Zen And The Art Of S.P.V. Maintenance

With Apologies To Robert Persig

I've never read his book, and indeed don't know the first thing about it, whether it's fact, fiction or paint-by-numbers, just that it makes a handy literary meme, if you will.

     I suppose a little explanation about "S.P.V." is needed.  It's the official acronym for "Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle", a monstrous wheeled armoured fighting vehicle as used by those nosey parkers at Spectrum.  Art!

     The only way to outrun one of these beasts is to be in an F1, flooring it.  You'd have to have a lead of several miles, too, because - it has missiles.  Spectrum may be symbolised by rainbows but it has a distinct shortage of fluffy bunnies and butterflies.  Art!

     

     45º slopes no problem!  Spectrum has a world-wide distributed network of SPVs secured in hidden storage points, from where they can be retrieved by agents in good standing and with a valid Class 4 driving licence.  Art!

     Spot the SPV.  You can't, it's hidden.  This petrol station is fully functional, but the manager is actually a Spectrum undercover agent, tasked with keeping a weather eye on the hidden vehicle.  It must be a burden, having to manage double-entry book-keeping and dealing with alien menaces in the meantime.  If a Spectrum agent happens to turn up and produces appropriate ID, then -

     Trailer goes away, SPV appears.  Now, don't forget that these vehicles are only used in emergencies; Captain Ochre can't requisition one to get through traffic on his way to LAX - although seeing one of these in your rear-view mirror would clear traffic like magic - nor can a group of lagered-up Captains appropriate one to get home after the last bus has gone.  So, bearing that in mind, they have to be kept in tip-top shape, cleaned, fuelled, armed, maintained, systems tested and given a quick buff at the weekend - ALL THE TIME.  

     Conrad suspects that this is rather beyond the remit of the resident undercover agent, because a sixteen-hour workday is a tad excessive, and if you spent eight hours a day in that truck above, people would wonder.

     Thus Conrad proposes a national maintenance team for Spectrum, possibly one in each country where they have a presence (so none in Bereznik), who are peripatetic and whom rove up and down, discreetly ensuring every SPV is in peak condition.  Art!

     One of the more popular locations for maintenance staff; the Auld Lang Syne whisky distillery.  That vehicle probably has a litre of malt in the first-aid kit.

     Here an aside.  Conrad is aware of South Canadian conspiranoid loonwaffles who maintain the myth of "The Black Helicopters"*, as if!  These, the story goes, turn up at Mysterious Inexplicable Events, and dismount hordes of Anonymous Gubmint Enforcers, who remove all the evidence of whatever it was, which is why the only proof Lonny The Basement Boy has of 'an epic battle between the Greys and the US SEALS and the Terminator and Superman' is a scorched pine cone.  Art!

A Black Helicopter!  Flee for the hills!

     You see, to hide their identity they have no insignia.  Which is stupid.  If they want to divert attention, they'd have the US Parks And Forests logo on them, or the 237th Reconnaissance Air Wing, or Spectrum

     ANYWAY Conrad's point - yes there is one - is that South Canada is freaking huge.  HUGE!  I've flown across it from coast to coast and it took all day.  Art, a handy map, please.

     Does Lonny The Basement Boy think that these black helicopters all live in Kansas and fly out from there?  How long would it take them to reach Florida?  Or Alaska?  Hours, and with refuelling required along the way.  No, for the black helicopters to exist in reality they'd need a base in each state, with multiple helicopters available to account for those taken up by training, maintenance, repair or retaining pilot flying skills.  They need fuel, and lots of it, and lots and lots of ground staff, and accommodation, and spare parts, and radars.  Plus an extensive radio, e-mail and internet eavesdropping service to ensure they get to the scene first.

     It's not very likely, is it?

     My Spectrum scenario is far more plausible.

     Of course, I may be over-thinking this a bit ...

Small Earth Tremor In Wigan

As I put it about on Facebook last night, I completed an MEN Codeword last night, which had NIL controversial words present.  In fact, just to prove a point - art!

     I made a bit of a bodge with "APPEAL" since I had it down as "ANNEAL" at first.

     ANYWAY nothing contentious, which must be good, right?

     Yes and no.  It makes the Codeword easier but afterwards I've got nothing to complain about, so no blog content generated.

