Tell-A-Portative

We'll Get There Eventually, Just Bear With Me

You know how it is on the blog, we meander off on various tangents until SURPRISE! we alight on one in particular with all the verve of The Child Catcher and net it securely.  We must be careful here, lest we give all those of a certain age the sweating night-terror wim-wams.  Conrad never found him particularly odious or scary.  Art!

Look away, ye faint of heart

     ANYWAY that's the first meandering tangent, because what I want to introduce you to is the 'Hotchkiss Portative Mk 1*', which is part of today's title.  Don't worry, this one doesn't require being swept up in a child-proof net.  The name 'Portative' is an obsolete variant of 'Portable', and if you compare this weapon to an enormous piece of kit like the Vickers Medium Machine gun or the Teuton Maxim 08, then by comparison it really is.  Art!

We tell of this Portative

     This, for those unacquainted with noisy bang-sticks, was a light machine gun of the early twentieth century, arriving in 1909, and yes! that is a gel (Mae) operating it there solo.  In reality it would have had a two-man team, with one carrying and loading the ammunition strips and all the other impedimenta, with Number One firing the weapon.  Art!

     Proof that 'light' machine guns aren't, it tipped the scales at just over 26 pounds and could throw lead at about 500 rounds per minute.  Back in the day it was one of the early machine guns that used 30-round stripper clips to load the ammunition, which went in upside down.  Art!

     Mae's considered opinion - which I have to accede to as she's shot more guns than Conrad has - is that it's a fun little bundook but a bit too finicky and complicated for her to consider using in real life.  Conrad is unsure what her day job is .....

     ANYWAY now we come to our second meandering tangent, that being TELEPORTATION, which is almost quite close to the title, if you squint at it in a dark room whilst wearing sunglasses.  For this Intro, we are going to subsume the alternate description of 'Matter Transmission' within the definition of teleportation, because it's my blog and I say so.  Art!

     Say hello to "The Seeds Of Death", one of those 'Doctor Who' serials that, in my opinion, rather over-used the words 'Death' and 'Doom'.  The central MacGuffin is teleportation technology, dubbed 'T-Mat', for 'Transmitter of Matter', and that's just what they do.  The booth you can see there to port is a single-person unit, used to whisk Hom. Sap. from one side of the planet to the other.

     Because this premier dramamentary was funded by the BBC, who are notoriously tight with the pennies, it was all in black and white, and there is absolutely no frippery about the T-Mat process; one simply appears in (or disappears from) the booth.

The frighteningly efficient Miss Kelly

     By the way, this serial is a classic example of Bus Factor Minus One.  Miss Kelly runs the T-Mat Headquarters with millimetric precision, ensuring food supplies are despatched globally on time.

     However - first time today for this word! - there's only one of her.  When she is abducted by Ice Warriors, things go to Hades in a handbasket immediately.

     The 'Minus One' part comes from T-Mat HQ NOT HAVING A BACK-UP.  They have only the one HQ.  Whoever designed this system needs beating with a baseball bat 'till they bate breathing, because ALL major businesses have an emergency substitute location, for use if the primary goes dark for any reason.  Art!

     Behold the Stockport Pyramint, which was the alternate location for Sainsbo's if Arndale House went toes-up.

     By wild coincidence, there was an article out-sourced from "The Guardian" dealing with another BBC series, "Blake's Seven" on the news feed, and it also mentioned their teleportation system, which was both a lot more dramatic than that used by The Doctor, and which was in colour*, too.  Art!

Stylish, functional and teleportative

     As you can see, those activating their teleportative bracelet - not a phrase you ever expected to hear today - are limned by a white outline, which was achieved by having an effects technician watching the feed and 'drawing' it with an electronic pen.

     The thing about these bracelets is that you can teleport anywhere, not merely anywhere safe, which is how they got rid of an unwelcome villain aboard the 'Liberator'; they teleported him into deep space, where the vacuum saw him off in mere seconds.  A bit dastardly, that.  Art!

     That's the Departation Station, from whence Blake et al - well, departed.

     Conrad also notes that, by using these bracelets and bit of Quantel, the BBC completely removed the need to have shuttlecraft or atmosphere-capable landing ships, because again clutching tightly to  the pennies.
     

     Well, I'm going to save the rest of this topic for another Intro, because we're already at over 800 words and there's more film and television entries to analyse.  Chin chin!

Holey Moley

Thanks to my camera phone deciding to work again, Your Humble Scribe got a clip of photographs of the honest artisans busy at work digging vast and cavernous holes and pits in the pavement beyond The Mansion.  Art!

     This is the fruit of their labours, the result of the pavement being power-sawed and then hydraulically drilled into submission.  Along comes a very large truck with a great big vacuum hose attachment, which sucks up all the loose earth, helped by copious amounts of sprayed water.

     A shot of the vacuum-truck in action.  I'd be careful of my toes, matey.  Art!

     I angled this one for more dramatic impact.  You can see why the road has been coned off into a single lane, as the excavations extend half-way across it.  Our gas has been turned off whilst they add in small-bore plastic piping to replace old corroded pipe.

     It's great to see other people working hard in dank, wet, grey, miserable weather, isn't it?

"The War Illustrated Edition 201 2nd March 1945"

We continue with photographs I was able to take when my Dog Buns! phone decided to work properly.  Really, it's less reliable than the Orange Land Whale.  Although it does smell sweeter.  Art!

     If you cannot read the text, then this is the triumphant march of the French 1st Army into Alsace, where they were greeted as liberators by the locals, as seen at top port photograph.  Directly below are more cheering crowds; the equipment may be South Canadian but the soldiery are French, probably looking forward to moving into the land of the Teutons, rubbing their hands and sharpening their bayonets.  The somewhat indistinct picture at upper starboard is of a whacking big Teuton bunker being destroyed thanks to 33,000 pounds of HE and a long fuse.  At bottom you can see people improvising transport when the snow departed and floods arrived.

     "19th Army" is a rather grandiose title for a third-rate army consisting of ill-trained conscripts with understrength divisions, second-rate equipment and an inability to manoeuvre.  The French 1st Army chopped it into bits and annihilated the bits.  Stop me if I get too technical for you.

Did I Miss Something?

Conrad is guessing that one of the fans of Ol' Tolky has ascended to high office in the Meteorological Office or the Civil Service, because what do my eyes espy?  Art!

     Really?  Nor does anyone appear to be challenging this either overt hommage or blatant plagiarism.  'Danger to life' is also questionable, since as much as 3 mm of snow can paralyse This Sceptred Isle.  Unless they mean the Highlands, in which case they have a case in point as it will be more like 3 m of snow.

     We shall see.

Finally -

Conrad's Diabetic Big Toe Ulcer Update:  Nursey said it had decreased in dimension from 7 x 2 mm to 4 x 2 mm (apologies for using Metric <hack spit>) and hadn't oozed very much.  Then she dug around with a scalpel at another piece of hard skin, because open wounds look better in pairs?  Going back next Tuesday (PAYDAY!) to get the dressing changed again.  Plus she has ordered a shower boot.

*  Note correct spelling