What Will Undoubtedly Spring To Your Mind (And Lips)
Is the old M10 motorway. This was a short motorway constructed and opened for business in 1959, covering only a short distance as motorways go. Art!
I think you can see why I led with a Giant Tentacle Monster instead of the M10. Motorways are inherently boring, it's in their nature to provide the blandest and least interesting route from A to B. The last thing you want on your way to the office of a Monday morning is a terrifying adventure.
Well, that might have occurred to you, gentle reader. To a person like Conrad, who knows all about TANK, another item immediately springs to mind. Art!
Art, you bafune! When I said "Wolverine" I meant - try again and get it right. Go on!
This, ladies and gentlemen and those avoiding either, is an "M10 Gun Motor Carriage", more colloquially known as a 'Tank Destroyer'. It was the product of South Canadian research and development, and despite my crack above, it is most determinedly NOT a tank. Yes yes yes, it looks like one. Chalk in solution looks like milk but you can't make omelette with it, can you? Art!
You will notice that the turret is open, so the crew can get lots of lovely fresh air. The side armour is also sloped, to get a bit of ballistic protection. Overall it wasn't heavily armoured, the idea being it was better able to 'shoot and scoot', because it certainly wasn't designed to duke it out with tanks.
The South Canadian iteration came armed with a 3" gun, which was better at potting Teuton armour than the humble 75 mm gun on a Sherman, by about 30%, according to Professor John Buckley. The British decided to mount their 17 pounder anti-tank gun on the M10, and called it the "Achilles" because someone in the War Ministry was a Classics scholar. Art!
Muzzle brake and counterweight give it away
Then there is the contemporary South Canadian M10, which is named "Booker", apparently. Presumably after a South Canadian general from a previous conflict. It's appearance has confused a lot of people, which is understandable because unless you know what it's role is, then you may see it as TANK. Art!
Would you like it to roll over your foot/car/house? <delete where applicable> No, you would not, because at 42 tons it ain't the 'light tank' people are calling it. This puppy is intended to support infantry by delivering bad news to enemy troops, trenches, fortifications and passing vehicles. It is not intended to take on enemy armour toe-to-toe.
I'm glad we got that cleared up.
There are Bluetooth headphones that go by the name 'M10' but as that's even more boring than a motorway, we'll not bother with them.
The Curse Of Cocoa
Conrad, as we all know by now, is not a big fan of chocolate things, still less chocolate-flavoured things, and he still looks back with muted horror on the time he bought 4 mini-Christmas puddings from Asda, which turned out to be chocolate flavoured ones.
HERESY!
They went in the bin pronto.
This has not stopped retailers from trying to poison me with their disgusting wares, notably a packet of Hot Cross Buns, that I scooped up in haste, thinking that they were nothing more than Hot Cross Bun flavoured.
O dear me no. Art!
They certainly smell powerfully of oranges when the wrapper is breached, and they also taste strongly of chocolate, or at least the one I sampled did.
That's it. Either Degsy eats them or they will grace the bin quick smart.
WHOSE IDEA WERE CHOCOLATE & ORANGE HOT CROSS BUNS!
Further To Pens
There used to be a 'Pen Shop' on King Street in Manchester, which Conrad never went inside, because that would mean venturing into Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell and enduring the zombie hordes, which other folks try to tell me are more properly called 'shoppers'. As if!
It doesn't look as if I'll ever get the chance. Art!
They seem to have become a victim of Covid and insufficient foot traffic. I bet the rents on King Street were prohibitive, too. There is an internet shop, which pretends they still have a bricks-and-mortar presence. Art!
They advertise a few of their more refined pens, for distinguished writers or potential people of letters. Art!
£440 - and it's a rollerball! Much better - a fountain pen at only £155
One day soon after payday, perhaps perhaps .....**
"City In The Sky"
The previously quite-a-bottomhole Barclay has nobly stepped forth to redeem himself after putting the whole of Arc One at risk.
He waved broadly to the spacecraft, which
began a slow acceleration forward using only attitude control jets. Then his attention was devoted entirely to
the uneven surface of the giant rock and a scramble to reach his destination,
across pits and fissures that needed leaping whilst also trying not to reach
escape velocity.
Faint vibrations ran up his legs, puzzling until he realised Ace must be
drilling into the rock up ahead. In fact
she had finished by the time he reached a small cloud of debris drifting ahead
of the parent rock, debris that surrounded a shallow crater with a deep
vertical centre. Narrower than the
booster, the Warden judged. He activated
the radio link.
‘Right. Time to use that fourth
booster. Ace, you need to extract it
from the service bin and clamp it physically against Pangolin with one of the
arms – don’t just hold it unsecured or it’ll tear the arm off. Don’t forget once it starts to burn you can’t
stop it.’
He killed the link instantly afterwards, not wanting to hear any last
broadcasts. Then he set to enlarging the
borehole with his drill, until the metallic lining of the booster fitted snugly
inside. Peeling the three protective
covers free, he unwrapped the friction igniter and pulled sharply, then headed
back along the rock at speed, fast as he dared.
Even so, the purple afterglare of the booster igniting danced in his
vision for minutes afterwards.
How to arrange for the heavens to fall. Yes, this has unforeseen consequences for New Eucla and the Doctor's party of resistance fighters.
"The War Illustrated"
The Allies are now moving inland from the invasion beaches post-D Day, and the higher levels of the Wehrmacht might be getting a hint that Normandy is the sole beach-head, just the merest smidgeon of enlightenment. Art!
This is one of their montage spreads across two pages. The troops you see marching are probably British or Canadian, as the vehicle towing an anti-tank gun is the British Universal (or Bren Gun) Carrier. I say 'probably' because the helmets worn don't have that 'soup-bowl' vibe and might be the South Canadian pot instead. Note the lack of concern about air attack, with all the marching soldiers close together, and no camouflage on the carrier. Art!
This is the same town, St. Saveur, at ground-level and with a worms-eye view of the sheer destruction wrought upon the hapless polity and it's citizens. The Teutons were perfectly happy to destroy any number of French villages, towns and cities, because it wasn't Germany that was being fought over. The Free French and FFI had a score to settle as a result of this.
Finally -
I was looking for a short item to boost the word count a little to hit 1,300+ because that's how wildly ambitious I am, and - what's this I noticed in the feed? Art!
I may pursue this after closing off today's BOOJUM! That island in the background seems to be the Japanese island established to enable submarine coal mining to take place, being abandoned when the coal seams ran out. Kagashima Island? perhaps, if my memory is not playing tricks on me.
* There weren't really, it just sounded good
** That squeaking noise is my anguished wallet.
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