Greetings, Pilgrims!
First of all, I did think it was taking rather longer than it ought to in order to attain the Word Count Total of 1,200 words at minimum. This was the total when I was adding in an excerpt from my fan-fiction of about 200 words on top of the initial aim of 1,000 words. Everybody loved the excerpt because nobody complained about it, which is how I'm interpreting things. So the revised total sans excerpt should have been 1,000 words, not 1,200.
Well, nobody complained about it. Art!
O what is happening! I hear you witter. Leading into the Intro without a tangential blather first? Art!
Well done FB mods, it's only taken you 13 years to discover BOOJUM!s modus operandi. I did appeal against their decision and nobody's gotten back to me yet. Gosh! Isn't life full of little surprises.
ANYWAY what do I mean by 'Timed Travel'? Simply that TLG, which I am now reading, has definitively moved on from the pre-war novels preceding it, since it came out in 1953 and reflects that. For one thing, Ol' Phil watches boxing on a television set. For another, a minor character relates a military anecdote about their time at the front line in lots of snow, so that was either Italy or the Ardennes. Whichever, the Second Unpleasantness has been and gone. No mention of the Korean Unpleasantness so far. Art!
This is Santa Monica in 1940. Why does that matter? Because Raymond Chandler didn't want to rock the boat too much when describing this famously corrupt area, where everyone was on the take. So, he dubbed it 'Bay City' instead. As an example, in "Farewell, My Lovely" the gangster Burnette buys the mayor for $30,000. Not to run Bay City, simply to ensure his water taxi service that runs to the floating casinos beyond the three-mile limit are not troubled by police or anyone else.
Let us continue with the deconstruction of the temple.
ROLLS-ROYCE SILVER WRAITH: Yes, a car. Being RR, it will have been large and very expensive. Art!
That's a 1952 iteration, yours today for only £64,000. They seem to hold their market value, don't they? Phil makes the acquaintance of Terry when the latter is unable to get in or out of his ex's RRSW. Alcohol was involved.
JOWETT JUPITER: I had never heard of this vehicle before, so author and audience alike are going to be making a discovery. Art!
The epitome of a sporty little number, hmmm? The blurb under the picture for this one is:
There were only 900 of these made, which is why they're rare. I shan't go into detail as cars are Not My Thing, merely to note that the car used a sports-spec engine with a commercial chassis, and it could get up to 86 m.p.h. and that, like the RRSW, it hailed from This Sceptred Isle.
SPUMONI: From the context, this is food, though I wouldn't hurry to eat something pronounced 'Spew-'in the first syllable. Once again I have no idea what it is in real life, so let us explore. Art!
From the accompanying blurb, this is an Italian-American ice cream dessert. Go on then, taunt me with what I cannot have. Unless there's a sugar-free recipe? Hmmm I feel a recipe trawl coming on.
JUDAS WINDOW: I hadn't heard of this particular item, either. Doing a quick Google brought up - O irony of ironies! - what they called a famous 'locked room mystery' by John Dickson Carr. Art!
That's his pseudonym
A bit of a red herring. Doing a bit more digging, and resisting the urge to read about TJW, I discovered that a 'Judas Window' is a very small window let into a larger door, for the purpose of looking into (or less frequently out of) a room. Art!
It often comes with a movable cover to restrict access. So now we know.
Thinking on, Conrad realises he's read or heard an account of a fake death in Mexico. Mexico, you see, is where Terry, Phil's absconding mate, ends up dead. Or does he? I may find out in the next 200 pages.
If You Are Feeling Generous
Or even if not, and you merely feel guilty at having lots of money in the bank making lots more money in the bank, let me acquaint you with a fund-raiser promoted by the Twitter user "Seveer of the 95th Rifles".
Buymeacoffee.com/atlasglobalaid
atlasglobalaid.org Please comment when you donate with 'car' or 'vehicle'
Sevvy is looking to purchase a car for medevac work in Ukraine. Art!
Don't ask me what kind it is, I already told you cars are Not My Thing. A 4x4 that can off-road?
Because I am feeling generous, a donation will keep you out of the organ banks when I take over. The uranium mines, however, are still an option.
A Little Inter-Service Rivalry
Twitter is proving to be a source of content generation today. I came across this Tweet and made a copy so I could post it on the blog. Art!
The implication being that the Army, Navy and Marines are all far too gung-ho and physical, whilst the Brylcreem Boys are a lot more civilised.
This made me recollect the amusing anecdote from our South Canadian cousins about the difference between their armed forces. To wit:
U S Army - The Army would secure a building by locking all doors, put bars on the windows, and establish one entrance with a guard post and armed guards and carefully check the IDs of all personnel who try to enter.
U S Navy - The Navy would secure a building by swabbing all decks, turn off all coffee pots, turn off all lights, lock all office doors, and lock all entrances as they leave the building.
U S Marines - The Marines would secure a building by assaulting it with a combined arms team, breaking into all interior rooms, shooting all resistance, and planting demolition charges as they evacuate in an orderly manner. They would then level the building to prevent further enemy use.
U S Air Force - The Air Force would secure a building by having the Base Contracting Officer negotiate a three-year lease with a option to purchase.
It seems the fly-boys are regarded in exactly the same manner on both sides of The Pond.
Talking Of Fly-Boys -
Again thanks to Twitter, and whoever put up this short video clip of a monster aircraft coming in to land. Art!
There's nothing to scale it against, thanks to it being in the sky, except possibly that other plane in the background, but this thing is not nicknamed "Roc" for nothing. Art!
With puny humans for scale. It's 238 feet long, has a wingspan of 385 feet and comes in at 225 tons. The idea was to use it to air-launch space vehicles as a non-expendable platform, which it never got to manage. BUT in an alternate universe, a craft like this would have been ideal to help construct "Arcology One", nicht wahr?
Finally -
Apparently the Olympics have begun in Paris. Your Humble Scribe, who is as uninterested in sport as he is in fashion or ballfoot, only became vaguely aware that this even was happening a couple of weeks ago.
Rest assured, we will ignore it as comprehensively as possible.
O I take it that the Yuro Ballfoot event is now over? Answers in the Comments please.
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