TREASON!

No, I Am Not Referring To That Single By The Teardrop Explodes

It is a pretty catchy tune, mind.  In fact I'm going to fire up Youtube and play it whilst composing this Intro.

     Here an aside YES ALREADY, if you don't like it the exit door IS THAT WAY.  "The Teardrop Explodes" name came from a caption in a 'Daredevil' comic strip sequential art publication.  Art!

Because teardrops do that.

     Julian Cope, driving force in the band, later branched out and became a respected antiquarian, authoring two extremely well-received works on megalithic sites in This Sceptred Isle and Europe, which is quite the career change.  Art!

Proof I am not raving

     Where were we?  O yes.  Treason.  Sorry, that's not dramatic enough.

TREASON!

     Much better.  You know Conrad, always one to ponder on the darker side of life, and I'd been reading about Ukrainian collaborators fleeing ahead of their countrymen in the Kharkiv oblast.  Those that survive, anyway; quite a few have been assassinated.  "That's what Quislings get," I pithily observed, before wondering a bit more about treason and traitors.

     South Canadians have a touchstone of their own.  This is going to cause me to grit my teeth a lot, so - Conrad will admit that there was an American Revolutionary War, and on the South Canadian side was a general called Benedict Arnold.  Art!

     He rose to become a general by being an excellent officer, and George Washington thought very highly of him, eventually putting him in charge of West Point, a major rebel stronghold.  However, he was not only deeply in debt, he was being pursued vindictively by various political factions amongst the American rebels.  His recently-wed wife had strong Loyalist views (hurray for her!) and it's strongly suspected that she helped push him into conniving with the British, who appeared to think more highly of him than his fellow rebels.  His plot to surrender the fort was uncovered and he fled to the British, who rewarded him by making him a general, whereupon he gleefully fought against his erstwhile comrades.  

     So you are unlikely to get many South Canadian subscribers if you start a Benedict Arnold Appreciation Society.  Art!

A gross calumny!

     We here in the Allotment Of Eden have our own notorious traitors, a gang of five - named "The Cambridge Five) who decided that the Sinister Union was the shining example of wonderfulness and that they would happily betray their native country.  I shan't bother to name any of them, but three of them were forced to flee to the Sinister Union rather than be arrested, which was quite a severe punishment in itself.  After living it up in the fleshpots of London, an apartment (that would be bugged) under constant KGB supervision would be quite a comedown.  Art!

Apartments or prison blocks?  Only you can tell!

     You'll notice that they didn't choose to go live in the Socialist Workers Wonderland until it was that or get arrested.

     Then we come to Vidkun Quisling, whose name is synonymous with 'traitor'.  He was a Nork politician who formed the Nasjonal Samling Party, a toxic far-right group that licked the boots of Nazism.  Most Norwegians wanted nothing to do with either it or him, and by 1940 it was a fringe party.  Art!

"Just add little black tash and - Instant Dictator!"

    SUDDENLY! the Teutons invaded Norway in April of 1940, and by the end of the month Quisling had become head of the government with personal support from Herr Schickelgruber.  However, he was always under the thumb of the Teuton Reichkommissariat and was continually squabbling with them, whilst enacting measures that irked the general Nork population immensely, by trying to copy the Nazi system present in Germany.  Norks are not Teutons and didn't wish to be.

     He was arrested after Germany capitulated and Norway was freed by the Allies.  To judge how much the Norks hated him, after being found guilty of several flavours of treason, he was executed by firing squad, and this was Norway, where you have to work hard to get into trouble.  Art!

Just wait, both of you

Conrad's Found Another BBC Photographic Competition

Doubtless this news will leave you weeping with joy.  The webpage appears to be dedicated to astronomy photographs taken by young people, so let's bring up the first one.  Art!

Courtesy Yang Hanwen and Zhou Zezhen

     This beauty is the Andromeda Galaxy and you are seeing it as it was two and a half million years ago, because it is - you may be ahead of me here - two and a half million light years from Earth.  A very nice shot, lads, and to bring home how Dog Buns! large our universe it, this is the nearest galaxy to our home lens.

"The Sea Of Sand"

It's entirely possible that the bio-vore aliens in this rip-roaring fan-fic are from Andromeda, Conrad cannot remember if he ever defined where 'Homeworld' was.  Anyway, let's crack on.

Carefully contorting himself, the Doctor took off his long overcoat and draped it full-length on the floor of the shelter, before carefully pouring the adhesive syrup over the outer facing of his coat.  He rapidly flipped it over and pressed it into the sands, knowing that he had -

     - a warning siren howled over the complex three times -

      - little time remaining.  Donning the overcoat, now encrusted with sand, the Doctor crept cautiously out of the shelter, concealing a scarf-wrapped canister beneath his coat.  He lay flat on the sand and crawled towards the trans-mat platform, freezing whenever he heard the sound of approaching webbed feet.  

     Luck, darkness and his own improvised sand-camouflage were with him.  Twice aliens stalked nearby on his short but risky journey, yet neither noticed him.  He paused to slither closer to the platform and pitched the canister underhand, a good bowl that brought it to rest against the nearest trans-mat pylon.  The scarf was essential to muffle any sound the metal canister might have made on landing.

     Back across the sands, around the southern side of The Temple, and the Doctor slithered madly until he reached the wooden scaffolding there.  He leapt up it, not bothering about concealment now, because time mattered more than stealth

     Cunning old Doctor!

There Is A Certain Royal Event Taking Place Today ...

Conrad isn't going to cover this as it's all over the media everywhere, most of the BBC's News webpage is devoted to it.   O go on then, just one picture as it is an historic event.  Art!

     It would take ages to go through who these chaps are.  Maybe tomorrow.

     ANYWAY it's a good few months since my subscription to "The Daily Beast" expired, so I wonder how this South Canadian web publication was coping, because they are obsessed with the British monarchy and regularly had items about them.  It's almost as if they regret having been disloyal rebellious subjects because now they don't have a Queen.  Art!

     Yup.  This is just the first two lines of hits that came when I Googled "Daily beast Queen".  As obsessed as ever.

More Bang Per Buck

You should surely recall my item about an ex-Green Beret recounting his tales of unusual foreign weapons he'd used abroad, and the relic Thompson sub-machine gun that was restored to life.

     He also said that the most fun he had was firing a Ruffian ZSU 23-2, which, if we poke Art into wakefullness with this red-hot fork -

     It's a twin-barrelled 23mm anti-aircraft cannon, now mostly used in the ground role.  Unless you are wearing a tank, it's not something you  want to be on the receiving end of.

Finally -

The weather has really cleared up since I took Edna for a trot this morning, so much so that Your Humble Scribe is pondering a constitutional down into Royton, though I shall be wearing a coat, as it's definitely chilly out there.  Autumn is on the way!