Roundabouts

I Did Kind Of Promise This In Yesteryon's Facebook Post

Your Humble Scribe implied that he was referring to that old saw about "Swings and roundabouts", which <hastily acquires "Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable"> quotes "What you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts", an oblique reference to the law of averages, in that you may lose in one enterprise but make up for it with success in another.  Art!

     "Roundabout" is the opening track on "Fragile" and it comes with Jon Anderson's utterly incomprehensible lyrics.

"In and around the lake,

Mountains come out of the sky and they stand there"

     Do they indeed, Jon.  I'll have a pint of whatever he's been drinking, thanks.

     ANYWAY on to roundabouts, which the Brewer's has being: "A large revolving platform at fairs, circuses and the like, with horses or similar mounts, which go round and round and are ridden by passengers to the sound of music.  In certain uncouth lands beyond the bounds of Perfidious Albion they are mistakenly called 'carousels'."

     I think at this point we need to cattle-prod Art into consciousness.

     <loud crackling noise accompanied by the smell of scorching>

Patently not for adults

     Conrad cannot see the utility of sitting and going round in circles accompanied by cheesy music*.  There was also this - Art! O stop whinging and put Sudocrem on it

     This was not just any old roundabout, it was <drum roll> "The Magic Roundabout", a stop-motion program only about 5 minutes long that was, supposedly, for kids.  In fact the sly wit in the scripts entertained adults, too.  Here is where it gets complicated.  It was adapted from a French version, with all-new scripts and characters created by Eric Thompson (dad to Emma Thompson) and proved to be so successful that it ran for 12 years and over 400 episodes.

     ANYWAY let us return to the more mundane roundabout, which graces many play areas here in This Sceptred Isle.  Art!

"The eagle's dancing wings create as weather spins out of hand"

     As you can see, it sits very close to the ground in order that no digits or limbs are trapped beneath it.  Now, you might well expect that these rotating devices are limited in the risk they pose, because small children cannot propel it at any great speed, right?

     WRONG!

     Some five years ago there was a brief craze for using the rear (powered) wheel of a moped or motorbike to whiz the roundabout around at dangerous speeds.  This caused those unfortunate idiots on the roundabout at the time to suffer the kind of injuries experienced by pilots using an ejection seat.  The ingenuity of Hom. Sap. knows no limits, does it?  Art!

     Note that roundabouts are now designed and constructed so as to be flush to the ground.  Try revving your motorbike on that, matey.  Art!

"I'll be the roundabout
The words will make you  out 'n' out"

     Hey, take it up with Jon Anderson, I didn't write the lyri

     ANYWAY this here is a roundabout, a form of passive traffic control much seen and used in This Sceptred Isle, to the consternation of visitors from South Canada, where the very idea of a roundabout is foreign and unseemly.  They'd probably call it a 'Traffic Carousel' to boot.

     The operating principle is quite simple: stick to the outside lane if you're turning off before the last exit, use the inner lane if you intend to leave at the last exit.  Give way to traffic coming from your right.  And DO NOT DRIVE DIRECTLY INTO THE ROUNDABOUT.  That last one's important.  Art!

Absence of traffic and long shadows imply early morning

I mean, how can you miss something that big in your direct line of vision?

"Call it morning driving through the sound ..."

     Conrad is guessing that the sloped roundabout wall helped get him airborne as a variety of stone launching-ramp.

     For your information, this happened in Poland.  The car crash-landed in the graveyard of a nearby church <insert bad joke here> and caught fire <insert 2nd bad joke here> with the driver trapped inside <insert 3rd bad joke here>.

     The kicker is, the fire-brigade arrived in time to cut him free and he walked away with a few scratches.  I think the Lord above was telling him, in a roundabout way, not to drink and drive (yes he was many times over the limit).

Pay Attention!  There Will Be A Test Later

Or not.  Conrad likes to bring a little tension into your lives.  

     "Depleted uranium shells" is going to be a hot topic for a week when South Canada supplies them to the Ukrainians; expect lots of ill-informed squawking from both ignorant pundits and offended Ruffians.  Here at BOOJUM! we will explicate just what these things are.  Art!

     These infernal devices were invented by Perfidious Albion in the Second Unpleasantness.  The idea was that the full-bore width of a gun barrel was used to propel a Long Rod Penetrator, clad in a sabot, down the barrel.  This meant a lot of surface area to exert propulsive forces upon.  When the sabot-clad round emerged from the barrel, the sabot fell apart and away, and the LRP sped on it's way to the target, to expend a tremendous muzzle velocity on a very small area when it hit.

    What you see above is the shell and propellant.  At the 'neck' of the shell is the sabot ring.  Art!

     As you can see, this occupies precisely the width of the barrel.  From the outside it rather resembles a knitting needle inserted into a cotton reel.  Art!

     The LRP (jargon probably decades out of date) is the long, thin  projectile with stabilising fins at the far end.  Art!

     The uranium is depleted, so it's not radioactive.  As a heavy metal, it is, of course - obviously! - highly toxic, which is going to be the least of your worries as it comes in through your tank's hull at Mach 25.

Okay, Okay, So I Weakened

Yesteryon I posted a picture of A Mysterious Something taken from one of "The Daily Beast"'s sidebar adverts, which none of you have bothered to identify.  Art!

     So, I did indeed click on it to find out which particular piece of tat they were trying to flog, and found this:

   They even provide a head-on shot of the device.  Art!

Just To Rub In The Salt And Lemon Juice A Little More

I have annotated a couple of Joe Blog's vlogs about the Ruffian economy, which I might parade at a later date, you lucky people.  In the meantime let me announce that the ruble is now standing (or, more correctly, falling) at 96.40 to the dollar.  So their interest rate might be hiked again in a couple of weeks because Bloaty Gas Tout doesn't like seeing it go over 100 rubles to the dollar.

"City In The Sky"

Ace and Alex have donned a pair of aging workhorse spacesuits and are about to EVA.

     ‘We’re ready to go.  I need to inform the Comms people that I’m going out of the Personnel Airlock and then we can go EVA.’

     Seconds later he directed them to the eight-foot airlock.  A locked box with a number pad stood to one side of the doors, which Alex dialled open, to remove a physical lock similar to an Allen key.  He keyed a permission panel next to the lock before palming the big green “OPEN” button.  They shuffled inside, Ace feeling the strange slow tug of her magnetic boots, and a churning in her stomach that might be nerves or their position in relation to the sphere’s rotation. 

     When the external doors opened, she felt a touch of terrifying vertigo as the distant, sparse heavens beyond swooped around.  Alex must have felt a similar touch of fear, hanging back from the opening before slowly shuffling outside, onto the outer hull.

     ‘Most of the external hull is steel, so your boots should grip.  There are tether points you can use if you’re worried,’ said the suit radio.  Being worried, Ace kept her eyes on the vast curving flank of the rotating sphere and moved from tether point to tether point.

     Despite this, she was still fully aware of the Earth, the Moon and the Sun all dancing around in a circular ballet over her head, or under her head.  The stars themselves rotated in a long slow pattern. Like being on the biggest, most expensive fairground ride ever.  Taking a deep breath, she looked down at her home planet.

Finally -

Off to do laundry and get stew on the go.  My rock and roll lifestyle, the envy of millions (it says here).

*  I bet there's not a single bagpipe or harpsichord to be heard.