BEWARE!
For my finger is poised POISED I TELL YOU above the Remote Nuclear Detonator button for the first person who chirps up about ' - the silly old fool making a typo'. I've already vapourised half a dozen Codeword compilers to get my hand in, and am thirsting for more.
First of all, in terms of progress, I have finished Catton's monster illustrated work on the American Civil Unpleasantness. Art!
Ol' Brew makes a very valid point when he gets into technical details of the weapons being used, the principal small arms being rifled muskets. These used percussion caps and bullets and were lethal at up to 800 yards. Contrast this with the humble smoothbore musket, which had a maximum accurate range of 150 yards. Art!
The trouble when the Unpleasantness began was that officers and men were using tactics appropriate for fifty years earlier, meaning that attackers were frequently shot flat long before they got near the enemy. In a prescient foreshadowing of 1914, soldiers who were dug-in were almost invulnerable, whereas their upright opponents would suffer fearfully in making an attack, whether it was successful or not. This kind of evolution in firepower led to the rapid demise of dense infantry formations, which were simply a very large target. The Prussians might have done well to note this, since they sniffily dismissed the years-long fracas in South Canada as being simply the work of 'armed mobs'; O did they have an unpleasant surprise on the battlefield when they met the Chassepot rifle and the mitrailleuse!
South Canadian mitrailleuse
Ol' Brew has much to say about the Yankee engineers, who were prodigious bridge-builders. The Rebels would burn down or demolish bridges if they had to retreat, which mattered so because of the importance of railroad transportation. You could whisk armies across the land via railways in a matter of days, rather than weeks if on foot, and you could supply them with all the food and forage they needed by railway. Art!
They used partially-assembled wooden trestles and could replace a bridge so quickly that it seemed pointless to destroy it in the first place. If there was no bridge over a river, why then they would pontoon it. Art!
Thus
That's no stripling, you could run trains of artillery across it.
We will definitely come back to this, it's an interesting topic. At least it is to me, which is what matters.
About That Title
Today the Beeb had an article about Sir John Peel and his enormous record collection; 120,000 LPs - 'Long Players' which were vinyl albums - plus twelve inch disks - usually containing extended versions of singles tracks - and seven inch singles. If I can cattle-prod Art into consciousness after his coal-consuming binge -
Sir John had his show on late in the evening, from 23:00 to midnight, or 22:00 to midnight, depending on how the current managerial staff at Radio One thought of him. He would include sessions from new or established bands, plus records sent to him from bands all over the UK and abroad, and you see some of those above. If you got airplay on his show, you were made, because people throughout the music business listened to him in order to pick up on The Latest Fad. Art!
John 'cueing-up' a record (stop me if I get too technical)
The thing is, John could get away with playing stuff that would never be seen near the daytime shows, and he was more interested in the music than the sound of his own voice, unlike that odious git who would talk over music until the lyrics started, Slimey Bats or somesuch. For a chap who couldn't play a note of music (even if he pretended to once on Top Of The Pops with a mandolin) he had an enormous influence, and it's great to see his collection being explored and played again.
Just to be a pedantic hair-splitter, if we assume each album lasts for 40 minutes on average - some will be a lot longer, and don't forget some will be double or triple albums - and you play each a single time, with a slave to go get them and put them away, it would take over NINE YEARS to hear the album collection alone.
Both now sadly expired
Let's Add Torment To The Mix
Yes let's! Since nobody has objected in the Comments, which is the same as pleading to continue, at least in my head, which is where it matters.
Perhaps. Every so often she would flit into the
prison, checking. At
‘They’re getting ready to move
him, right now!’ she warned, crackling slightly.
‘**** – they must have moved the
time forward. Expecting company, I bet.
Get inside and warn me when they reach the door.’
The task would have been
impossible without help from Jen. She
vanished into the police station’s stone wall, emerging only seconds later.
‘Get ready! They’re coming down the corridor!’
He made it to the corner of the
station, careful not to seem hasty. Once
he rounded the corner a prison van, white-bodied and with tiny high-set
windows, came into view, backed up to the side door. A single plain-clothes officer stood outside,
standing sentry before the closed door.
He held up a hand to Louis, plainly warning him to stop or keep away.
‘What? Me?’ asked Louis, pointing to his chest and
slowing his approach gradually. The
officer moved between Louis and the door, just as it opened.
Two more plain-clothes
detectives, handcuffed to a man covered with a blanket, emerged from the
station interior, in time for Jen to trip the prisoner and send all three
stumbling to the floor. Louis was there with the other detective, again in time
to see Jen whip the blanket away and toss it to the pavement beyond.
Close enough! And he reached out to grasp Miller’s
shoulder whilst Jen kept a hold of her mentor’s other hand.
The detective still upright instantly intervened,
practically throwing Louis away from the three men now dashing for the rear
entrance of the prison van.
‘Keep your ****** distance!’ he warned, backing away
and getting inside the van.
Well well well, realised Louis. It worked!
He acknowledged the detective’s shouted order with a nod and wave,
ducking away and moving backwards.
Now you can see why Uncle Dave couldn't have done this, since the police would have been expecting him, and are already aware of him due to - er - 'past indiscretions'.
Shall We? O Go On Then
As you should surely know, we have been featuring lighthouses frequently of late, because they're cool and dangerous at the same time, so when Your Humble Scribe Googled 'Dangerous Lighthouses' and this one came up, I was wondering if it had been Photoshopped. Art!
Deffo sus
Actually not. This is Tourlitis lighthouse, off the Greek island of Andros, and is the first automated lighthouse in Greece, being built in 1993. I wonder if they're all automatic now? Art!
Picturesque as shizzle
And with that, Vulnavia, we are done indeed.
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