What A Shock - It's A Nymph Osmosis Bloc!

Or Is It?

After all, you can't trust BOOJUM! to be honest or truthful about anything, especially not if lying brings in more victims visitors I meant visitors.

     I know you must be wondering if I've been at the cooking sherry already.  Of course not!  Sherry is disgustrous stuff and I wouldn't drink it even on a dare.  Did I ever tell you about the sherry-flavoured milkshake I once made?  The horror lingers on

     ANYWAY I am merely getting my retaliation in first, because today's title contains three more wretched Codeword solutions THAT ARE NOT AT ALL FAIR <mashes Remote Nuclear Detonator fiercely and frequently>.  I dunno.  Every time I vapourise an idiot Codeword compiler they go out and hire a replacement even more stupid, if that's possible.  Art!

     Let us proceed with the deed.

"NYMPH": A five-letter word with NO VOWELS?  How unfair is that?  Very unfair is the answer you're looking for.  Either 'A spirit of nature envisaged as a beautiful maiden' or a fly larva, take your choice.  Actually, looking at that page in my Collins Concise, there's an interesting word: NYMPHOLEPSY.  Not come across that before; it means 'A state of violent emotion especially when associated with a desire for something one cannot have'.  Ah.  Like Your Humble Scribe and ice cream.  Art!

"OSMOSIS": WHAT ARE WE ALL SUDDENLY BIOLOGISTS NOW?  In case you were unaware, this is the tendency for a weaker solution to dilute a stronger one across a semi-permeable membrane, which I well remember from Biology.  STILL UNFAIR.

Osmosis Jones.  It was a thing.

"BLOC":  'A group of people or countries combined by a common interest'.  Because using 'BLOCK' isn't poseury enough one presumes.  Art!

Bloc, Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell

     That's my blood pressure up again, time to stop before the red mist descends and the world loses another twenty-seven Codeword compilers.

A Bit Of Whimsy

Sorry, I've had this bit of doggerel going round in my head and it needs to be put down on paper or it will only keep going and getting longer.

I feel all sweaty

Like Shilpa Shetty

Eating spaghetti

On a jetty

And being petty

To her friend Betty

     There we go, expunged, so it won't keep getting added to.  I hope.  You can never quite tell what my mind is going to come up with next.

The Dogger Bank Incident

If you're in the mood for a little Ruffian-bashing, carry right on.  One of the biggest wars you've never heard of was the Russo-Japanese War, which ran from 1904 until 1905, where the Ruffians - Tsarist at the time - lost every battle yet won the peace.  Essentially the Japs ran out of soldiers whilst Ivan had only just begun to mobilise troops from European Russia.

     ANYWAY the Ruffians decided to send their Baltic fleet out to the Far East to take on the Japs, which meant they had to traverse the North Sea.  Art!

     Whilst at the Dogger Bank they encountered a fleet of British trawlers from Hull, whereupon some idiot screamed "JAPANESE TORPEDO BOATS!" as you naturally would (this is sarcasm lest you be unaware) and the Ruffians promptly opened fire.  Art!

     If this had been any other navy then those trawlers would have been rendered unto matchwood.  Fortunately for the fishermen it was a Ruffian battle fleet, so only one trawler was sunk and two crew killed, and this is after twenty minutes of firing.  The Ruffians did manage to shell one another and reported being struck by torpedoes, which is quite a feat as Hull trawlers lack this article entirely.  The whole event was notable for the appallingly bad gunnery of the Ruffians; one ship, Oryol, fired 500 shells without hitting anything.  Art!

Oryol

     The incident enraged This Sceptred Isle, which was bad news for the Ruffians since the Royal Navy outnumbered, outgunned and outskilled them.  Packs of cruisers stalked the Ruffians, who eventually agreed to investigate the incident and pay compensation.

     Food for thought, Tsar Poutine!

Laying On The Torment

If you recall, Luma and Yvonne had been paid a visit from 'Management', who had begun to take an active interest in our protagonist.

Yvonne caught on quicker than Louis.

               ‘When I helped to heal his arm, that’s taken as a bond?’

               ‘Mhm,’ nodded Michael.  ‘And when he helped to recharge your batteries, post-attack.’ 

               ‘Is a bond-and-bind serious?’ asked Louis.

               ‘Oh yes, yes indeed!’ said Michael, beaming.  ‘It ties the spirit to the mortal.  No Moving On until the mortal does.  A rare privilege, but officially sanctioned in your case.’

               Louis felt a sense of incredible unreality steal over him.

               ‘Let me clarify this.  I’m being told by an angel that I’m practically engaged to a spirit, and encouraged to hunt down demons.’

               ‘Messenger,’ tutted Michael, raising one elegant eyebrow.

               ‘Does this seem strange to you?’ asked Louis of Yvonne, who appeared similarly startled.

               ‘Of course it’s unusual, because people like you are so rare,’ explained the “messenger”.  ‘Anything else?’

               Only about a million questions!

               ‘Yes!  Why me?  Why can I interact with spirits when nobody else can?’

               ‘I can’t tell you that, Louis.  Privileged information.  Yvonne?’

               She waved absently.

               ‘Time to go,’ said the messenger.  A huge pair of feathered wings unfurled  from the back of his jacket, beat once and created a storm of wind.  ‘Sorry, couldn’t resist.’ The wings vanished, Michael winked and then vanished too.

     As I said before, what a wag that Michael is, hmmm?

Bring On "The War Illustrated" You Say?  Why Certainly!

Forgive the quality for this one, a tad blurry.  However I'm not going to go back upstairs in order to retake the photo and have to upload it again, so there.  Art!

     Here we go, from port to starboard.  First up are some Axis prisoners coming in, then engineers removing enemy anti-tank mines, which is a rather dodgy business if they've been booby-trapped to prevent lifting.  Then there's a patrol coming in.  Bottom port is a very disabled 88 flak gun; one tyre seems to have gone completely CHEAP CHINESE KNOCK-OFF, and the crew either didn't have a spare or enough time to fit one, because the British are now towing it off LIKE UKE FARMERS.  Last picture shows a platoon of Churchill tanks, which became known for their ability to climb steep Tunisian hills, to the dismay of the Axis sitting atop those hills.

Finally -

Good lord aloft, that Lavrov chap doesn't know when to keep his pie-hole shut!  He might be Dimya's Foreign Minister yet he ought to possess at least a little diplomatic skill.  His quote "I believe that Hitler also had Jewish blood " has predictably annoyed the Israelis, which is bad news as Dimya needs all the friends he can get.  Art!

Lavvy The Liar

     O, and another 'Ooopsie!' moment occurred on a Kremlin-friendly news website, which accidentally published the true totals of dead and missing Ruffians as of a week ago. 

In Russia, where even the use of words like 'occupation', 'attack', 'war' and 'invasion' is prohibited, there has been another big leak. Readovka, one of the favorite media organs of the Kremlin, wrote that 13 thousand 414 Russian soldiers were killed in Ukraine and 7 thousand were missing. In the news based on the daily briefing of the Russian Ministry of Defense, it was also stated that 116 sailors died and more than 100 were missing on the Moskva warship sunk by Ukraine.

     These are credible numbers and tally with outsider estimates of between 15 to 20 thousand Ruffian dead to date.  This implies total casualties of possibly 60 thousand, or almost half the original 'Special' Military Operation force.

     Let's hear it for Dimya's 'Special' Advisers!