Be Sieged

No!  Nothing To Do With Either Of Those Stephen Buckethead Films

Don't expect that topless Playboy model bursting out of a cake, either, you filthy animals.  Instead, have a picture of a battleship.  Art!

     When you stop to think about it, the title makes no sense, as there is no siege in play; the bad guys enter the ship in disguise and then take over, the end.  You might be better advised calling it "Guerilla Warfare Aboard A Battleship" except that would be hard to fit on a poster and cinema hoardings.

     ANYWAY I shall begin by putting up a picture of "Siege", the board game from the Eighties that I recently unboxed and began playing.  Yes, solo.  The great thing about playing solo is that it's impossible to cheat - or, if you do cheat, your opponent instantly knows about it.  Art!

     The Notes inform us that this castle is modelled on a Welsh border castle of the thirteenth century, which was used purely as a military garrison as it was too small to accommodate any local aristocracy and their retinue.  The Rules gradually introduce more kit; I'm now using scaling ladders and the next game will have siege towers, then there are ballista and mines to come.  Great fun!

     Well, it would be if I wasn't so preoccupied in annotating "British Armour In The Normandy Campaign", by John Buckley.  PROFESSOR John Buckley to you.  And reading "Official History of Australia in the War 1914 - 1918 Volume VII", which is 800 pages long and two inches thick.  Plus digging out any mentions of the Light Car Patrols in "Military Operations Egypt And Palestine".  A bookworm nerd's notes are never done.  Art!

Guessing it's a replica as the real thing would be over 100 years old

     ANYWAY back to sieges.  Up to the age of gunpowder, the besiegers would generally attempt to get at the fortifications and physically overthrow them, with devices like those quoted above.  Back in the days of Hellenic antiquity, it was a convention that, were fifty yards of a defensive curtain wall to be undermined, then the defences were doomed, the siege would be over and all concerned could sit down and negotiate a surrender.  Philip of Macedon, a wily bird, once bluffed a besieged polis by merely heaping up overburden to the length of fifty yards; end result = surrendered polis.  Art!

     Any assault on a fortified position full of defenders was always going to be a bloody business, which is why the other option, starving them out, was Plan B.  In this, the attacker surrounded the position, be it a simple fort or a whole city, thus cutting them off from any external supplies.  Whilst there might well be springs or other sources of water inside a city, you can bet there wasn't infinite food.

     You might consider a contemporary situation, where the attackers haven't managed the encirclement.  Art!

     Leaving the 'back door' open means that supplies, which includes rations in addition to ammunition, reinforcements and replacements can be brought in, and the wounded and civilians can be brought out.  Who knew!

     No, this Intro is not going to be about Ukraine.  Rather, we're looking at a far more obscure contemporary conflict that has been increasing in size and scale for a couple of years now: the civil war in Myanmar.  Art!

     Whilst the junta installed by coup has - or had - as it might be called, 'all the gear, no idea', their morale, especially of late, has collapsed.  This has led to large-scale surrenders of government troops, some of whom promptly join the rebels.  The rebels also acquire all that nice hardware, which mean they now have tanks and artillery.  Overall, the junta has lost control of about one-third of Myanmar, and if that Neanderthal Art will get off his over-padded posterior -

     This isn't good.  Still less good was the surrender of almost 3,000 government troops at Llaukkai on the Myanmar-Sino border, after being besieged.  There, a reason for today's title!  No, they couldn't be re-supplied by air; the rebels now have enough MANPADS of sufficient quality to shoot down Myanmar air force aircraft, especially helicopters.

     There's also another reason to mention ancient siege warfare and Llaukkai.  You see, six brigadier-generals were captured there by the rebels, and the junta has resorted to the traditional punishment meted out to commanders who surrendered their citadel too easily or early: the death sentence.

     Good luck imposing it, Junta, as said generals are now far beyond your reach.  So long and besieging you!

Ummmm Nope

Conrad occasionally features items about rock-climbing and mountains, because it's such a sublimely dangerous and un-necessary sport.  I mean, would the world be any better or worse off if nobody climbed another mountain ever again?  Exactly so.  Art!

          The credits say that this appallingly high, steep, sheer rock formation with the verrrry narrow ledge is called the "Thank God Ledge", so-named because the first party to tackle El Capitan, of which it is part, managed to camp and rest before tackling the rest of the 'Half-dome', which is not merely high and steep, it overhangs.  Conrad has a sense of vertigo just looking at the Dog Buns! thing.  Nopenopenopenopenope.

More MegoLego

I just made that name up, and if it becomes accepted into use, I want royalties from Collins.  For Lo! we are back on exorbitantly large Lego constructs, proof that Conrad isn't the only one with entirely too much time on his hands.  Art!

     Largest Lego skeleton, before you ask.  This beast is 20 feet long, although it only stands on two, and is made of 80,000 pieces.  Ol' Spitty didn't show any 'making of' so Conrad is having to guess that it's based on a metal skeleton, which is kind of ironic if you pause to think about it, and that tail looks as if it might be an anchor point for an interior cable.

"City In The Sky"

When last we looked at New Eucla, it was about to encounter a pack of Hunting Spiders, one of this author's more unpleasant post-apocalyptic creations.

Lately, however, prey had failed to come into their hunting grounds in sufficient number and sheer hunger was driving the spider packs into larger sweeps over greater areas of ground.  Lacking any intelligence, they didn’t realise that most of this absence was due to the wandering herds of camel and kangaroo learning to keep away from a certain ill-defined zone (those herd members too stupid to learn ended up as high-grade ashy fertiliser on the Nullarbor Plain).  Ironically these scouts were themselves being scouted, and the unseen scouts were far deadlier than any scavenging arachnids.  They proved this by witnessing the Lithoi’s slow escape and creating a plan.

     One of the causes of that animal migration, Mirkan 93, currently laboured slowly and carefully alongside the rutted camber of the track out of the township, where it’s long, narrow body could fit without any difficulty.  An observer able to look down from the vantage height of a horse would have witnessed what seemed to be a snake of unusual girth for it’s length, a snake with glittering metallic collars and braces and belts, a dark leathery snake with odd little limbs sprouting at three points along it’s belly.  That same observer would have been dead in seconds thanks to the lasing rods that protruded from the free-floating weapons collar mounted on the “snake”.  

     Hmmm a clash of snakes and spiders, two animal species that score high on most people's Cringe Meter.  Bring it on!

Phew, Disaster Narrowly Averted

As you should surely know, tea is a subject close to Conrad's heart and stomach, and he recently travelled into the Sainsbo's in Babylon Lite to get more more more loose-leaf Darjeeling.  Thus I am rather chuffed at seeing a bye-line as below.  Art!

     Also, I know someone who's going to suffer when the Remote Nuclear Detonator gets back from it's 150,000th Victim Service.  Art!

     There are times when Conrad wishes that the American Revolution succeeded.

Finally -

Yes yes yes, it's bitingly cold outside thanks to the windchill.  Good!  A vast improvement from the monochrome palette at dawn, where everything was either grey, black, wet or all three.