The Revenge Of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle

 First Of All - 

WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS!  I'd like to get that in here as a first response, just in case, as I know what fearful perverts you are.

     I know a lot of you, especially the foreign readers - and we do have some - will be rather perplexed at who 'Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle' might be, so let us provide a little clarification.  Art!

<sorrowful sigh>

     O well, whilst it's up.  Yes, we currently still have readers in Ruffia, whom are brave people indeed, since BOOJUM!'s slagging-off of the Witless Wonder Wart would undoubtedly get us five years in prison, were the bumbling numpties of the FSB ever to lay hands on me.  Our audience in the Southern Hemisphere has vanished for the moment, so perhaps I'd better throw in an item or two about kangaroos or that toxic bird that lives in Polite Australia.

     The South Canadians seem to like us, possibly because we use obscure and obsolete words and only mock them in the gentlest of manners*.  The Teu

     ANYWAY let me illustrate Mrs. T-W.  Art! and get it right this time

     No, neither you nor I have been at the raspberry gin.  Yes, the lady in question is a hedgehog, who acts as a launderer for the animals of her neighbourhood.  She is an invention sprung from the fertile mind of one Beatrix Potter, a rather successful author and artist (and farmer), whom had the commercial smarts to manage the merchandise of her characters to become independently wealthy.

     On a bit of a tangent, she was also very well-regarded in the field of Mycology, or the study of fungi, and please note I have avoided any cheap puns here.  Art!

Bea and dog

      Mrs. T-W was based partly on a pet hedgehog that Ol' Bea possessed, a fact probably greeted with some jealousy from any Brits reading this, since we as a nation have a soft spot for the hedgehog.  They are a nocturnal, snuffling, shuffling creature, very slow over rough ground and only really remarkable for their coat of spines.  Art!

Go on, go on; coo over the prickly little pear

     The arrival of tarmac roads and the automobile was not kind to hedgehogs, since they travel over roads to get to the other side, and are frequent victims of passing traffic.  Art!

     This is entirely unofficial, put up by concerned residents.  There have been allusions to The Hedgehog Strikes Back in a series of adverts for cider, where a ten-ton hedgehog wreaks a crushing revenge on motorists.  Art!

     Aptly enough, the cider was 'Woodpecker', country wildlife versus Hom. Sap. hmmm?

     You must be wondering why Your Humble Scribe has been bloviating about small British mammals.  Because, over in Soviet Union 2.0, their citizens are being encouraged to only eat single hedgehogs at a time.  Art!

     Apparently the Ruffian recipe calls for putting a live hedgehog (!) in a hot oven (!!), the better to bake it.  You can get licences and permits from the authorities in Sverdlovsk to allow you to hunt hedgehogs, and various species of rodents.  Why, you'd almost think that there were Ruffians in the provinces finding it hard to make ends meat meet, if they're being advised to dine on wildlife.  Art!

"Rodent dinner on the hoof", thought Vanya

     O tempora, O mores, O hubris.  If you have a long memory, you'll remember that at this time last year, according to the Kremlin, we Brits were so short of food that we were eating -

     Squirrels.

     Tandle Hill Park, the big park at the end of our road, has a large population of grey squirrels.  Good luck trying to catch one, they can run faster than you can, and they can climb trees with alacrity.  Plus, once you've skinned and gutted a squirrel, you'd get about a thimbleful of meat.

     NO!  You'd be very ill-advised to go shooting them with shotguns.  For one, even birdshot would be liable to fragment them to the four corners, and for second, strangers wandering around shooting at things are liable to have OMON or Rosgvardiya shooting back at them.   Art!

"Stuff Conrad," thought Vanya.  "This looks delicious."

"The Dirty Dozen"

Conrad watched this somewhat daft caper film last night, for the first time in decades, and was struck by a few things.  First of all, during a night scene in the depths of the British countryside, we hear crickets.  Er - nope.  'But they might be frogs,' I hear you quibble.  NOPE!  CRICKETS!  Art!

     

     Another thing, everyone shoots from the hip, no nonsense about aiming here, they just spray and pray.  No tracer rounds, either, which is understandable as they'd increase the hazard level to Extremely Dangerous.  You don't see anyone re-loading either, after they empty their magazines, which only hold 30 rounds at the most.  Note that almost every Teuton carries a sub-machine gun, when only one in five or six did in real life.  Art!

     This is the only moment anyone bothers to aim.  Note the Teuton half-track here, which is a beast of a vehicle and really looks (and sounds and moves) like the real thing.  Lee Marvin has to drive it over a crushed Kubelwagen and demolished stone pillar, and the stunt looks dangerous.  Art!

     Conrad suspects this was the real thing.  If it's a mock-up then they did a very good job with it, especially as the props people used a South Canadian M3 half-track done up in Teuton paint and symbols a few minutes earlier.  Art!

    Of course, I could be overthinking this ...

Just To Rub It In A Bit More -

On the back of the Indian Chandrayaa-3 mission to the lunar south pole - sorry, that should read ' - the SUCCESSFUL Chandrayaa-3 mission to the lunar south pole -'  the Indians are now on a bit of a roll, and totally not showing off at all.  Art!

     One wonders where the Ruffian official congratulations are, or if they'll come at all.

     Meanwhile, back in Ruffia, one of their top rocketry and space experts died after eating mushrooms that were either 'poisonous' or 'poisoned', according to which translation you use.  Where's Beatrix Potter when you need her?  Art!

Vitaly Melnikov

     Killing joke here: 'Vitaly' in Russian means 'Life-giving'.  Conrad feels that someone, somewhere, was very very angry about Luna-25 ending up as a steel and silicon smear on the lunar regolith ...

"City In The Sky"

Ace and Alex are about to go EVA and space-walk on Arcology One's hull, to examine one of the gliders the crew had constructed.

Shivering, Ace doubted this – and then realised, with all the clarity of an epiphany, that she hadn’t felt weird or strange or had to crouch down at all on this visit to Arcology One in a stark contrast to her first time here.  You could adapt!

     ‘Stop and get your bearings,’ advised Alex, coming to a halt himself.

     She looked.  Three airlocks breached the hull of the sphere: an eight-foot one big enough for two people to walk into; another at least ten feet by forteen; a circular one ten feet in diameter.  Rails led to the latter two locks, and dollies sat on the rails.  Scattered around were welding equipment, computer diagnostic testing kit, tanked oxygen, CNC lathing and routing beds, mobile trolleys piled high with tools, and odd sheets of dull grey metal.  Alex walked her slowly over to a stack of the metal panels.

     ‘Aluminium alloy, with a steel mesh woven in.  We call it “Arculinium”.  All from the Lunar Mine.’

     He pointed to a portable toilet.

     ‘That’s the fitting room for our suits.  Er - ’ and he blushed.  ‘You need to be measured naked.’

     Ace rolled her eyes.

     ‘What am I, Miss Space Idiot?  I knew that already.  Don’t blush to death!  You go first, I’ll follow once you’re sized-up.’

     When she went in, the laser-web in the measuring booth whizzed up and down, across and back, making the tiny interior look like the world’s smallest disco, before deciding which space-suit fitted her most closely.

     “B15”, flashed a graphic on all four inside walls of the booth.

     Notice how Conrad smoothly glosses over the issue of an Ace without clothing, you slobbering perverts.

Finally -

The clouds have rolled away, so it's time to take Edna for a trot and get my step count up.  Chin chin!

*  Apart from DJ Tango