Like A Troubled Bridge Over Water

No!  That Is Exactly How It Should Be

Let me dispel the confusion you are doubtless feeling.  Today's title is nothing to do with that song by Slimey & Gargleflunk (sp?) that you are o-so-obviously referring to.  Conrad has nothing against the song, he quite likes it, although the two troubadours have come in for a fair amount of Little Musical Critiques in their time.  They probably wince when they hear the word 'Conrad'.  Art!

O that's how their names are spelled.

     Here an aside.  Conrad cannot resist poking a little musical critique at one lyric, which warbles

"Like a bridge over troubled water

I will lay me down"

     Errr - no, chaps, that's not how the architecture of a bridge works.  If it's lying in the water something's gone badly wrong.  Art!

     Take this example.  It's a 'bridge' (more probably a barrage) being built by the Ruffians at Antonivka, because the Ukrainians have HIMARS'd the actual bridge into a concrete doily.  Unlike a proper pontoon bridge there are no gaps between the barges to allow the passage of river water.  If it gets completed - a very large and ugly "IF" - then the Dnepro's current will immediately push it against the road bridge piers, which were never constructed with that kind of stress in mind.  The river water will also back up on the upstream side of the barrage, perhaps to the extent of overturning barges.

     There, S & G, do you see why lying a bridge down is bad news?

     Where were we?  O yes.  Conrad, lacking inspiration from Terpsichore or any of her sisters, looked up a random entry in his "Brewer's" and was rewarded with "Bridge Of Sighs".  Art!

     Let me paraphrase a little.  The bridge above runs from the state prisons of Venice to the palace of the Doge - the overall big cheese in charge of the city.  Prisoners were led over this bridge from the hall of judgement to be executed, which is where the name comes from.

     But wait!  There is another Bridge Of Sighs at Saint John's College in Cambridge, so-called because it resembles the original.  Art!

     Conrad cannot see any resemblance beyond it being a bridge, not even by closing one eye and squinting.  We're still not done, because you can bet if Cambridge has an artefact then Oxford will try to get in on the action.  Art!

     This is at the Oxford Royale Academy.  Close but no cigar, definitely one up on Cambridge even if it lacks a river.  Going back in a loop to sighs and sorrowfulness, Waterloo Bridge in London was known as the Bridge Of Sighs back when it was a spot for suicides to end it all.  There are volunteer patrols to counter that sort of thing now.

     Motley!  Get out the cards, for I feel like a game.  How about pontoon?

Conrad Takes His Frothing Nitric Ire For A Walk

Just because I haven't been scorching teh Interwebz with my anger doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  O no.  I've been saving up these Codeword examples of how the compilers push boundaries and I expect you to be as angry as I am.  Because if not, there's always the Remote Nuclear Detonator ...

"INCUBI":  You see?  This, lest you be unaware, is the plural of INCUBUS and one presumes you'd only ever see it's use in old religious sermons of the fifteenth century.  Not going to go into much detail, just to explain that the incubus was a demon that had his way with sleeping women.  Art!

As saucy as you're going to get

"JINX":  YOU WHAT!  A four-letter word that ends in "X"?  How rare are they?  Hmmmm well there are a few - enough of that!  How dare the!  As you know the word means an unlucky person or object.  It derives from Latin <hack spit> inevitably, from 'Jynx', the genus name of a bird that comes from the Greek <hack spit hack spit> 'Iunx', or the wryneck, a bird usied in magic.  Art!

"TEEM":  As in the sense of being abundant.  EXCEPT it normally only gets used in TEEMING.  This one comes from Old English <cheers loudly> 'Teman' which means 'To produce offspring', probably after one of those incubi made a house call.  Art!

Hmmm - teeming with Teem

This Will Make Sense On Facebook

Back To Picturesque

These images I am posting from the BBC's "Countryfile" page are the finalists in a competition to see whom gets their photograph on the Countryfile calendar.  So pop along and vote, the competition ends quite soon.  Art!

"Flower Power" by William Brown

     Not a lot I can say about this one that isn't blatantly obvious.  Flowers.  In a field.  Under blue skies.  Yes yes yes, they may well accord with the theme of "Wild and Free" but can you eat them?  No you cannot.  I close my case.

"The Sea Of Sand" Is Back On The Menu

I seem to be focussing rather on food, don't I?  ANYWAY when last we were here, aliens were emerging from a long hibernation in their complex at Makin Al-Jinni, with The Doctor taking a long, searching look at them.

A weaving, snaking proboscis easily as long as the creature's arms lay beneath and between the eyes.  Their skin seemed leathery and dull, in varying shades of red, shading to brown and purple.

     Once there were twenty-seven creatures out in the open, they began to perform exercises in unison, standing alongside their recent cells.

     "Monsters!" gurgled Albert.  "Monsters!"

     "Nonsense!" chided The Doctor.  "Aliens."

     "What are they doing?  It looks like the warm-up before a rugby match," commented Templeman, fascinated despite himself.  He mentally noted that Doctor Smith's bizarre, not to say impossible, hypothesis, had been proven absolutely correct.

      "I think you're partly right, Professor,  Those creatures have been in - let us say hibernation - for several millenia.  Being inert for that long must cause some muscle kinks that need to be stretched out."

     Various clues were falling into place for the Doctor.  To be really certain he'd have to get up close to one of the aliens.

     "What are they?  And how did they get here?" asked Albert, his tongue finally unsticking.

     The Doctor screwed up his eyes and thought, hard.

     An apt point to take a break.  Of course these aliens are here with evil intent, because if this story was all fluffy bunnies and rainbows, it would end at the next paragraph.

More Of Dot's Doing

Thanks to Dot Sayers we are all getting an education in ecclesiastical accoutrements.  I think the reason I've not encountered these words in the ghost stories of M.R. James is because he wrote about Protestant churches and the story "The Undignified Melodrama Of The Bone Of Contention" is set in a Catholic church.  Next we have: THURIFER.  Let me consult my Collins Concise.  Art!

     This chap is a thurifer, which is the name given to the chap swinging the THURIBLE, another name for a censer, which contains burning incense.  Presumable agitating the censer helps to both spread the smell and keep the incense burning.

From Sublime To Malign

I refer, of course - obviously! - to that list of post-apocalyptic films as put up by Culture Vultures.  In an aside, I watched the last episode of "Sweet Tooth" yesteryon without realising it was the last one - caught out <sad face>.

     Number 23 was "The Book Of Eli" which I've seen so we'll skip that one.

     Number 22 is "Carriers" which I've not seen.  It concerns the regulatory small group of survivors, adrift in the wilderness, in a world devastated by plague.  Art!

     Of course things go horribly wrong, with mistrust and suspicion and each other becoming the bigger threat.  It seems worth a watch, you know.

AND WITH THAT WE ARE DONE!