"The Sea Of Sand"

I shall have to keep this relatively brief since I wittered on so long with the Intro.  Not going to apologise, once an author gets a head of creative steam behind him you have to stand back or be crushed by creativity.

Corporal Tam Mickleborough escorted the detainees outside, into a silent, baking heat under a brassy sky, the precursor to the approaching sandstorm, which now towered a hundred feet high and only a few hundred yards away. 

          ‘Double time!’ he called, and led the two across the sands, past crates, boxes and pallets, to a large khaki tent pitched in the lee of giant stack of crates.  Eddies of dust and sand began to whip around their ankles.

          ‘Sir – Captain Dobie’s ordered that you look after these two.  Mates of the Professor,’ called the corporal from outside the tent, then sped off to find his own tent.

          The tent flap opened and Lieutenant Llewellyn peered out, his peaked cap failing to sit properly on his tousled hair.

          ‘Good Lord!’ he exclaimed.  ‘Civlians?’  He cocked his head as the wind began to pick up.  ‘In here, smartish, chaps – oh!’

          Obviously he suddenly recognised Sarah’s gender.  Once they were safely inside, he hastily tied the tent flap shut.

          Sarah cast a sharp eye over the tent, aware before looking of the smell of sweat, soap and tea.  The horizontal tentpole brushed the top of the Doctor’s hair, reminding her that she still carried his hat.

          ‘I beg my pardon,’ said the officer, wearing wrinkled shorts and a khaki shirt open to the navel.  He buttoned up the shirt, then put on a pair of incredibly battered sandals.  ‘There, decent.  Now, introductions are in order.  You are?’

          ‘I am Doctor John Smith, and this is my travelling companion, Miss Sarah Jane Smith,’ intoned the Time Lord, his eyes taking in everything in the tent within the space of a second.

     What Roger will make of his new guest's relationship remains to be seen.  You may rest assured, however, that there will be NO hanky-panky here.  Not the done thing.

A Passel Of Possibilities

A quick look at one of the introductory maps as found in the opening pages of "The War Illustrated", so Conrad can pontificate.  Art!

     This shows the strategic worries that the Axis had, because now the Allies controlled the whole of North Africa, they had umpteen possible choices to make about where to invade next.  Spain?  Southern France?  Sardinia?  Corsica?  Sicily?  Italy proper?  Greece?  Yugoslavia?  Or more than one?

A Little Musical Critique

O yes indeed.  These items have grown musicians and composers weeping into their beer as Conrad deconstructs ruthlessly, using logic and semantic analysis, and blatant mockery.  Today it's the turn of Pink Floyd and "One Of These Days".  Let the excoriation begin!

"One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces"

     Hmmmmm, that's quite the attitude, isn't it?

     And with that we're done.  Hey, we're over the Adjusted Compositional Ton, I had to keep it short.  Art!

Finally -

Payday today!  Which is good, Conrad is always to have more beer and book tokens sitting in his bank account, except we'll be supporting the HR team that takes queries about pay, and I guarantee that there'll be lots of 'em.  Fortunately there's only one more payday before we get the big heave-ho.  Counting the days!

*  I mock them, I jeer at them, yes; but Spectrum absolutely exists.

How Much Dragon Do You Want With Your Sea?

We Touched Briefly On This Monster Marine-Mounted Missile

When going on about 'Dragons in the sea', although that quick gloss could do with a little more background information.  We have seen that the Sea Dragon, whilst being slightly taller (or longer when lying down) than the Apollo's Saturn 5, was a much beefier beast altogether.  Art!

?

     What on earth is this ghastly apparition?  Have you been at the lignite again?  You know it makes you see things.  What's that?  It's a species of fish called a 'Sea Dragon'.  I see.  CAN IT REACH ORBIT?  Of course not.  Then we don't want it here.  Try again.

"LEO" is "Low Earth Orbit"

     Thus the SD could lift almost 4 times the payload of an Apollo mission, and the size constraints of what you're sending into LEO are almost negligible.  That's not all, either.  The SD was designed to use the very cheapest of components, and to be partly recyclable, to further keep costs down.  A few commentators on another forum exclaimed in horror at this thing's sheer size, stating that it would destroy any launch pad it used thanks to that enormous engine.

