Bear With Me, I'm Making This One Up As I Go Along
You'll get the allusion about 'eyes' and 'seeing' later on, just wanted to also point out that you're also pronouncing the initials of This Sceptred Isle's multinational giant I.C.I. which used to mean 'Imperial Chemical Industries'.
Oddly enough, it was also the target for a bit of criticism from the artist Barney Bubbles, who did interior work for the band Hawkwind on their "Saga Of Doremi Fasol Latido' album, where he inks in the phrase 'machine logic god' for ICI. Art!
One for all the space-rockers out there.
ANYWAY let us abruptly jumps back in time to the First Unpleasantness, when artillery dominated the battlefield and you were much more likely to hit your target if you could see it. In France and Flanders the ground was mostly flat, with a few small ridges, so you needed an elevated coign of vantage to be able to spot the enemy's rear. After interim measures with Really Tall Ladders - Art!
- what all sides realised they wanted were Observation Balloons. These came as great big sacks of fabric, filled with hydrogen for lightness, and if we can cattle-prod Art awake -
British and French model Teuton version
You can just see in both cases the observation basket underneath the balloon, in which would sit a couple of observers with maps and binoculars, connected to the ground via a telephone. At several thousand feet elevation, they could see far and wide, and consequently call down artillery fire on potential targets.
Things were not especially peachy for the observers in these windbags, for their lighter-than-air status came about courtesy of the extremely flammable hydrogen they were filled with. One round of 'Buckingham' incendiary ammunition and the bag would burn. Art!
The crew did have parachutes to escape with, which were fixed to the basket and were dangerous enough that you'd only use them on pain of death.
It wasn't fun for any pilots attacking these balloons, either, as they were protected by anti-aircraft guns on the ground and occasional standing air patrols, meaning a high risk of low life-expectancy.
Enter Biggles. The author Captain W. E. Johns had served in the RAF in the First Unpleasantness as a pilot, so he knew whereof he wrote. In 1917 young Bigglesworth wasn't yet under the crippling stress of the next year, still being hale and hearty and appreciative of French champagne. Art!
You see, he and his rival Wilks, of 287 Squadron, had both discovered a French estaminet with an incredible supply of wonderful whisky. In the bowdlerised version for Young Adults that I had, all reference to 'whisky' was substituted with 'Lemonade', which made the following events somewhat absurd -
ANYWAY Biggles and Wilks both get into a scuffle outside the estaminet, each grimly determined to get their hands on those crates of spirits, and are rolling in the roadway when Colonel Raymond drives up and catches them.
"Officers! Gentlemen!" he comments, with 'soft but deadly sarcasm' - that bit I remember. As a neutral observer, he suggests a competition: the recently-established Teuton observation balloon at Duneville has been causing the very devil in terms of the accuracy and volume of artillery fire it can direct.
FORCING THE BALLOON DOWN: 10 POINTS
DESTROYING THE BALLOON IN THE AIR: 20 POINTS
CAPTURING THE BALLOON: 100 POINTS
Both Biggles and Wilks make several partly-successful attacks, until Biggles tries a hedge-hopping approach to get close enough and drops a couple of bombs on the ground winch.
Purely by luck, a splinter from his bomb cuts the winch cable and the balloon is carried by the winds over into Allied lines, where it collapses and is captured. The winds are such and Allied lines so close that even if the observation crew pulled the emergency ripcord, they'd still crash behind enemy lines. Art!
There you go, a story about hostile balloons being foiled by the gallant chaps of the air force.
That reminds me of something ...
Kopecking Their Melon
The Kopek, FYI, is a unit of currency in Ruffia. It's such a small denomination I'm not sure if it's used any longer and cannot be bothered to find out.
You see, in addition to the actual blood-and-thunder war going on in Ukraine, there's also an insidious economic war being waged against Peter The Average, which he is not winning.
Here's a few figures put out by the Ruffians themselves. Their oil and gas exports for January 2023 are down by $6 billion compared to last year. Art!
The whole Ruffian GDP was down 35% in January this year, whilst spending had increased by $43 billion on this time last year. This, mind you, is before the cap on refined fuel products and the EU ban on the import of same came in on Sunday last. Projecting forward, at this rate the Ruffians will hit their planned deficit for the whole of 2023 by the end of September.
One wonders, one wonders. These figures are awful enough - but are the Ruffians telling the whole truth? They've been cherry-picking data and putting out complete fiction as statistics, so reality could be even worse.
"No, no - I've just got something in my eye."
"The Sea Of Sand"
You might call this bit "How To Mantle An Atomic Bomb" as the Doctor is getting ready to constructively create chaos.
The Doctor rapidly took over one
of the mud huts, one which had been used by the depot staff to store
tools. He cleared a space on the floor,
laid out a tarpaulin with a rock at each corner, then returned to the crate
containing the x-ray equipment.
‘Now
I miss the sonic screwdriver,’ he grumbled to the night, having to very
carefully lever the lid off the crate.
The delicate equipment within had been wrapped in muslin, then linen,
then restrained with wooden braces and the crate filled with sawdust. A lining of thick foil held the sawdust in
place.
‘Oh. Radium.
Well, we’ll just have to work with that,’ he said, seeing the symbol
stencilled on the outer casing of the equipment and leaving it on the
tarpaulin.
His
next problem came when he snooped around the hut, failing to find any tools
sufficiently small or precise, so he went to find Roger, who was smoking a
cigarette and pointing out constellations to Sarah.
‘I
could get you screwdrivers and an adjustable wrench.’
‘No! That just won’t do! I need precision instruments, not – yes,
Sarah?’
‘Would
a dentist’s stuff be any good?’
‘Yes!
Yes it would!’ enthused her mentor.
There you go, Chekhov's Gun at play. I did warn you.
A Bit Of Literary Feedback
As you may recall, I am currently re-reading "The Short Stories Of Sherlock Homes", which are terrific fun as it's been so long I don't recall the solution to some of them. Or, with some, I recall the solution yet not the set up to the pay-off.
In "The Speckled Band" Holmes holds forth at length on how dangerous a doctor can be when brought to a life of crime, and he mentioned William Palmer. This chap had been a doctor, which he found a dull career, so he took up the exciting career of gambling on horse-races, which ruined him financially. Art!
He had his brother insured, upon which his brother conveniently died. The insurance company, smelling a whole warren of rats, refused to pay up, which they tend to do even if a case is entirely rat-free.
Enter John Cook, another gambler who was rich enough to be able to race horses himself, and a good friend of Palmer's. After winning a substantial amount of prize money, he fell ill, and got steadily worse under Doctor Palmer's tender ministrations.
You can guess the end. Cook's goose was done and he died in mortal agony. Palmer was tried, found guilty of murder and hung, because they didn't mess about in those days. He is also suspected of killing his brother, mother and four of his own children (!), which might make him seem like a monster - yet he was by all accounts a kind and gentle man with his patients.
Hmmmm not if your surname was 'Cook', he wasn't.
Finally -
Right, Conrad needs a scrape and scrub, so that's this dog-and-pony show on the road, after which it'll be time for lunch.
Chin chin!
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