One Of The Things About Being Conrad -
Is that I am painfully literal, in the sense that, if it's not written down, then it doesn't exist. This is why I have filled countless notebooks with scrawls and scribbles about blog content, or Bookmarked a webpage to come back to later. Thus, whilst during a Thinking Time when walking Edna, I had An Idea about a blog item, except I didn't write anything down and have spent at least a week trying to recall what it was. Art!
A ghostly deserted residence
This has nothing to do with Number 53, Tandle Hill Road, apart from the bit where we walk past it. Conrad, who does actually notice things, and things that you might not, and leap to a credible conclusion, noticed that there is never a car in the driveway, the lights are never on, nobody is ever seen moving about indoors and they don't put the bins out for collection on a Friday. Art!
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| Old photo as the gates are now permanently open |
There is no "For Sale" sign up, either. However, I have noticed that their green bin, under the carport roof, has blown over and not been righted. Also, a portion of the fencing along the side has been hit by a car and dislodged; it's been like that for weeks and not repaired or replaced.
What's going on?
O I thought you'd never ask!
ANYWAY back to "Chicken Licken", which I have decided is what this Intro was going to be about all along. The story's details over time may have changed, yet it has a history going back 2,500 years. The version you may be familiar with is quite the palimpsest of paradoxes, a phrase you probably haven't encountered before today. Art!
More 'chick' than 'chicken' I think you'll agree. The story goes that CL is hit on the head by an acorn, and mistakenly takes this to be the sign that The End Times are upon us. "The sky is falling down!" it shouts to the heavens - bear with me on this, CL's gender is a bit of a grey area - and determines that the King needs to be informed.
HOLD IT RIGHT THERE! We can overlook talking birds with an intellect at least equivalent to that of a five-year old, but really! Promoting archaic monarchical power-structures in the 21st Century? Art!
Did Robespierre die in vain?
Nor is that all. CL meets up with an array of other fowl, whose parents must have been morbid sadists thanks to the nomenclature employed. "Henny Penny", ah yes that's how much you're worth hen, and don't mope so, it could have been a farthing. "Goosey Loosey" because clearly in the benighted times before the 21st century, you could mock a person sentient bird for having incontinence. "Turkey Lurkey" makes them sound like a variety of sinister sex pest. Art!
Entry 557-i25B on the Register
How do all these various fowls make their way to the King? You know, as The End Times are approaching and time is of the essence, for catastrophe to be mitigated if not averted?
They walk.
At what must average a mile per hour*. If this story originated before the existence of the telegraph or wireless, it was still in an era where a horsed courier could travel consistently at twenty miles per hour. Or, being birds, could they not get a flight-capable bird to carry the message, because as the crow flies is guaranteed to be quicker than as the chicken walks. Art!
Henny Penny and Shepherd Leopard play chase.
This whole idiot's crusade comes to an abrupt and pretty grim ending, when they all meet Foxy Loxy, who invites them into his Sekrit Layr, from which none of them emerge. It's a good job the sky wasn't falling down or our vulpine friend might have doomed Planet Earth to it's imminent destruction. Art!
This is James. He has a way with birds.
Portrait Of Despondent Doggo
Your Humble Scribe takes his dog-sitting duties seriously, and today we went for a trot in the light rain that was falling o'er Lesser Sodom, which included walking past Number 53 to make a note of the house number. Art!
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| "Edna!" |
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| "EDNA!" |
She caught sight of a couple of blackbirds perching on a fence, which was hopeful of her, as they instantly flew off. Soz, Edders; you're not dealing with those but lightly endowed with intellect like CL.
Fiat Lux!
Yes yes yes it's Latin, once again, whose blog is it?
Thank you so much. Can we continue? Splendid! Art?
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| As it was |
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| As it is |
Conrad is uncertain why it's still working, and I do have a new lightbulb to swap out if the old one dies, which may not be for a while yet. We shall see!
"City In The Sky"
Ace, Kirwin and the Australians are about to storm, not the gates of Heaven, but the Lithoi baseship, and they're going to do it with - well, read on.
To Ace, this tide of human curiosity meant that the Lithoi had lost
control of the information war already.
Hence that missile platform must be meant to deal with the newly-informed
and critically-aware humans. Captain
Kirwin also understood this, if a little less clearly than Ace.
‘These people here could help us with the balloons,’ she whispered to
her companion.
Ace took stock. There were seven
couriers sitting down to eat. A couple
might be persuaded to help with her mentor’s bizarre decoy strategy. Downing a salted crocodile steak, she stood
up.
‘G’day!’ she breezed, trying for light and amusing.
Silence was her response.
‘Ah – yeah. Right. The Captain and I are going to be trying to
distract the lizards with a collection of balloons whilst Doctor Smith sets
about sabotaging their missile platform.’
More silence.
‘Balloons made from bits of coat-hanger and foil and bin-liner. Decoys, you see.’
Still silence.
‘So the Captain and I were wondering if any of you fancied helping us
make them.’
She cleared her throat in embarrassment and sat down in a hurry.
‘Sure. Why not?’ drawled one of
the nut-brown travelling horsemen, to a chorus of approval.
The Doctor's Machiavellian planning begins to bear fruit.
"The War Illustrated Issue 187"
By the time this edition was published in the UK, it was plainly obvious that the Teuton's strategic position in Occupied France was irretrievably doomed. Not only had the D-Day landings been overwhelmingly successful, the Allies had beaten the Teutons in reinforcements to the theatre, by far, and were now operating under an air umbrella that flew from airfields in France. Art!
This is worth a bit of study. You can see the British infantry laden down with kit, including shovels and picks, all the better to dig in on whatever position they capture. Note that their helmets are all festooned with twigs and branches, the better to break up the Brodie outline and avoid giving them away. A Bren gunner and his Number Two are already in position to lay down suppressing fire; you can discern the Bren gun by the big curved magazine. The chap pointing is either an officer explaining the terrain to a senior NCO, or a senior NCO explaining the terrain to an officer. In the background more infantry sections from the platoon are getting into position, and in the foreground a 'Don R' or Dispatch Rider is hanging around after delivering orders or awaiting further instructions to whiz off on his motorbike. Art!
These "Don R's" are actually <drum roll> Donnas!
The Horror Of Donna
This is Conrad riffing on an ad lib. Art!
This, ladies and gentlemen and those unsure, is John W. Campbell, whom I like to call the 'John Peel of Science Fiction' because his influence lay not in the fiction he wrote, which was mostly forgettable space opera, but in the magazines he edited and the talents he nurtured.
Thus we come to the spine-chilling, horrifying exception to 'mostly': "Who Goes There?" which is the source of a whole tranche of films and games. Art!
It was originally published in 1938, where Ol' John decided to use a pseudonym, being a derivation of his wife's maiden name: Donna Stuart. Thus it was originally credited to Don A. Stuart.
If you haven't read it by now, only do so in well-lit company because it is Dog Buns frightening.
Finally -
And with that final pregnant sentence echoing in your mind, it's time for us to wish you a fond goodbye!
- what was that noise?
Probably nothing.
* Yes, chickens can manage nine miles an hour. FOR SHORT BURSTS ONLY.
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