     Ah, but -

     It was intended to be built ashore, then floated out to sea, where an aircraft carrier would generate the hydrogen and liquid oxygen to fuel it and pump said fuel aboard.  It would assume an upright position, without the need for all the support gantries of conventional rocketry designs, and be launched from this position.  Obviously there would need to be a minimum depth of water beneath the engine bell, as otherwise you'd risk potential damage from bits of the ocean floor being blasted away at high speed.  Art!

     It's a very cool idea and a real shame that NASA never took it up, because by now we'd have hundreds of people living on the Moon and a small Mars colony, too*.

     Now, where did I put that Tazer?  Art needs a lesson or two.

Lazy Conrad Is Lazy

As you pikers ought to know, it's a constant battle here in the blogosphere to create fresh and interesting content - or at least content that interests me, you people are quite incidental.  So, when I came across a BBC webpage that details significant authors from the Commonwealth, selected from the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign STAND UP FOR THE QUEEN! it rather intrigued me.  Take the selection from 1952 - 1961, which I will append here.

1952-1961

 

The Palm-Wine Drinkard - Amos Tutuola (1952, Nigeria)

The Hills Were Joyful Together - Roger Mais (1953, Jamaica)

In the Castle of My Skin - George Lamming (1953, Barbados)

My Bones and My Flute - Edgar Mittelholzer (1955, Guyana)

The Lonely Londoners - Sam Selvon (1956, Trinidad and Tobago/England)

The Guide - R. K. Narayan (1958, India)

To Sir, With Love - E. R. Braithwaite (1959, Guyana)

One Moonlit Night - Caradog Prichard (1961, Wales)

A House for Mr Biswas - VS Naipaul (1961, Trinidad and Tobago/England)

Sunlight on a Broken Column - Attia Hosain (1961, India)

     I know, I know, a cheap way to up the word count.  Still, the only one I'd heard of was "To Sir, With Love", and the only author I'd heard of was VS Naipaul.  Fortunately the BBC has another page that gives a plot synopsis, and a couple of these seem interesting in that they tell a horror story.  HOWEVER I really can't justify buying another 10 books when I've just ordered 4 from Naval & Military Press.  Art!

     I have heard that there are these mysterious entities called 'Libraries' where one can borrow books ...

The Bronk's!

NO that is not a typo and it should NOT read 'The Bronx', thank you very much.  I refer, of course - obviously! - to Justin Bronk, senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and a chap who really know his onions.  Thing is, he only looks about 17, which must cause friction with his alumni and fellow fellows.  Art!

Trying the old 'A suit will make me look older' trick

     He's been featured on Ward Carroll's vlog a couple of times, which are well worth watching.  I'm sure they do preparation about subject matter, but he doesn't hesitate or fluff lines or look blank, and his detailed response to a Patreon member asking if the South Canadian Air Force was going to stealth-enable it's flying tanker aircraft was very impressive.  Briefly put, a tanker has a low radar cross-section if it's not deploying the fuel drogue, and there are technical issues about putting a stealth-skin on them, which shoehorn's The Bronk's explanation a lot.  They also discussed this monster - Art!

     It can carry 4 Hellfire missiles and bombs as well, and it can stooge around the sky for 25 hours.  When they arrive in You Know Where there are going to be some very bad hair days in store ...

Let Us Now Travel To Libya

And the desert war of early 1941, before Rommel arrived, for Lo! yes, it's back to "The Sea Of Sand" where The Doctor and Sarah have been rescued from an imminent sand-storm, only to be scrutinised by a very suspicious British officer, who thinks they may be spies.

Not that he really believed that.  A spy would try to blend in with their background, not stand out like a circus act.

          ‘Our transport was destroyed, bombed.  Nothing left.  That’s why we were out in the middle of the desert,’ answered the rather attractive female detainee.  Her brunette curls bounced appealingly in front of the captain, who swallowed abruptly, remembered his wife and thought of England.

          The gangling male detainee, still wearing a long coat, gave the captain a broad smile.  Captain Dobie wasn’t fooled; the curly-haired chap had summoned Corporal Mickleborough from across the desert sands by using a vertical flag.  He didn’t seem dehydrated, or properly suffering from the symptoms of sunstroke.  Odd, perhaps, but not mad.

          ‘Quite why the War Office would give a pair of civilians permission to travel into a war zone escapes me.’

          He looked at them dispassionately before abruptly exclaiming.

