The Island Of DEATH!

Please Note: This Is Not About That Video Nasty

In fact, Your Humble Scribe wasn't aware of it's existence until he thought to do a quick Google check, 'just in case'.  O my goodness.  There is indeed a film called "Island Of Death", filmed on Mykonos, which seems to collect every possible sexual offence possible and mix them in with a giant dose of gore.  It was banned everywhere, which means there was doubtless a lucrative market in dodgy videos of dubious quality.  Art!

Odd-looking hat

     I don't think the Greek tourist authorities would have looked on it with any grace or favour quite be

     ANYWAY of course I've rambled on about what we're not talking about today.  You see, the BBC's news website, that font of all that's fit to be writ, had an article with a slightly tabloid headline, which, if Art will put down that nuclear fuel rod -

     Conrad immediately realised that this would be about Gruinard Island, because his skip-like mind ('skip' as in the voluminous container, not the merry hopping action) retains memories of this unenchanting spot from back in the Seventies.  Gruinard Island, you see, was the testing site for an experiment involving anthrax spores, and was chosen because it was remote, small, uninhabited and not easy to get to.  Art!

CAUTION!  These are not tourists

     The test subjects were a flock of sheep, who were downwind when the explosive device was detonated by remote control.  No, they did not develop mutant superpowers: they all died, which counted as a success for the experimenters.  No, it wasn't a sinister plan to corner the mutton and wool market, for we are talking about mid-Second Unpleasantness and fears that the Teutons might stoop to biological warfare.  They never did, but you had to have contingency plans in case Herr Schicklegruber tried it on, the dirty cur.

     What nobody expected was the sheer resilience of Bacillus Anthracis.  Art!

Anthrax spores

     Yes, spores.  "The Seeds Of Death" sounds great, and is indeed one of the Patrick Troughton-era 'Doctor Who' dramamentaries that was put out on video back in the late Eighties, but it's not an accurate description of the hardy little beggars.  Even setting the island alight didn't destroy them.  Under an official Government and Civil Service policy of Ignore It And It'll Go Away, Gruinard Island was left alone until the locals got fed up and active.  We shall gloss over what they did as it was extremely naughty.  It did propel the Gov to properly decontaminate the island with 250 tons of formaldehyde in solution in 1986.  Finally, in 1990 - a whopping forty-eight years after initial contamination - the warning signs came down and you can now gambol or skip (the merry hopping action not the voluminous container) across Gruinard Island, should you feel the need to do so.  Art!

Bad Moon on the rise

     Conrad strongly suspects that Harry Harrison uses the phrase " - anthrax - income tax -" as exampled of what hideous monstrosities are present in an alternative Earth towards the end of "A Trans-Atlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!" at which point we have strayed far from the path.  Like we do.

Talking Of Deep Waters -

Back to trawling through another BBC page, this time the Underwater Photographer of the Year one, and don't worry, there are lots of photographs left for me to exploit use.  Art!

"Rock Pool Star" courtesy Martin Stevens

     Martin caught this shot in a tidal pool in Cornwall.  That there is a spiny starfish, which is an odd kind of name when you pause to think about it, since there's absolutely NO resemblance to a fish.  The star part - yes, I get that.

Meanwhile, Back In 1943 -

For your information, this is a year after they were testing anthrax on Gruinard, just to put it in context.  Okay, bring on the emptied horses.

     For your information, the Mareth Line had been created by the French in 1938, when Mussolini was casting covetous eyes at Tunisia.  It was a set of defences running inland from the sea to the coastal mountains along the Tunisia-Libyan border.  You can see a few of the defences above, including the utterly obsolete Renault tanks huddled under palm trees.  Why is it here?  Because Rommel's Axis forces, having lost catastrophically at Medenine, had to hold it in order to slow down or stop the Eighth Army.  So the Italians and Teutons would be using French defences in Africa to stop the British.  There.  Glad we got that cleared up.

     Whilst we're on the subject, a little more about the Italian Semovente class of armoured vehicles, as I threatened to do yesteryon.  Art!

Semovente 75/18

     What they did with these was to take the Italian M13/40 tank, remove the turret, replace it with a boxy cupola and stick a 75 m.m. <hack spit> gun in the front, a far larger calibre weapon than the usual 45 m.m. <hack hack spit spit> weapon used in the tank.  "18" is how long the weapon is in muzzle calibres.  Not available in large numbers, it still made an effective armoured vehicle from a pretty rubbish tank.

More More More Of "Tormentor"

You need to recollect that Luma had been undergoing scientific testing at the behest of the Reverned.  It had not gone well.

Paula shivered.  There was a certain air about McMahon that made her uneasy, at a level below conscious analysis.

 

Blithely unaware of the reaction his statement made, Louis went off to sit in on another of Laura’s seminar’s, trying to be unobtrusive whilst ticking boxes on his clipboard.  She managed fairly well, despite having to play down the mock-flirting from one or two of the male students.  After all, she wasn’t a great deal older than them.

               ‘Quite competent,’ he informed her afterwards.  ‘Can’t give more feedback than that until our Review with the VP.’

               Gathering up her papers, Laura nervously straightened her hair.

               ‘I’m really nervous about that!’

               ‘Don’t be!’ reassured Louis.  ‘He tolerates me because I’m dealing with the remedial idiots.  He’ll tolerate you because you come cheap, look good and have potential to improve.’

               Laura stared at him, not sure how to take his comments, and deeming silence to be more diplomatic than trying to deternine exactly what he meant.

               ‘Hey, honesty without tact.  My trademark.’

               ‘I see,’ she replied, non-commitally.

 

Louis sat in his boxy little room behind the desk and made neater notes about Laura’s tutoring skills on a set of pro-formas.  The stuff he’d written in the lesson only made sense to him.

               After a loud knock on the door, which normally never happened since nobody actively sought him out, Nige the scientist came in.

               ‘Hello there,’ greeted Louis.  ‘Only one chair, and I’m sitting on it.  There used to be another but it got nicked when I was still part-time.’

     Yeah, I can't see anyone daring to rip off a curmudgeon like Luma if he was full time and likely to interrupt a chair-theft.

Finally -

Atypically, the day is nice and bright and sunny; it has been since I got up and - O thing of wonder! - so it has remained.  Thus I need to hit the Compositional Ton, visit the bathroom and take Edna for a trot.  The downside to good weather is that all the other dog owners will be taking their domesticated wolves for a trot, too.  What an exciting life I lead! Do you see wh O you do.