Lewis Carroll Would Not Approve

You Know, That Author Chap

Responsible for "Alice In Wonderland" and "Alice Through The Looking Glass" in his spare time, when he wasn't being Charles Dodson.  One has a sneaky feeling that the South Canadians have been reading far too much of him, for reasons I shall shortly go into.  Art!

<Pilot whistles nonchalantly>

     At first glance, this is merely an airliner, cruising at altitude with a complement of merry-making holiday folk off to Florida, revelling modestly with their free cocktails, complete with miniature paper umb

     WRONG!

     You are looking but not seeing.  What passenger airliner comes without windows?  And what is the purpose of all those bits atop the fuselage? or those prongs at the wingtips?  And - why is it trailing a variety of mechanical 'stinger'?

     Ladies, gentlemen and those unsure, please greet 'Looking Glass'.  The title is transferrable, as it's a job title rather than a single aircraft.  The crew, plus anyone in the know about their role, would much rather that they never came into action, since they were responsible for being the airborne command post giving launch orders to the South Canadian ground-based missile forces.  This was a fall-back measure in case the Sinisters got in a disabling first strike on the Minuteman or Titan missile bases.  Art!

Technically the EC-135 Airborne Launch Control Centre

     Sorry if that sounds a bit technical.  The idea behind them was quite simple: at least one of them would be airborne 24/7 to ensure an ability to launch remained, regardless of circumstance.

     Conrad cannot think of any comprehensible reason why the name 'Looking Glass' came to be.  Perhaps - reaching a little - it referred to the 'mirror' role reflecting that of ground-based launch control systems?  Whichever, once again I don't think Ol' Lew is going to be brimming with enthusiasm about this naming convention.  From a daft surreal children's tale to TOTAL NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION is a bit of a step.

    ANYWAY as per usual that's not what I really wanted to talk about.  No, you see there was a South Canadian initiative to create an intercontinental missile that was a cruise version, not a ballistic one.  Art!

     This non-ballistic beast is the SM-62 'Snark' and once again Lewis is rotating in his grave.  From a nonsense poem to an intercontinental cruise missile carrying a 3.8 Mt warhead is a large step.

     Conrad thinks we've mentioned this missile before, but cannot be bothered to check.  The thing is, a picture in flight like that above gives no sense of scale, and I only just came across a video on Youtube that illustrates just how Dog Buns! enormous this puppy was.  Art!

     It needed to be such a monster to be able to cruise to targets in the Sinister Union.  In fact it was so large that it couldn't take off unaided, and needed a brace of Jet-Assisted Take-Off boosters to get it into the air.  These only burned for a few seconds as that's all it took to get up to cruising speed.  Art!

     That white cylinder is the JATO booster.  Once expended they were jettisoned, to presumably follow a ballistic arc of their own downrange.  

     Except not in this film.  Art!

Boosters jettisoned

     There must have been a few people with an attack of the quivers at that point.

     A touch of poetic inversion, in fact: in the poem the Snark is being hunted; here it appears to be doing the hunting itself, in both directions.  Now, that I think Ol' Lew would approve of.


A Touch Of Looking Glass Myself

In the sense that I've been playing Anti-Wordle today, rather than Wordle, which I may have a bang at now that I've mentioned it.  Art!

     I shall have to go look up 5-letter words in my "Longman's Dictionary Key", which ought to list any incredibly obscure ones full of X and Z.  I wonder, I wonder - d'you think they'd permit ZYGON?

Indexercise Continues

It took five-and-a-half laundry baskets to empty the second layer of books in the Book Cave this evening, and they're big, hardback tomes that weigh plenty.  The problem now will be to store them temporarily once they've been re-indexed, because there's the third layer to hoik down and re-index.  Art!

Second layer revealed

Hopefully no spiders

     Yeah, they look even bigger and heavier.  In fact they are bigger and heavier.

     Once I get them back up there, I think the need will be to take a photo of each layer, so I know what's where.  There's still a truckle-box of Ospreys under the bed to list, as well ...

     O and we're now up to three duplicates, which is not bad considering how old age and gin have affected my cognition and memory.

If You Made It Up People Would Shake Their Head

Conrad is minded of that scene in "Monty Python And The Holy Grail" where the tumbril comes around to pick up the dead - probably not done with proper hygiene procedures and sterile tools, forsooth - and you get one chap insisting - Art!

     Your Humble Scribe got that feeling in spades on seeing a menu heading on the feed.  Art!

     Not to rub salt, lemon juice and sriracha into the wound, but - the Black Sea Fleet has scuttled off to other ports from Sevastopol, lest itself indeed be scuttled.  The BSF HQ staff are ash and vapour.  The Ruffians in the Donbas have run out of body bags.  The Ukes are shortly to get ATACMS and longly to get F-16s.  Good lord aloft, imagine if things were getting worse!

"City In The Sky"

The Doctor has made an error of judgement, or calculation, or both.  Nothing critical, just that he and his companions need to adjust their perspective.

CHAPTER EIGHT: Country Life

 The Doctor chose to land just over the state border, in Western Australia.  Not for any political reason; the almost-abandoned town – really only a hamlet – of Eucla sat on that side of the state line, and was the only settlement near the coast.  He recalled that maybe fifty people lived there, serving the passing trade of the Eyre Highway.

     Correction, he realised, looking at the scanner: he had materialised on a slight rise amidst a collection of sprawling sand dunes, about half a kilometre back from the seashore.  Low shrubs and stunted trees graced the gently rolling landscape, where tracks and paths darted in between a small town of strangely-constructed buildings, seemingly more glass than anything else.  People were bustling about on their business, carrying long poles that heavy nettings dangled from, glinting silver as sunlight caught the scales of captured fish; a cart pulled by two draught horses went trotting by, carrying a cargo of cut wood, the driver looking astonished over his shoulder at the Tardis’s sudden appearance.  Other people, including many children busy mending nets, looked up when the strident tones of the otherwordly timeship’s arrival came to them.

     Ever one to make an entrance, hmmm?  Conrad unsure if that chapter title was a pun on the Roxy Music album.  I can be amusing like that, and after all the whole story was inspired by a Who track.

Finally -

Better log on and see what the schedule is for next week.  Predicting an 09:00 - 17:00 one.

     And with that, we are done!