          ‘Good Lord!  You’re not here for that blithering idiot Templeman, are you!’ he grated, his moustache twitching in righteous indignation.

          ‘Ah, Professor Templeman-Schwartz,’ said the Doctor in a cunningly-calculated ambiguous tone of voice that could have been either statement or question.

          Sarah watched the Captain’s face flush in anger.  He called Corporal Mickleborough into the sultry office and pointed to the two detainees.

          ‘Take these two and deliver them to Lieutenant Llewellyn.  And be quick about it, the storm is nearly here,’ he added, looking outside.  Once the distracting pair were out of his sight, he calmed down a little, picked up his fountain pen and began annotating his list of salvaged supplies.  Silently he cursed that buffoon Templeman, the War Office, Templeman’s political  connections that allowed him to return out here and little lost sheep in the middle of nowhere.

     It's a moot point as to whether the War Department would really allow archaeologists back into enemy territory, which is why we have a credible suspense of disbelief.

Finally -

Hmmmm, unusually for a relatively early evening shop at Morrison's, Your Humble Scribe picked up a fair bit of remaindered food.  Usually it doesn't start going into the chiller cabinet until 19:00 and there are human gannets hovering nearby, waiting to pounce, nor did they change their habits during the Covid crisis.  Obviously garlic bread going cheap is worth risking one's life for!

     On another consumption-related topic - Art!

     This was my Father's Day prezzie from Darling Daughter, which has now become Secondary Teapot of choice, since I can get about 3 pints of tea from it.  Just to keep you informed and up to date.

*  We'd have to be verrrrry careful not to spook either the Rock Snakes or the Mysterons.

Multimule

If It Wasn't A Word Before, It Is Now

Get used to it.  After I take over there will be a whole book of new words and phrases that you'll need to know, and YES there will be tests.  For what it's worth, I shall be merciful and anyone who fails will be given the choice of Total Organ Donation or a life sentence in the uranium mines*.  No, no, don't thank me.

     ANYWAY I have recently been perusing my latest purchase of Peter Caddick-Adam's fine work on the Cassino campaign in Italy during the Second Unpleasantness.  Art!

     Don't laugh.  Ol' Pete was an army officer and served in Bosnia and Iraq on the staff, so he has more right to wear a Brodie-pattern helmet than you or I.

     ANYWAY one point he makes is that the terrain around Cassino was so awful that wheeled or tracked vehicles couldn't negotiate it, so there was enormous demand for mules as transport.  Yes, mules, "The sterile offspring of a donkey and a horse" as the Collins Concise has it.  Art!

     "There's our theme for today!" crowed Conrad.  "Mules!"

     Mulish Footwear.  Conrad had to look this up in the Collins Concise because, as we all know, he has 0% fashion knowledge, which would be into minus figures if he didn't know what a sock and tee-shirt were.  'Mules' are footwear that lack any kind of support to the heel of the wearer, a backless shoe if you will.  Art!

Probably a lot pricier than a proper full shoe

     Not very sensible for This Sceptred Isle, given the amount of rain we experience.

     Let the theme continue!

     In "Para Handy Tales" The Tar - responsible for cooking aboard 'The Vital Spark' - makes the discovery of corned beef, which he serves as often as he can get away with, as it's a lot easier than cooking a beef joint.  MacPhail, the engineer, drolly christens it 'Malleable Mule' which is casting aspersions on Fray Bentos, matey.  Art!

Made of Marvellously Munchable Mule

     But wait - there's more.  For we have the Spinning Mule, which is not an equine affliction equivalent to Mad Cow Disease.  No, it's a piece of industrial machinery for - Art!

     Clearly this was designed to sharpen safety pins by the tens of thousands in order to underpin (do you see what I did th - O you do) the English textile-repair trade 

     IGNORE THAT!  Mister Hand the treacherous appendage has been interfering.  No, the spinning mule was designed and intended to process textiles from fibres into yarns, and was enormously widespread up until the twentieth century.  A few are still in use for work with very expensive textiles like alpaca.

     Whilst on the subject of machinery, say hello to the Mechanical Mule - Art!

     This is the M274 4x4 utility platform, as used by the South Canadian army and Marines, great for gadding about with too much kit for one person to carry.  You could dismount, move the steering wheel backwards and walk behind it, driving it forward if you felt the need to.  Art!

