Hopefully You Are Aware Of The Aphorism
"Use a sledgehammer to crack a nut", meaning, according to my Brewer's "To take quite disproportionate steps to settle what is really a very small matter".
There is also the practical matter of malleting a Brazil nut with a sledgehammer, because all you'll end up with is a mash of nutshell and meat big enough to cover a dinnerplate. Good luck sorting the edible bits out of that. Art!
My edition of "Brewers" also mentions a parallel "To break a butterfly upon a wheel", which compelling allusion was coined by Alexander Pope in the early 18th century, and - yes, Dog Buns, I shall explain.
"The wheel" it mentions was indeed a large, yet not excessively large, wheel, as you might find on a small wagon. It was dismounted and set up horizontally, and here is where it gets interesting, because an unfortunate miscreant was then tied to the wheel, and any bits of themselves that dangled o'er the rim were then beaten until broken. Art!
Where do you think the "Catherine Wheel" firework got it's name from? As you might expect, having your long bones shattered in sequence was, firstly, incredibly painful, and secondly, fatal. So the butterfly analogy works as an example of also going to excessive lengths to solve a relatively minor problem.
Okay, pop quiz: how do you extinguish a wellhead fire?
"What is a wellhead fire and can you casserole with it?" I hear you ask. Art!
CAUTION! not suitable for domestic cooking
There you go, a wellhead fire in all it's flaming glory. This kind of phenomenon can be prevented by using a 'blowout preventer', which we have mentioned before in relation to deep-sea oil wells. The problem is, these are large, complex and expensive, so it's easier and cheaper to do without. Just as it's easier and cheaper to use standard steel for your drilling components, running your drilling operation on the principle of What Can Possibly Go Wrong?
One method of extinguishing is to spray water or foam on the burning fuel. Finding either or both of these in, say, a desert environment is a feat in itself. What's more, if the well's physical bottom hasn't been recorded, because incompetence, you've got even more of a problem thanks to working in the dark. Art!
Meet the Urta Bulak gas field fire of 1963. By now, with the mention of incompetence, cheapness and disregard for safety, you have surely guessed that this took place in the Sinister Union.
Their excuse was that bad frosts had affected the pistachio harvest in Novi Pazaar, which meant that the steels used were rapidly eroded away by the exceptionally high levels of pistachio cream hydrogen sulphide, leading to a physical collapse of the rig. Then a coyly named 'ignition source' set the released gas - for this was a gas well, not an oil one - alight. Must be the same chap smoking at all those Ruffian refineries. Art!
Here they manage to not put the fire out with water. Art!
This chap did manage to set himself alight, which seems to have been expected and par for the course, as his mates douse him with water straight away.
How long did this go on for? O I thought you'd never ask.
THREE YEARS!
Who had generations of well-drilling experience and of tackling wellhead fires? The South Canadians, that's who. Pride, embarrassment and politics all combined to mean that they could never, ever, evah be asked for advice, let alone help. So, what did the Sinister executives (those not sent promptly to Siberia) come up with as a solution? Art!
CAUTION! Handle with extreme cautionary caution
The other method of combatting a wellhead fire is with high explosive, where the detonation of same creates a pressure wave that extinguishes the fire. Using dynamite to put out a fire sounds counter-intuitive, and it does take bags of experience and nerves of vanadium steel, but it works. Art!
As seen in the John Wayne documentary 'Hellfighters'
Rather than use an above-ground detonation, the Sinisters were going to slant-drill another shaft to the rough location of the original well, and then set off a thirty-kiloton nuclear warhead, which would shift the geological strata enough to cut off the gas supply.
WAIT WHAT?
Yes, an atomic warhead with the explosive yield of thirty thousand tons of TNT. There's your sledgehammer right there. For Your Information, that's the equivalent of about twenty of the RAF's Thousand Bomber Raids. Art!
Not very surprising! Now you know how the nut feels.
Conrad has only just heard of this event, which is surprising when you consider how interested I am in All Things Nuclear And Explosive. I wonder what the background count is in that underground radioactive camouflet?
More Of March
Before you get clever and respond 'It's December!' may I point out that I'm referring to the 'March Table' that went up as an Intro a few days ago. Art!
I missed the entry at the bottom - "26 Armd Bde W/shops Coy REME", which immediately gives away the Armoured Brigade in question: 26th. Nice to see my detective work was correct, though. The rest of this cryptic annotation means "Workshops Company (of the) Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers". These chaps were specialised electricians and mechanics dealing with all the myriad issues that 582 vehicles will generate. It would be more efficient to have these chaps with the Brigade as it moves, rather than sitting as part of a battalion back at Divisional HQ.
Also note the "16/5 L" and "17/21 L", a very terse abbreviation for units that have 120 vehicles each. Well, those are the 16th/5th Lancers and the 17th/21st Lancers, the latter those legendary cavalrymen with the motto - Art!
So, these are armoured regiments mounted on steeds of steel, not flesh and bone. Note also that they are each travelling with 4 guns of the 153rd Light Anti-aircraft battery, as protection from air attack en route, and to be able to set up in defence immediately they arrive at their destination. Again, this means the staff officers responsible need to know exactly how many guns the 153rd has available in order to dole them out accordingly.
Today I Found Out
Technically yesteryon, but given that I can claim poetic licence, Conrad is still correct, despite what you think and once again, whose blog is it?
ANYWAY I learned what a 'Baby Guiness' is, as Dawn mentioned Ivan ordering 15 of them. Erk! I thought. Art!
Pretty heroic to get through fifteen of those, except no. There were 15 people in the party, and a Baby Guinness is actually - Art!
Tia Maria topped with Baileys, which does look like a Guinness in miniature.
Ooooh This Sounds Interesting
We have not recently mentioned Matt "Eddie Munster" Gaetz, the <insert swears here> in human shape, who got away with exactly the same criminal activity his compatriot got 10 years for - and that was plea-bargained down from 32 charges to 6. Art!
Bring on the popcorn! Art?
Finally -
Doing the weekly shop today rather than Wednesday. Wish me luck, it's going to be a busy one, because everyone else on leave is going to be doing the weekly shop today, for reasons.
And speaking of busy, has the tracking algorithm on Blogger gone potty again? Art!
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