Nunc Dimittis

Yes Yes Yes

It's Latin <spit hack> but it came to me in the shower twenty minutes ago as a cod introduction to the Intro, instead of BOVINGTON TANK MUSEUM, just as a bit of a click-baity title.  I had no idea what it meant, and had to Google, which explained that it's 'Now Let Depart'.  These are the opening words of the 'Song Of Simeon' which is the official canticle for Evening, as defined by the Apostolic Constitutions of 380 AD.  So now we know more than we did five minutes ago, and it would have been a splendid title instead of 'The Journey Begins!'.  Art!

Saladin armoured car with puny humans for scale

     As I explicated to Sal and Tom, the Saladin was one of a family based on the same chassis, and this eleven-ton beast might be better described as a 'wheeled tank' as it's the exact opposite of a reconnaissance vehicle.  One of them appeared on the aptly-named 'Kuwait Arena', where the narrator explained them as a cheap way to get a significant anti-tank weapon made mobile cheaply.  'Apt' because the Kuwaitis operated them and fought the Iraqi invasion with them in 1993.  This one is outside because it would be needed for the first live vehicle exhibition.  Art!

     Here there were a group of re-enactors toting all the equipment a vehicle maintenance unit would need, and there was an awful lot of it, all original kit which the proud re-enactor said had been acquired.  Sorry I was too busy gabbing to take a picture.  Use your imagination.  Art!

     They had one of these, which is an oil can using a flexible hose, allowing the user to apply oil to awkward spots without tilting the can and spilling oil.  Art!

     They also allowed Conrad to lug a de-activated Thompson submachine gun, which was incredibly heavy for it's size.  Explained by the proud owner as being thanks to having been milled from a single piece of steel, which made it a fine example of precision engineering - and also verrrry expensive.  Art!

     Yes, we are now inside in the First Unpleasantness hall, where the Teuton machine gunners sat behind barbed wire and opened fire every couple of minutes.  To starboard is an Mg 08, where the barbed wire in the exhibit has been cunningly worked through a hole in the butt, lest the light of finger get tempted.  How you'd smuggle a whacking big machine gun out the doors escapes me.  Art!

     A Mark IV tank with puny humans for scale.  This one is carrying a fascine of brushwood, for functionality not aesthetic reasons such as pretending to be bush.  The tank would rock up to a trench - stop me if I get too technical - and drop the fascine into it, thus being able to drive over it.  Ha!  Take that, bally Huns! They are still used today, except they're now in the form of verrrrry robust plastic piping.  Art!

     This one is an example of too much too late.  It's the 'International', as it was a combined British-South Canadian effort.  It marks a progression in that the suspension is no longer rhomboidal and doesn't go all around the hull.  This seems to be one of the first designs that had multiple turrets, a trend that persisted into the late Thirties, and which promptly stopped when multi-turret tanks got into actual combat.  The International was a bit of a whopper, tipping the scales at 37 PROUD IMPERIAL tons, and being 34 feet long.  For all that, only a few were produced before the bally Hun cunningly lost the war and the Armistice intervened.  Art!

     A British Mk IV, the mother of all metal mastodons.  The design is intended to be as lengthy as possible, in order to cross trenches, and these things laughed at barbed wire, simply crushing it flat.  At the battle of Cambrai in 1917 some had 'anchors' they towed into the Teuton's barbed wire, then drove alongside their positions, dragging huge balls of barbed wire behind them.  Pretty obviously they were bulletproof, necessitating the Teutons introducing armour-piercing 'K' ammunition for their machine guns.  You can see into the interior through the transparent panel in the sponson, revealing it to be very cramped.  It would also have been ear-splittingly loud as the engine was naked and squarely in the middle of the hull.  Those 'rails' atop support a huge log, which is the 'Unditching beam'.  If the tank got bogged down in mud, the crew would venture forth, chain the beam onto the tracks and use it to get unbogged.  Art!

     I think that's a good place to pause.  We will be coming back to a couple of other First Unpleasantness vehicles later on.  I bet you can hardly wait.

Bath The Strategic Chokepoint

Conrad didn't take any pictures whilst navigating the town of Bath, so we shall have to rely on teh Interwebz, your imagination and my wordsmithing.  Art!

     That's one of the Roman baths in Bath, and the Regency crescent.  The architecture is certainly appealing, isn't it?  Unfortunately for the modern traveller wanting to get to Dorset from the northern shires, the road plan in Bath is still modelled on the Regency period.  Art!

Batheaston Bridge

     Their toll bridge collection methodology goes back to the Romans, too: two blokes in hi-viz vests collecting money in a plastic bowl.  In a reluctant nod to the 21st century, they had a card machine as well.  Art!

     Here you see a three-lane superhighway Bath version.  Conrad is quite certain that the roads remain locked in 1789 because the city officials thought it would bottleneck any invading Teutons, and then Sinisters during the Cold War.

The BBC - The Font Of All That's Fit To Be Writ

Unless you peruse the BBC's News website, you won't be aware that they have a Verification team, who check into the truth, accuracy and veracity of various news claims around the world.  One fascinating and horrid description was given yesteryon about alleged executions in Gaza; the verifier said that they would watch a video, timestamp any ghastly bit, review and assess for truth.  They would then pass it on to another colleague for them to review and see if they both came to a common conclusion, with the timestamps, so they could avoid the more awful bits, and both would take breaks so as not to be watching real life horror shows.  Art!

     This one is real: a bridge in the east of Taiwan submerged by flooding caused by the super-typhoon Ragasa, which has killed 18 people and is shortly due to make landfall in China.  The Beeb team identified it as the Mataianxi bridge by checking out road layouts.  I can't find any pictures of it in un-flooded condition, but consider that the normal river level will be many metres below the road bed to understand how bad this is.

 

Conrad The Considerate Cove

'Cove' in this sense of being a decent chap, not a coastal feature.  Allow me to copy in an e-mail I sent to 'Shiny Owl' books.

I was rather gobsmacked to receive Volume I of the Official Australian History today, expecting it to take weeks to arrive.  Thank you for the very fast delivery, and the extremely robust packaging.

I don't anticipate buying more Shiny Owl books - though you never know - but please take a bow with your excellent customer service.

 

Yours Sincerely, An Appreciative Pom

     Like I said, considerate.  I can be that on occasion.

Conrad The Baffled

Here's an illustration of an Ukrainian soldier playing a musical instrument that is novel to me.  Art!

     I don't think it's a zither because it has a fretted neck on it, although I am, frankly, not an expert in musical instruments.  Perhaps a quick dose of Google-fu would resolve it?

     Aha!  I Googled 'Ukrainian zither' and came up with this.  Art!

     Apparently it's a 'Bandura', a cross between a zither and a lute.  Now we know more than we did five minutes ago.  

     Time to log off and no, I'm not changing this font.  Deal with it!