No, it didn't come in a tricycle version, this one is manfully carrying on whilst missing a wheel.  What a trouper.

     And then we have The Mule, that super-powered mutant who threatens to overthrow Hari Seldon's thousand-year plan in Isaac Asimov's "The Foundation".  Art?

     <excuse me, grooving to a corking song by The Doors playing on my i-pod, unsure which one because it's only displaying album titles - ah - 'Spanish Caravan'? possibly.  Very impressive!>

     ANYWAY The Mule is put forward as an existential threat, except - if he's a mule, he cannot breed, can he, so his reign will end when he ends, won't it?  Subtle resistance methods would be to feed him high-cholesterol foods laden with saturated fats, five times a day.  That'd see him off.

     Then, finally - because some of you are whimpering with terror - we have the immortal Bob Blackman, who sang 'Mule Train' on TISWAS.  His gimmick was that, during the chorus, and to emphasise the rhythm and syncopation, he would wallop himself over the head with a tea-tray.  Art!

     Conrad is unaware how they got away with this, except to say it was back in the Eighties, when Health & Safety was less scrupulous, and concussion was acceptable on children's Saturday morning television.

     Corks.  We've gone on about this rather, haven't we?  Bring on a change of subject!

"The Sea Of Sand"

Let's not beat about the carefully-curated topiary.

4) The Sinews of War –

 To everything there is a season, said Captain Dobie to himself.  Ecclesiates, however, did not provide guidance and advice on mysterious and suspicious strangers.

          The Captain heaved a dramatic sigh.  He looked at the framed photograph of his wife on the grimy desktop, hoped that all was well at home, unconsciously rubbed his sternum and looked at the – call them “detainees” – who stood in front of him.

          Corporal Mickleborough had marched the two suspects into the sandbagged mud shack and stated that they had been found out in the desert, alone, sir, with no water or transport, sir, and might they be spies, sir?

          The Captain looked at his paperwork with fond appreciation.  Why, only four months ago he’d been happily doing paperwork for 4^th Corps around Brighton, tabulating march columns.  Now he was out in the hideous trackless wastes of North Africa, baking his brains out, likely to be killed at any moment, and now he had to deal with – with –

          ‘Who are you people, exactly?’ he asked, fiddling with his moustache.  ‘No transport, no paperwork, no documents.  You could be spies.’

     And that's enough of that.  Keeping it short and sweet.

Back To Nature

And the last of the BBC's photographic exhibition on the theme of 'Nature'.  Art!

Courtesy Tom. St. George

     These are underwater caves in Mexico, which look spectacular, and also worryingly dangerous and difficult to access, so there is no prospect of Conrad's colossal bulk being squeezed into them, which will gratify the photographer, who says they are at risk thanks to tourism**.

Go On Then

Another single photograph from "The War Illustrated" because there's not a lot of room left thanks to the ridiculously long Intro.  Honestly, sometimes Conrad wishes we had an editor here, who could lay down the law and co-ordinate input better.  Steve and Oscar just won't cut it.

     ANYWAY 

     This page aptly mentions that these ships - escort carriers - were being used to hunt down Teuton u-boats, and by the time this edition came out the u-boats had lost the battle of the Atlantic.  Shipping losses suffered by the Allies had dropped dramatically, whilst the u-boats were being sunk in forbidding numbers.  Escort carriers, also nicknamed 'Jeep' carriers, were small and had a limited complement of aircraft as compared to the big boys.  However, they could be produced en masse and were, which helped to provide convoys with air cover, and also formed the core of hunter-killer groups that actively sought out u-boats.  Here we see three being readied for launch, which is three times more aircraft carriers than the Teutons had.

Finally -

Finished watching "The Umbrella Academy" Season Three last night, and it tied up most of the loose threads, for which thanks.  We still need another season at least to finalise this new timeline.  Yeah, time-travel is tricky stuff, The Doctor reminds me every time we meet, as if he knows anything about it!

*  PPE = a giant nappy.  Capable of reaching the shoulders, to spare ladies their modesty.

**  Masochists with death wishes.

Dies Another Day

NO!  Nothing To Do With James Bond

Definitely not a sequel to "Dye Another Day", an hilarious comedy about a pair of  hairdressers who moonlight as deadly assassins with one being white and the other black and they tour internationally -

     No, hang on, that was "I Spy", wasn't it?  Hang on, hang on -

     <gives Reality a good hard kick>

     So.  I was referring to that James Bond opus "Die Another Day", which I may have seen.  Art!

