When The Sea Is Made Of Sand

... And You Cannot Sail To Land

No!  I was being ever so metaphorical, not positing that the Atlantic will turn into a great big mass of silicone dioxide, a.k.a. sand.  Where would we get our fish fingers from?  How could Perfidious Albion project it's naval power overseas?  What

     ANYWAY I refer to a film I started watching on Monday evening: "Sea Of Sand", a 1958 venture set in North Africa during the Second World 'Special' Military Operation.  Art!

     The story concerns a Long-Range Desert Group patrol that, from it's base in the middle of nowhere's middle of nowhere, goes out to make a giant bonfire.  Using a Teuton petrol dump as fuel.  One of the more interesting aspects of the film is the location: Libya.  Yes, that Libya, the country that the LRDG whizzed over during the real thing back in 1942.  In 1958 it was still a monarchy, untroubled by Muammar Gadfly, and happily home to British army units enjoying the sun and date palms.  Art!

Apt vintage kit

  
     They do bodge it with South Canadian half-tracks pretending to be Teuton Sdkfz 251s - as if! - but the vehicles you see above are just the ticket - Chevrolets kitted-out for traversing the desert.  Nor is that all.  Most of the LRDG's work was stultifyingly boring reconnaissance jobs, where they would carefully lie-up in concealment and watch Axis road traffic, counting what was going where.  We do indeed encounter a Road Watch team, whom - you may be ahead of me here - were watching the roads.  Given that this is 400 miles behind enemy lines, even the most boring chore has a certain frisson of nervous excitement about it.  Art!

Scruffy and dangerous.

     O and because this film is about manly men being manly, there's none of that silly nonsense about romance or females, thank heavens! bar a photograph that gets torn in two.

     Motley, fetch me a bucket and spade, for I feel like making sandcastles.  O and nip down to B & Q and fetch back a few 250lb bags of sand whilst you're at it, too.  Thanks in advance.

On The Scene With Another Theme

Yes, we've finally run out of Sony World Photography entrants, which is a mixed blessing, since none of them were attributed to individual photographers.  What we now pick up is another BBC competition, with the headline being "Into The Blue", which as you may imagine has inspired folks to be creative.  Art!

Yes we see what you did there,  Sharon Forrest

      This is a 'dog agility course' at Llanidloes in Wales, with Duke and his human having a trot on the spot.  Hopefully both got a biscuit at the end.  Conrad unsure why dogs would need training in agility, as unless they're ancient and decrepit they seem quite agile enough.  Edna, for example, whilst out on a trot Monday, turned a corner and came face-to-face with a couple of pigeons, entirely unexpectedly.  It was a close thing for the pigeons <sad face thinking of pigeon pie>.  As I said, agile aplenty.

Darwin Win-Win

Here's a bit of unabashed good news, which we all need in these times of typhoons, tornadoes and <thinks> tilting of the world's axis.  Okay, that chap Charles Darwin, responsible for the advancement of the theory of evolution, and "Of The Origin Of Species", which is like garlic and silver to Creationists, made a lot of notes in his - get this - notebooks, with a fountain pen, because ink pens are classy (if messy on occasion).  These notebooks were held at Cambridge University's Library, until they weren't.  The details are a little obscure, and the guilty party hasn't explained anything either, but we know these notebooks have been missing for 22 years.

     Erk.  Art!

     They have just now been returned.  Wherever they were being kept, the thief took very good care of them, which is a good thing as they are worth MILLIONS - enough for Dimya to live on caviar and Grey Goose for the rest of his misbegotten life.  If the police to enough digging we may get a television special about the crime.  Art!

The Tree Of Branch.
(He changed the title later on)

     One of life's unexpected small wins.

And Now Back To "Tormentor"

Because it makes an appropriately stark juxtaposition, before you ask.

‘ “Spirits are forbidden to undertake contact with ordinary mortals unless under particularly extreme circumstances.  You may want to examine your library books and the terms Incubus and Succubus”.  That sounds like the Professor, doesn’t it?’

               Louis made another note, taking a guess at the spelling of the two words and asking Yvonne to pencil in a question about ghosts.  Later on, in bed, he looked up the two latin terms.

               ‘To sum up, male and female demons that have sex with mortals.  For “demons” read “pervy spirits”.’

               ‘Please!’ shuddered Yvonne.  ‘One can see humans gaining gratification from it, but a spirit – dear me no.’

               ‘Bear in mind you’re in a single man’s bedroom at night,’ he teased.  In a huff, Yvonne disappeared.  Her presence still hung in the room as she kept watch, silently.

               Louis gave a mental shrug.  His ability to piss people off extended to spirits, too.

 

Monday dawned with Louis still in one piece.  Yvonne’s invisible presence lurked in all four corners of the room.

               ‘Thanks for watching.  I’m off to college.  Daylight is about ten minutes away, so you can get some rest.’

               Thank you came a distant echo, faintly yet clearly. 

               He felt almost cheerful on the bus to college.  Once there he found another note from Rowell in his pigeonhole.

               “!!!See me IMMEDIATELY !!!”

               A couple of the other staff snickered at his exaggerated response, all tutting and rolling of eyes.

               Bloody hell Rowell, learn to write proper English!

 

               ‘Come in!’ yelled Rowell instantly as Louis’s fist hammered on the door.

               Rowell was not alone.  Doctor Greene, the Principal, and Evelyn, the Bursar, and the Principal’s secretary were there.  The Principal hardly ever descended to levels this low.  Normally he mixed with the Mayor or local MP’s or jetted off to Holland or Canada.

               ‘Elevated company,’ said Louis.  Rowell looked pale, almost stunned.  ‘Have I been fired?’

               ‘Hardly,’ said the Principal, drily.

               ‘Quite the opposite,’ added Evelyn.

     I remember this bit.  Luma falls on his feet and has good luck for once.

Finally -

Yes yes yes, here we are again, poking mocking fun at the court of Tsar Poutine and belittling the Ruffian 'Special' Military Operation in Ukraine.  Actually, if you want an incredibly well-reasoned analysis of the conflict there is a Youtube video by a vlogger called 'Perun' that I listened to last night, which is four weeks old yet just as relevant now as it was then, and Dimya and cohorts would have done well to heed it.  

      Now back to the relentless satire.  "The Daily Beast" as of a couple of weeks ago published an interesting metric.  Art!

Latest in Ruffian kitchen accoutrments

     An un-named South Canadian source was briefing the Reuters news agency about the devastatingly accurate and deadly and cool as shizzle Ruffian missiles, which have a failure rate of over 60% -

     Wait, what?  OVER 60%?  That same source, probably with a malicious grin, explained that a failure rate of 20% is seen by the South Canadians as bad.  The word he used was 'High', which is what Dimya's inner circle must have been when dreaming up Operation Sloth.

Dimya's Inner Circle.  I rest my case.