BOOJUM!: Gone To The Dogs

This One May Take A While

You know Conrad, ever one to use fifty words when three would do - hey, I have a Compositional Ton (plus two hundred) to hit!

Okay, we've had dogs in the blog for a few days now, because they're a quick source of content and doubtless I could create all sorts of hideous puns using their breed names. Not to mention that we at The Mansion have our very own (small) domesticated wolf in the household, Edna Wunderhund. Art!

Less going to, more coming from

No, you don't get a picture of Edna, because doing that would be far too straightforward.

ANYWAY there I was, cracking open a can of Old Speckled Hen and I wondered about that saying "Hair of the dog", which is more properly "The hair of the dog that bit you". SO I went and did what any hair-splitting pedant would do: looked it up in my Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable (best £5 I ever spent). Wellllll they say that this dates from possibly Roman times, where they held a belief that 'like cures like', more formally in Latin <hack spit> 'Similia similibus curanter'. Thus, if you were bitten by a dog, burning a lock of it's hair would cure you. Did I mention that ancient Rome had a high death rate?

Sinsemillia. Close enough.

This explains THOTDTBY; by consuming more alcohol you stave off the symptoms of a hangover (whatever one of those is), which is, by Conrad's judgement, merely putting off the dreadful day when you eventually have to experience the Hangover From Hades that lasts for a month.

Sorry, we cannot merely leave things there. This evening's title needs explaining, since there is that saying "Go to the dogs". Another recourse to BDOPAF results in "To ruin, morally or materially. Food not fit for human consumption was frequently fed to dogs" NOT IN THIS HOUSEHOLD! since the default response to food looking off or seeming funny is "Give it to Conrad" and do you know what? I'm still here. Mind you, Francine at Connexions did say I ought to gift my interior to medical science, so they could determine why I was still alive, and that was twelve years ago. Art!

It was either this or a picture of my insides.
You got off lightly.

Which features Alice Cooper, whose ancestors must have made barrels at one point, and we'll end the Intro right there or we'll be down a positive warren of rabbitholes.

"Little Ireland"

Conrad hadn't ever heard this phrase before watching a Martin Zero Youtube video about forgotten bits of Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell, going back to Victorian times. I bet you're imagining Little Ireland as a happy clappy community all dancing reels and quaffing Guinness whilst growing potatoes and shamrock -

WRONG!

It was one of the most wretched slums in Manchester, which had plenty of dreadful housing already, few of which were as awful. Art!

It was inhabited almost exclusively by immigrant Irish, who worked in the factories located next door, and whom could be exploited without consequence by unscrupulous landlords. The area was thrown up (pun intended) in 1827 and vacated by 1847, so we don't have any Daguerrotypes to prove how vile it was. Freddy Engels, that political cove, went to visit and came away less than impressed. Art!

Sadly lacking the olofactory experience

Proof, if it were needed, that The Good Old Days weren't very pleasant for some folks.

"Duel In The Dark"

Phil, he of The Society Of Twentieth Century Wargamers, put up a post on Facebook about a board-game he was playing of the name above. Your Humble Scribe had never heard of it, so of course - obviously! - I just had to go off and search the internet. Art!

Box art

Game in progress

The game deals with the RAF's bombing campaign against Nazi Germany during the Second Unpleasantness, where one player is the RAF and the other the Teuton Kammhuber Line commander. You can see the clouds above, with various targets, and the Teuton nightfighters going up against the RAF's Light Striking Force and the main bomber stream. Interesting, yes, and it will cost you about £50 for the game, so Conrad will politely wait for Phil's After Action Report.

Moving Swiftly Onwards

Time for more ~~Happy Smiley Bunnies~~ - sorry, "Tormentor". No bunnies, unless they're going into the cooking pot*.

This doesn’t feel right, he told himself, skin prickling beneath his sleeves and collar. Still, being daring, he crossed the pine-needled, weed-thickened grass in silence and stood behind the mossy headstone, not being quite daring enough to attract the attention of what writhed and bobbed on the stone slab abbutting the headstone. From the range of six feet, he could tell it wasn’t normal. The bushy hair, wild and tangled, showed big bald patches of scabby skin, skin peeling back to reveal dead white beneath it. He made a face when he realised that the green arms weren’t covered in a jumper, the skin itself was green, dark and dried, with deep cracks running across them, exposing livid flesh beneath.

He was going to back away without making a sound, not wanting to witness the front of this creature if it matched the rear view, and began to back off.

The creature stopped bobbing in place, standing up and turning, allowing Louis to get a good, long, horrified look at what had been a face, now collapsed inwards, with a dislocated jaw dangling down below the neck, sporting black stumps that might have been the remains of teeth. The jaw wobbled horribly from side to side with the creature’s turning motion. It’s eyes were bags of putresence, the nose a gaping open sore, yet it seemed to see him, making a dreadful braying noise and raising both sticklike, withered arms to pounce on him –

- he made it back to the path behind the pine-tree windbreak, leaning on his knees. The decayed thing hadn’t followed him, a small mercy.

‘What are you up to?’ barked the cadaverous cemetery worker, turning up out of nowhere.

‘Uh – a spider. A really big spider,’ blurted Louis, trying to sound convincing. ‘Scared of spiders.’

Luma has, quite understandably, misjudged things here.

How Dangerous Is This Lighthouse?

Bit of an open question because I've not reviewed the next of "Top 15 Dangerous Lighthouses", so we shall see, shan't we? Art!

Okay! It's not sitting snugly and smugly on an island 100 feet above the waves, so we're off to a good start. It stands off the coast of Australia, intended to warn shipping of the Troubridge Shoals, and, most unusually for a lighthouse, is made of cast iron. What makes it dangerous is time and erosion; it was erected in 1856 and the gradually encroaching sea is working away at the foundations, so at some near future date the lighthouse is going to greet the ground in stunning fashion. No, there are no lighthouse keepers, it was decommissioned in 2002, so the only people at risk are tourists. Art!

Say hello, waves goodbye

'Twill be a sad day when it goes, there aren't that many cast iron lighthouses left.

Finally -

Cue bad jokes about "Dam!". The BBC has just put up a page about Ladybower Reservoir, which is at 98.8% capacity, as a result of which excess water is flowing down the spillways specially built to accommodate this phenomenon. Art!