     Conrad fondly imagines that this is one of the choices that The Grim Reaper gives you when he turns up at your door and raps upon it with his bony knuckles*.  "Hello there!  Your choice - die today or die another day?"

     Trick question.  If you say "Die another day, please!" then he goes back in time one week and offs you then, because he didn't specify if it was DAD in the future or the past, did he?  Foolish mortal.  Art!

Hey what say what?

     ANYWAY of course - obviously! - none of this has anything to do with the real Intro, which has been hiding behind the sofa all this time.

     You see, from the Latin <hack spit> 'Dies' which means "Day", we derive the word "Diary".  Now you see where today's hilariously funny title comes from.  And why are we whanging on about diaries?

     Because Naval and Military Press have facsimile copies of EVERY war diary from the British army of the First Unpleasantness.  Art!

     The small print there is a little hard to resolve at this size, so allow me to point out that they have 3,472 war diaries extant, that one can buy.

     Here an aside.  Many years ago Conrad purchased the rights to the War Diary of 2/2 Battalion the Lancashire Fusiliers, from the Royal Archives, which gave one access for about a fortnight.  This allowed me to print off the entire work using the printers at Connexions - thanks, Connexions! - and assemble it in a ring binder.  Art!

     One of the battalion's officers would have been graced with the title of 'Intelligence Officer' and it was his responsibility to keep the War Diary up to date and accurate, which is why they can vary immensely from battalion to battalion.  The Fusilier's WD has several hundred pages; some unit's WDs total over a thousand.

     Why is this big news?  What makes it important?  Because these are what historians call 'primary documents', the raw data that you can study and create theses and histories from.  You can bet millions to munce that half the military history works gracing the shelves of Waterstones that deal with the First Unpleasantness have several of these as sources.  Art!

The Mansion**

     The other Rate Limiting Factor about these N&MP works is their cost.  The minimum price is £12, and the 1,200 page ones go for £90.  Thus, if we select a guesstimate average of £15, you're looking at a price tag of £52,000, or sufficient for Conrad to need to take out a second and third mortgage.  AND, given that there are over a million pages, I'd need life-extension drugs and/or technology to finish them off before I finish.

     "Another Day"?  Another decade, more like!

Just Imagine

Conrad came across a bonkers idea yesterday, "What if the Borg were British?".  The Borg, I should explain, are a variety of cybernetic drones who live in a controlled hive-mind environment, and who are intent on converting everyone alive into more Borg, because Bjorn.  They originated in "Starry Trek: The Next Iteration" (I think, details a bit vague) and have threatened the Universe at various points since.

     Well, not to be outdone, Your Humble Scribe pondered "What if the Daleks were British?" and how would their catchphrases sound?

DALEK                                        BRITISH

EXTERMINATE!                           Would you really please stop being alive?  

OBEY!                                          We'd really appreciate it if you could see your

                                                   way to be doing as we'd ask.

EXPLAIN!                                   What on Earth/Skaro is going on here?

YOU ARE THE DOCTOR!              I say, you're that chap who travels around in a

                                                   big blue box!

YOU ARE THE ENEMY OF             You know, all things considered, I very much

THE DALEKS!                               doubt that we can be friends.

Daleks busking for charity

     O and I have to confess 'twas me who had that daft idea about the Borg.

Let Us Now Visit The Sands Of North Africa

And "The Sea Of Sand".  Conrad would like to point out that all the kit mentioned in the text is actual wartime issue that was around at the time - bar the alien silicon-dioxide manipulation, of course.  Obviously!

Davey looked at Sarah for confirmation.

‘That’s right,’ she said, not bothering to go into details about exactly what the “transport” amounted to.  ‘An aircraft attacked us.  We were lucky to get away alive.  And that you came along.’

‘Oh, aye,’ replied Davey.  ‘It was your signal we spotted.  The haze stopped us seeing you.  This plane, did it have a blue shield on the side?’

Sarah nodded. 

‘Chevrons, with lions rampant,’ added the Doctor.

Davey swore.

‘Hey, Tam!  That bugger the Count is back again.  These two were shot up by him,’ he shouted to the driver, who merely grunted in reply.

