First Of All -
WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS! This is nothing to do with drugs. Nor is it about those cyborg zombies the Rolling Stones, and nope, you're not going to get a picture of them either, the pikers. Nor is this Intro anything to do with "Rolling Stone" the magazine, mention of which now allows me to use a picture of it. Art!
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| Sorry, no idea who he is |
No, you see, during my Thinking Time whilst walking Edna this morning, I got to wondering and pondering about henges. How many exist in the UK? Where are they? What are they? How were they built?
Here an aside. I was in the Co-Op in Lesser Sodom yesteryon and heard a song on their PA system that was annoyingly familiar. By the same group that did "Pineapple Head" and "Always Take The Weather". Could I remember their name? No I could not! It bugged me all the way home. They are (or were) -
ANYWAY back to henges, and I found a fantastic resource from English Heritage that I'll do a precis of. What? You think Conrad begins and ends with Wikipedia?
Formally, a henge is differentiated from a defensive earthwork because the ditch associated with it is inside the earthwork. Within this there may well be standing stones, or holes where timber posts once stood. They are products of the Neolithic era, being constructed between 3000 and 2000 BC. Art!
This is an aerial shot of Arbor Low Henge, where the standing stones have all fallen over, and it was too much work to get them upright again. Stone circles will persist over millenia, but wooden posts rotted away to nothing, although some have been reconstructed. EH mentioned one such structure at Durrington Walls in Wiltshire, and if Art -
Sorry, can't find an aerial shot of the reconstruction, but here's one that shows where the posts were. Art!
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| With puny humans for scale |
There are over 100 henges across the UK, with at least 170 stone circles or standing stones. The latter are clustered in the North West, as well as Devon and Cornwall. Henges tend to occur in the Midlands and south. Art!
The Cornish Stripple Stones and henge
The whole EH article is detailed and extensive and if Conrad were to precis the rest of it, this Intro would be 5,000 words long and be exclusively about henges. We cannot go without a picture of the most famous one of all - Art!
Stonehenge!
Here is the link, if you want to know more:
Prehistoric Henges and Circles (historicengland.org.uk)
If you do log onto it, best plan to put an hour aside, it's a loooong article and quite scholarly to boot.
Motley! Break out the Jenga, we've got a reconstruction to build!
Not Quite At 'Replicator' Yet
I am referring, of course - obviously! - to the McGuffin from "Star Trek: The Next Generation". You know, the gadget that Captain Picard orders to produce "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot" and Hay Pesto! it magically appears. Art!
Conrad, of course, can't just leave the idea of a replicator alone. Can you get a replicator to create another replicator? Plus, there must be safety restrictions in place. "Replicator, I want two pounds of Semtex plastic explosive, a mercury tilt-fuse, a flask of hydrogen cyanide and two sub-critical pieces of fissile uranium, please" ought to get alarm bells ringing. One imagines that the instruction manual has a list of prohibited objects and substances, akin to the ones seen in airports. Art!
To this -
That's a rather intimidating piece of kit. Yes, they have to use a metal barrel, and they need to obtain ammunition, however, 3D-printers using metal are currently in the pipeline and could be here in a decade. Exciting times ahead.
"Tea, Darjeeling, Hot"
More Korean Kooking
How hilarious is that. Yes, I am going to abandon Edna this afternoon to get the weekly shop done, which means I need to look up a couple more Korean recipes and work out what ingredients are needed. Conrad fancies a crack at this:
Korean chicken burgers
And there's another one that looks interesting:
Prawn and spring onion pancake, and unlike the other recipes I've tried, this is a recipe for one. How abstemious am I*!
"The Sea Of Sand"
We have hopped planets again, back to Earth, where a worried Italian officer has seen evidence that things are awry in the desert, and he's got more on his plate than the British army.
One of the drivers, bringing a Sahariana along the main route amongst the vast supply pyramids, had come across a small, recently-dug graveyard behind a cluster of mud huts. British and Italians buried alongside each other.
Then, more worryingly, smashed remnants of the bizarre vehicles that mad Englishwoman had been ranting about were discovered. A hectare of black glass fragments, surrounding a derelict British tank; a very badly-damaged vehicle amongst the supply stacks; a mostly intact black tankette on the main track.
Dominione frowned deeply when he examined the latter. The British had shot it with armour-piercing bullets, smashing the hull armour, and battering the inside to bits, yet enough remained for him to recognise it definitely wasn't from the Regio Esercito, nor the Wehrmacht, nor the British either. Given the complexity of the vehicle's interior, what might well be an electric-brain - given that, Dominione's skin crawled when he wondered if the whole wretched machine was even the product of human ingenuity.
Sarah Smith, obviously, pointed out the Martian origins of the black tanks. Dominione, sighing, had put her in one of the mud huts with plenty of water and an examination from the medical orderly. He regretted removing her gag, out of gentlemanly regard.
Not quite so cocky now, are you, matey?
"Set In Scotland" Again
More exampled of the lowlands, highlands and islands being used as a backdrop for films. Art!
A shot from "Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets"
Conrad had no idea where this scene was. The Beeb explains that this is the splendidly Scottish-sounding Glenfinnan Viaduct, in Lochaber. That above is the Hogwarts Express, which gives you a sense of scale for the viaduct itself. It's not apparent here, but the bridge is built in a curve, rather than a straight line, for no reason I could find at first Google. Art!
I think we might come back to this bridge, it has an interesting history to it. For one thing, it's made out of unreinforced concrete.
Finally -
Blue skies! Hopefully they stick around for Edna's afternoon/early evening trot. Actually I was going to mention something completely different and now it's flown out of my head. What was it? <thinks> Nope.
Aha! That was it. The South Canadians are currently counting the votes in their Mid-Term Elections, with things apparently a lot tighter than the pundits predicted. I daresay we'll find out more by the end of today, or at least those of us who follow certain Youtube channels will. Yes yes yes, this is Politics, but it's South Canadian politics, which are a circus freakshow compared to how we do it here in This Sceptred Isle.
* Don't answer that question
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