The Prime Of Miss Jean Helmet

I Needed A Way To Wow You

And here we are.  This Intro is another example of how Form Ferrously Follows Function, and since I'm making it up as I go along, we shall see how long I can witter for.

     Conrad has not read the novel, seen the film nor watched the television series, and has no intention of doing so, because I am horrid like that.  Art!

     Hmmmm not convinced about this AI art-generator.

     ANYWAY let us now turn our attention to - HELMETS!

     That was surely no surprise, it's in the title.  Okay, when the nations of Europe and This Sceptred Isle went to war in 1914, they had one thing in common: ineffective headgear.  I doubt I shall get a single image of all the major combatants, so let's prod Art into action.

Men of the British Expeditionary Force 1914

     Note the heads protected by the mighty peaked hat, which could successfully withstand even the heaviest downpour.  Rubbish at protecting the head from things like spall, shrapnel or bullets, mind.  Art!

     This bunch of rascals are French poilus of 1914 vintage, also equipped with a kepi that kept out wind and rain and not much else.  Conrad, because that's how his mind works, notes that nobody here is clean-shaven.  The tash abounds!  Let us transition from the M8s and see if we can find an equivalent with the Teutons.  Art!

     Don't be fooled by the pickelhaube second from port, it was made of leather.

     As the First Unpleasantness became both protracted and relatively static, all parties realised that their chaps in the trenches needed more sturdy headgear, since a piece of fabric or leather had little stopping power against lead-antimony shrapnel balls.  Art!

     Enter the Brodie pattern helmet, hence today's title.  The Teutons used to describe them as 'soup-bowl' helmets, which is a pretty fair jibe.  Originally they weren't issued in sufficient numbers to equip the whole army, and were treated as 'Trench stores'.  Production did get up to speed eventually.  Art!

     

     They must have been of some utility, as Perfidious Albion continued to use them for the whole duration of the Second Unpleasantness.  No, I'm not going into detail about the Czechs in British service in North Africa, go watch the film "Tobruk" for a bit of an education.  The South Canadians adopted it in the First Unpleasantness and were still using it when they joined in the Second one.   Art!

     Being cocky colonials, they tended to wear theirs at a jaunty angle that would have had the sergeant-major down on the neck of whichever hapless Tommy dared to emulate.  That still is from the excellent "They Were Expendable" which is an unsentimental depiction of the early months, when the South Canadians were getting a can of whoop-bottom opened upon them.

     So.  The Brodie helmet, designed to protect the head, neck and shoulders of the wearer.   This is where FFFF comes in, since a thought rose unbidden in the mucky mire of my mental mendaciousness yesteryon: "Haven't I seen something similar to the Brodie in depictions of medieval warfare?"

     Why yes! yes I had.  Art!

     There you go, Form Ferrously Following Fashion.  Bear in mind this is a good five hundred years before trench warfare and shrapnel rounds.  The kettle helmet, as it was known thanks to it's resemblance to a cooking utensil (or soup bowl), was easier and cheaper to make than other types of helmet, nor did it obscure the wearer's vision or hearing, as an enclosed helmet would.  This is a serious issue if there's an opponent looking to turn you into human kebab.  If you were a humble infantryman then it gave protection from cavalry, who would be using a cutting downstroke.  It was also jolly useful in siege warfare.  Art!

     Again, as it would five hundred years later, the kettle helmet protected the head, neck and shoulders from projectiles fired or dropped from above, a common occurrence in siege warfare.

     There you go, not a bad witter for being encapsulated in a single thought.  Well done Conrad!

The Times They Are A-Whirling

Our old washing machine was reliable in that it could be counted on to break down once every two years.  This last time The Mansion had a meeting and decided to go all out and buy a Bosch, which costs more, admittedly, yet which comes with a manufacturer's five year warranty.  So, Wonder Wifey used her superpower of driving a bargain and had a chap not only purchase the old Indesit but take it away.  Art!

     Test run.  Note the amount of froth.  This machine requires half the detergent of the old one.  Teuton technology!  Art?

     It is remarkably quiet in operation, certainly compared to the JUMBO JET IS TAKING OFF level of noise from the old machine when spinning at 1200 r.p.m.  Also, it's clever enough to detect the mass of what you're shovelling into it and will curtly inform you that careless Hom. Sap. has overloaded the machine.  Which, come to think of it, is a bit Skynetty.

Pining For The Fuds

If Conrad, ensconced in his Sekrit Layr, opens a packet of crisps, or tackles food with a knife and fork, Edna is immediately there.  Her dog-nest in the hallway allows her to hear any potential food noises from lounge, kitchen or Conrad's man-cave.  Smart puppy.  Art!

"As if by magic, the Edna appeared"

     She has learned by experience that the long, wistful gaze is a winner.

A Catastrophe!

As you should surely know by now, Conrad refers to and annotates various vlogs put out by "Joe Blogs", who makes economics interesting.  Joe had 1,000 videos up, put out over three years, and 360,000 subscribers.

     Yes, 'had', past tense, because scummy hackers hijacked his Youtube channel.  They have now been ejected, but YT has also removed ALL Joe's content.  He is currently appealing this and rightly so, since this is how he makes his income.   Art!

Joe Blogs - YouTube

     That's the link to his new channel.  If you feel up to doing a good deed today, please Subscribe.  He's had to start from scratch and is restricted in what he can upload.  Art!

"City In The Sky"

We jump from Australia to America, where sinister skullduggery is afoot.

    At the same time, three Americans dressed in camouflage fatigues were observing a delapidated shack on the outskirts of New Orleans, a city battered and depopulated even before the Big Crash.  Most of the city’s tiny population were concentrated towards the port area, and only the odd hermit, Wanderer or criminal lived on the outskirts.

     The three were from the Carlsbad Crew and consisted of Colonel Boyce, Signals Specialist Werner and Boyce’s ADC, Captain Mower.  All three were armed, Boyce carrying an induction pistol and the two others with induction rifles; Mower also carried a hi-spec pair of digital binoculars that he watched the shack with.

     ‘Definitely weird,’ he muttered to the colonel.  ‘I can pick out the Chief on infra-red, but that other guy doesn’t register at all.’

     “That other guy” was apparently a voodoo priest, according to the two other district residents the soldiers had questioned earlier that day.  Solitary and strange, the priest still had visitors who came to see him.  And yeah, one of them was a soldier.

     The Colonel’s initial impulse when Washington called him was to snap angrily at the suggestion that an insider had carried out sabotage; as with the Veep, he’d later called his hasty response into question.  Given that there had been sabotage, a suspicion he’d been careful never to actually state aloud, then – if this bizarre story of alien infiltrators was correct – the saboteur had to be someone who’d gone off-site, and on a regular basis.

     Gosh, whatever could be going on?

     Dog Buns, I made the mistake of reading on from where that extract ends.

Finally -

I am having to keep a weather eye on the skies, as a load of my washing is out on the line, and today seems changeable.  It's still cold, and windy, just not raining yet, so March might end acceptably.   We'll see.  Also, April is my next Dry Month, so today's ale-quaffing will be the last until May.