‘I wonder, could you tell me the date?’ asked the Doctor suddenly, in a serious tone.  Davey’s response was to look suspiciously at him, then lean closer to Sarah.

‘Looks like your mate’s got a touch of sunstroke, miss,’ he stage-whispered.  The Doctor favoured him with a radiant smile.

‘How d – oh – er, yes, he does seem a bit, ah, distracted,’ said Sarah, initially indignant and then realising that a heat-stricken Doctor would be much easier to explain away.  She caught her companion’s eye, and noticed a twinkle there; clearly he agreed.

The small truck bowled along across the desert floor, frantically outracing the oncoming storm, both heading for Mersa Martuba.

     Nobody's come back to me about using a realistic vulgarism yesteryon, so this one is gong to stand as well.

Red In Tooth And Claw

No, you bumbletuck: Nature, not the Daleks.  Nature!  And another illustration from that BBC exhibition we've been featuring. Art!

Courtesy Tom Shlesinger

     This is identified as a 'male Atlantic goliath grouper' amidst a lot of other fish.  One presumes it has never been in front of a mirror because this beast got stuck in the Ugly Washing Machine on full two-hour colour cycle.  Is it a vegan?  Because Conrad cannot fathom why it's being mobbed by fish that would make a tasty morsel for it.

Finally -

I have had my Weekly Stew on the go for the past two hours, so - should probably go down and give it a stir.  No particular recipe, except that we've not got any fresh cabbage to add in, so I omitted the sauerkraut.  There is still one portion of the Roadkill Stew left for tomorrow's lunch.

     Hmmm.  That's not a very rock 'n' roll way to end the blog.  What cou -

     AHA!  The end of Season Three of "The Umbrella Academy", is what.  Conrad unsure how they can bring the whole universe back from total destruction, but - he's certain that this has been referred to previously, after some input from Darling Daughter, where the universe has been rebooted five or six times already.  What was the comic/game/television series called?

Superior to the comic, frankly.

     And with that, we are pretty much done.

*  Strangely enough, one never encounters feminists insisting that Death be an equal-gender position.

**  In my mind.

There's A Dragon In The Sea

And It's Hunting You And Me

Ha! Do you see wh - O you do.

     Well, first of all, we have to acknowledge a debt to sci-fi author Brian Herbert, whom is best known for creating "Dune" but who also had a fairly prestigious body of work behind him at the time.  Art!

     Conrad is prepared to believe you have never read this novel nor will ever be  likely to do so, thus a little more background is surely in order.  Okay - the year is <Cough cough> and Westopia had being fighting Eastovia for years and years, so yes this is a Future-war Sci-fi novel, except that this one is from a vanishingly small trope, that of Submarine Warfare.  Our protagonists are on a mission to steal vast amounts of petroleum from their Eastovian opponents from beneath their very own oil-wells, which by implication means that Texas has been blasted into a thin vapour* obscuring the upper atmosphere.

     Your Humble Scribe also recollects that Ol' Bri makes mention of 'vampire gauges', which, in best sci-fi author style he does not bother defining or purposing, bar that they have something to do with blood chemistry.  Art!

 Instrument panel from a Vampire

     Of course - obviously! - none of this is to do with what I really wanted to lay out in this Intro, which is still to do with dragons in the sea.  Art!

    Okay, this is a NASA launch from the Eighties, in a timeline where the Sinisters got to land on The Grey Lady first, and South Canada had to play catch-up afterwards, which includes <gags> matters like first woman on the Moon.  The NASA 'catch-up' takes the form of projected technologies that we here in This Reality never came close to.  Art!

     It's an impressive moment, all the more so as 99.9% of the viewers have no idea what a Sea Dragon is. 

     "What, Conrad, is a 'Sea Dragon'?" I hear you query.  Well, go on, allow me to explicate.  Art!

     That's the Sea Dragon arraigned against the puny Apollo for your delectation.  The principle underlying the Sea Dragon is that water density and bouyancy  would help support it's massive bulk until launching, whereupon it could put a 500 ton payload into orbit.
     Yeah yeah yeah, all fiction.  Still a man can dream, can't he?

Deep Stuff

It is an established trait amongst humans that they love to get where it's as difficult as possible to be; the tops of mountains, the edge of space and the ocean's abyssal depths.  If it's hard or horrid or both to get there, you'll find Hom. Sap. doing it's best to arrive.

