The Reason Is - Treason!

The Question Mark Is Important

Otherwise you might mistake this Intro for something to do with that old Kasabian track, "The Reason Is Treason", which is a pretty fair jig, and well before their recent <ahem> line-up 'problems'.  Which allows me to include a click-baity photograph because that's all the excuse I need.  Art!

     You see, I've been reading the gory details in "The Killers Of the King" about the punishment for treason way back in the late seventeenth century, and let me tell you it was medieval.  To mix temporal metaphors.

     To give you a bit of background, Charles I had been charged by his Parliamentarian gaolers, judges, sundry enemies and others with the offence that he had 'Traitorously and maliciously levied war against the present Parliament and the people therein represented."  When the death sentence for high treason had been passed, several dozen people had signed it and appended their signature rings to the wax upon the document.  Art!

Sixty of 'em

     Chuck had done himself no favours by refusing to accept that anyone could sit in judgement but the Lord Himself, and also feeling that, because he had been locked up, any agreements, negotiations, settlements, contracts or bonds that he made were worthless and would be betrayed the first chance he got.  Art!

     

Chaz, chopped

     Bear in mind that Chuck got beheaded, by an axe-wielding executioner, which was a quick and (it says here) merciful release compared to those who were convicted of petty treason - such as murdering your hubby, for which you would be hung until you died from strangulation.  No long drop and broken neck for bludgeoning the Mister to death with a marble rolling-pin, madam.

     Here an aside.  Note that the two black-clad executioners, one with an axe, the other with a head, have their faces clearly visible to the crowd.  This is poetic licence, executioners wore a mask that covered their head in order to avoid just such identification, and the two who saw off Chuck One were never positively identified.  Art!

     What goes around comes around, and Charles II took the English throne in 1660, after years of poverty-stricken exile on the Continent.  He immediately set in train a kangaroo court intended to provide him with revenge, which would ride roughshod over normal legal precedent and ensure that at least seven of the signatories to his dad's death deed got a touch of fatal death themselves.

     This is where it gets gory, and the squeamish might well to skip the rest of this Intro.

     You see, Chuck Two wanted to punish the regicides in truly awful fashion, so that nobody would ever be tempted to try him for treason.  Those found guilty would be hung, drawn and quartered.  Let us elucidate a little here, whilst also trying to stay SFW.  Art!

     The guilty party would only be hung until they lost consciousness, whereupon they would be cut down.  They were then castrated <eyes water> and the detached articles shown to them - Art!

'Twould be either extra sharp or extra blunt

     Then came the disembowelling with red hot knives and irons, which created a fearful stink.  By the time this was over the victim was dead, at which point their limbs were hacked off to be buried separately.  Art!

A touch of overkill, one feels

     In fact the first victim, one Colonel Harrison, survived with enough strength to smack the executioner one in the kisser, hard, when he came in to make the unkindest cut, which lead to the enraged and embarrassed executioner promptly killing the Colonel.  A bit of a Greek gift.

     And there you have the light and fluffy account of how regicides were dealt with in Early Modern England.  A fascinating subject if you enjoy legalistic gore.

Pallet It Be

One of the things that Conrad has, hopefully convinced you of with a few acerbic illustrations and comments on photographs from "The War Illustrated", is that logistics is one of the backbones of warfare, and especially modern warfare with it's high-intensity consumption of fuel, ammunition, shells and other ordnance.

     Contrarily, it's possible to see how backward the Ruffians are, with their logistics apparently based on principles and practices as modern as, oooh, say 1937.  In all the media footage of them in Ukraine and their own territories, Your Humble Scribe has never seen a single pallet or forklift or truck-mounted derrick.  Art!

    These are bagged charges for artillery shells and artillery shells, and the big spiky things are anti-tank rounds, which retail for about £5,000 each.  As you can see, like all the other stuff here, just lying around.

     These are anti-tank mines, minus their fuses.  Again, just stacked up.  This was definitely done by the Ukrainians, Russians are too lazy and slovenly to bother and just leave them in huge piles.

    Cannon shells, rockets and boxed ammunition stacked up to the ceiling.  All very obviously left behind because it would take hours to load this stuff up in a KAMAZ truck.

     This looks like what the British army would call "Extremely B***** Dangerous" as it's just a giant heap of various ordnance piled up together.  All it takes is Igor Jenkins striking up to light a fag ...

Yes Yes Yes Tragic But -

The BBC has a news item up on a crewmember having fallen from a cruise ship into the waters of the Cromarty Firth whilst it was docked at a pier.  The unfortunate chap was airlifted by helicopter ambulance to Aberdeen Royal Infirmaty, where his condition remains unclear.

     ANYWAY Conrad was intrigued and baffled by the picture the Beeb used as an illustration.  Art!

    What on earth are they? I pondered, although 'what on water' might be more appropriate.  You know Conrad, he cannot leave well alone.  More Googling on 'towers' and 'Cromarty Firth' brought up more illustrations.  Art!

     The verbiage that went with these pictures mentioned 'Windfarm' and things began to make more sense, because recall that first picture that I got an insert from.  Art!

     The yellow 'towers' are the legs for a marine wind-turbine, which will be taken out to sea by tugs - another variant of 'tower' - and placed on the sea bed.  Exactly how?  O I thought you'd never ask.  Art!

     This vessel will also be the one placing the turbine tower onto the marine platform, and doubtless the turbine blades, too.  An interesting application of large-scale marine logistics, if you will.

     Now we all know more than we did five minutes ago, and you're welcome.

"City In The Sky"

The intrepid time-travellers have jumped forward only in time, not space, and are now materialising on what they expect to be a deserted and abandoned Arcology One.  What you expect may not be what you get ...

CHAPTER SIX: Same Old Scene

 There had been warnings from the Doctor before they arrived in 2105.  The sphere might be a gutted derelict, stripped of everything usable and left to die slowly in the heavens.  Or, it might have been stripped internally but left intact, just in case a future refuge was needed by humanity’s survivors.  Then again, it might be completely intact, merely having lost it’s inhabitants.

     What neither she nor the Timelord expected or anticipated, a fourth option, showed proudly on the Tardis scanner: exactly the same perspective as the one they had departed forty years previously, complete with busy agricultural workers and slowly-moving electrical carts.

     ‘Have we really moved forward in time?’ asked Ace.  The Doctor took a moment to reply, focussed  as he was on the monitor’s display.

     ‘Eh?  Of course we have, Ace!  What, you think the Tardis is unreliable?  Forty years, to the second.’

     She stood alongside him and copied his pose exactly.

     ‘Because, you know, it looks dead similar to what we left.’

     Muttering dark imprecations under his breath, the Doctor opened the Tardis doors and they both walked out into the pseudo-daylight of Arcology One.

     TARDIS gone wrong or Ace guessed right?  Tune in later on to find out!

You What?

As you should surely know by now, Conrad doesn't bother to keep up to speed on a lot of pop culture, because it's putrescent piffle that rots the brain.  So, I wonder what on earth this utter guff is all about?  Art!

    I have no idea whom either of them are and don't feel my life is any poorer for this deficiency.  You may enlighten me in the Comments.

Finally -

As you should know equally well by now, Conrad is a frighteningly literal person.  So the following advert made him frown.  Art!

     1)  It's not a potato

     2) It probably costs a ridiculous amount of money*.

     3) A real potato would be of considerably more utility, because you can eat it.

*  £3.87!