain and then plodding through input with my trademark sausage fingers.

     I realise this must sound extraordinarily dull to you, and it's definitely not subject matter that makes you a laugh riot at parties, but Conrad feels inspired to be conscientious in his new department*.

Ha!  Take that, Moon!

     A depiction of our database would be tiresome, so I'm falling back on that old reliable standby: atom-bombing the Moon.

*  For the time being.  For the time being, Conrad he is on his bestest behaviour.