     And thus we arrive at the wreck of the USS Samuel Roberts - excuse me - the USS Samuel B Roberts (just to avoid confusing it with all the other Samuel Roberts out there).  Art!

Intact and afloat

     It's story is a bit of a corrective to those "Ice-cream South Canadian" stories one hears, because it took on a fleet of 23 Japanese ships, including cruisers and battleships, getting so close that the enemy couldn't depress their guns enough to engage.  Inevitably, it was pounded to scrap, but not before crippling one cruiser and badly damaging another, having fired off all it's ammunition.  The crew got that rarest of awards, a Presidential Unit Citation.

     Well, what do you know, the wreck has been found.  It is, to date, the deepest ever shipwreck discovered.  Art!

     You can't just pop over to the Pacific and don a snorkel to visit the wreck, as it's 4.25 miles down, and the pictures above were taken by a remote-control submersible.

     Hmmm looking at the drab grey day outside, Your Humble Scribe is happy to be working from home this week.

Enough Of The Sea, Let's Have Some Sand

Or, back to the BBC's Nature photography exhibition.  Art!

Courtesy Sandesh Kadur

     Matey says this image is called "Ghost of the Mountains" since this is a snow leopard, a creature that lives in the mountains, which means it's hard to come across one.  As you will also note, it blends in wonderfully with the background so if it's having a siesta you might never notice it.  Just don't tread on it's tail.

Whilst On The Theme Of Sand -

I think it's time to whip out another instalment of "The Sea Of Sand", regardless of what you think.  Once again, whose blog is it?

Sarah stood up, removing the Doctor’s hat from her head, causing both men opposite to look surprised.

‘Bloody hell!  Tam, that’s a woman!’ exclaimed the rifleman.  Tam, the driver, pushed his goggles up to reveal incongruously clean eyes and looked Sarah up and down, confirming that the slender “man” in spotless linen clothing was really a woman.

‘Don’t be rude, Sarah.  Introduce yourself,’ prompted the Doctor.

‘Sarah Jane Smith.  Journalist,’ blurted Sarah.

‘Davey, Davey, man, d’you think these two are all tickety-boo?’ asked the driver, in a broad Newcastle accent.  ‘All alone in the middle of the desert, like.’

Davey scratched his matted hair and looked backwards over his shoulder.  The distant brown line on the horizon had become a pronounced darkened smear.

‘We haven’t got time to stand around and argue.  Get in the back, you two.  We’re taking you to Mersa Martuba.’

The rifle didn’t exactly point at either Sarah or the Doctor, but it did emphasise his speech.  The Doctor climbed into the rear of the truck, sitting on several dusty wooden crates that had been stacked there.  He helped Sarah in and even offered a helping hand to Davey, who ignored it.

‘Step on it, Tam.  That storm’s not hanging about,’ he called, sitting by the tailgate and indicating the Doctor with a nod of the head.

‘How’d you get out here, in the middle of nowhere, eh?’

The Doctor gave a sad smile.

‘Our transport was destroyed.  Bombed.’

Technically true.  Almost.

Only One From "The War Illustrated"

Because you can have too much internecine content and we've already had war at sea and on land (even if fictional).  Art!

     This series of photos shows a Mosquito night-fighter getting ready to depart, first with the crew getting a briefing about weather conditions from their squadron's Meteorological officer, then having a chinwag and finally the beast about to depart.  Night-fighter Mozzies were the bete noir of the Luftwaffe, whose own night-fighter crews lived in dread of being picked up by one.  Their own aircraft's performance had been considerable degraded by the addition of lots of external aerials and lots of electronic black boxes internally.  This meant if they were to encounter the exceedingly fast and nimble Mosquito, it would turn them into flying confetti.

Finally -

Conrad is going to have to go through the Naval & Military Press' monthly catalogue to see what enticing bargains catch my eye.  I mean, they take the trouble to send it out every month, it would be rude not to, wouldn't it?  Art!

     Part of the fun is noting which works I already have, because there's always a few, given how large modest my collection of military history is.  And they have a fixed single price for post and packing, soooooo if I were to order 10 books at once that would really be saving money, if you look at it that way ...

* Certain South Canadians will regard this as a win from the get-go.