Search This Blog

Wednesday, 8 February 2023

If I Were To Say "The Secret Service"

You Would No Doubt Think -

 - because you're aware of my recent viewing of "Slow Horses" - that this refers to MI5 or even MI6.

     Incidentally, don't confuse the secret services of Perfidious Albion with the South Canadian Secret Service; note the capitalisation.  The SCSS are primarily known for their protection services as provided to The Prez, and they are not in the least secret, since you can see them clustered around The Prez, eyes looking everywhere but at him.  Art!


     This is an example of a presidential motorcade, except they'd probably include surveillance drones nowadays, in the Electronic Support unit, and some kamikaze ones in the Counter Assault vehicle.  In the past the SCSS would be running alongside Limo One and a decoy Fake one, just to keep the bad guys guessing.

     But of course - obviously! - that's nothing to do with what this Intro is about.  O, as an aside, I did buy the novel "Slow Horses" and have read it.  The television series is pretty close to the novel for the most part except

SPOILER ALERT!

  - there's no mad dash to rescue Hassan Ahmed, the Slow Horses find out where 'Curly' has finally parked - 'Larry' just runs off wanting nothing to do with murder - and notify the police.  As for Curly, he's chasing Hassan with an axe - guns being rather hard to get hold of in This Sceptred Isle - until he's tripped by a tree-root, faceplants and breaks his ankle, badly.  Hassan ends up with the axe.  Art!

So slow they've stopped

     We here in the Sekrit Layr are now on the second season, "Dead Lions", which briefly features the incomparable Phil Davis, British character actor who's been in everything under the sun for the past twenty years.  Art!


     The very embodiment of seediness, hmmmm?

     ANYWAY of course - indisputably! - none of that has to do with what Your Humble Scribe meant by "The Secret Service", because I refer to one of the more bonkers series produced by futurologist Gerry Anderson.  It was a kind of waypoint in his series as it mixed both live action long-shots with puppetry.  Art!


     The premise is that Father Unwin, as seen above, is a vicar working for <ahem> Operation B.I.S.H.O.P. and that's "British Intelligence Service Headquarters Operation Priest".  They deal with terrorism and counter-terrorism, in case you were wondering.  The good father is modelled on and voiced by comedian Stanley Unwin - Art!


     Unwin's comic schtick was speaking a kind of verbal gobbledygook dubbed 'Unwinese', which kind of made sense if you tried hard enough, and sure enough his puppet character did just that.

     Father Unwin'd 'gardener' was a hale and strapping young man called Matthew, except he was also a BISHOP agent.  The series gimmick was that Unwin was in possession of a miniaturing gadget that could shrink Matthew to one-sixth normal height, so he could handily fit into a briefcase carried by Unwin.  Art!


     Conrad also had a paperback novel based on the series, and I think I've found the cover illustration.  Art!


     This one was about South Canadian gangsters being hot on the trail of another South Canadian criminal who'd stolen an incredibly dangerous laser weapon.  O, and I've just remembered that the shrinking process was done via The Minimizer, a McGuffin concealed in a large leather-bound book that I don't think they dared call "The Bible".  Art!


     You may never have heard of it since it only ran for one season.  Lord Grade, the chap responsible for green-lighting Anderson's stuff, wasn't happy about the Unwinese dialogue, since he felt it killed the series' ability to sell to the South Canadian market.  So cherish it whilst ye may.


Validated!

Just a short item here.  One of the vloggers I follow is The Critical Drinker, whom actually did his vlogs as a side-gig, since he was a full-time author of spy thrillers.  However, his drunken curmudgeonly persona has proved a winner and he has a substantial following.

     He also hates EVERYTHING.

     Wellllll not everything, but he is very parsimonious with praise.

     Hence it was great to see that he, too, loved "Everything Everywhere All At Once", definitely my favourite film of last year.  Art!



Lord! Lord Peter's Crossword

Don't fret if you don't like this, we're just over three-quarters done, and it's an item that will put a nice gloss on your intellect.  Herein the clue: "The priest uplifts his voice on high, The choristers make their reply (9)."

     I'll give you the solution, neither of us would have solved it.

     VERSICLES.

      If anything, it sounds like a term from biology.  In reality: a short sentence said or sung by the minister in a church service, to which the congregation gives a response.

      Art!


"The Sea Of Sand" 

Sarah has come up with a solution to the problem of conventional workshop tools not being sufficiently precise.

‘Remember Roger showing us around when we’d just got here?  There was a dentists drill on display.’

          ‘Brilliant!’ grinned the Doctor, shaking Sarah’s hand madly.  He tracked down the depot inventory and read the flimsies until finding what he wanted, then dashed off.

          ‘I suppose he know’s what he’s doing?’ asked Roger.  The seemingly-demented Doctor Smith had proved to be extremely clever and quick, but cooking up a bomb that only existed in pulp magazines – that was a bit of a stretch, even for an imagination that had been stretched considerably already.

          ‘Oh yes,’ replied Sarah with absolute assurance.  ‘If he says he can, then he can.’

         

Detachment Leader Icono deposited the mystery Artefact alongside a Science Support building at the Infiltration Complex, sliding it off the Transport Car via the manipulators. 

          Incredible!  The blue box simply appeared out of nowhere in the path of the interception convoy moving to meet that life-signs trace.  First the desert stretched in front of them, barren,endless and empty, the next – there the big box stood.  The fodder had moved to investigate the new arrival, until they all dropped where they stood under the stun rays.

     Yup, the TARDIS is in entirely the wrong hands.


Take Aim At Feet -

It's a consistent theme on Quora and Youtube that South Canadian businesses try to cut corners in order to save pennies (or cents) and end up costing themselves enormous sums as a consequence of karma.

     Here's one tale.  Original Poster was an engineer, and had 10 years experience in the plant he worked at.  This involved processes, procedures, work-arounds, materials, product, expenses, profit margins, the whole lot.  Art!


     Then he and 4 sales people were sacked, OP suspects because they were the oldest and most experienced staff and thus on the highest wages.

     OP WAS DELIGHTED!  You see, they were enrolled on a Law course here in the UK, and needed to be there for the start of term - 2nd January.  However, they also needed to be present at their job in South Canada on 2nd Jan to qualify for holiday pay and enrolment in the pension plan.  Getting sacked meant 6 months pay, all their holiday pay and automatic enrolment.

     Then, of course - inevitably! - karma struck.  OP had been working for several years on scaling-up an industrial production process, presumably from a proof-of-concept plant to a full-sized industrial one on a commercial scale.  This was a tricky project that needed to be babied lest things go dramatically wrong.

     Manglement assigned an inexperienced junior engineer to the job after OP got fired.  IJE promptly disables a reactor for over a year and caused the cancellation of a $2,000,000 production project.  Art!


     Probably not quite as bad as the above.


Finally -

The weekly shop tonight, better go check out my 'Seoultown Cookbook' for what ingredients are needed.  No dairy or potato products, I would guess.



No comments:

Post a Comment