Firstly, Some Disambiguation Is Needed
Before I get around to what this Intro is all about, because 'The Zone' is rather vague as a term and easily misconstrued. Art!
This is Number One in a series with an interesting premise. War has broken out between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and the end result is a static stalemate stretching from the Baltic to the Mediterranean across Europe - the titular Zone. What you see on the cover is one of the few novel vehicles included; it's 'The Iron Cow', a hover-armoured personnel carrier. Most of the kit is standard Eighties kit, which is when the series was written.
Needless to say, not the Zone we're going to be talking about. Art!
The big gimmick for this one was that it was in 3D, which means an awful lot of things flying at the camera. Plus, for a zone that's supposedly forbidden, there's an awful lot of people knocking around it. Still not the right Zone. Art!
This is the Death Zone on Gallifrey. If it were to get a rating from Cooks, it would be negative. As the name implies, not a place to linger in. Still not the Zone we're looking for. Art!
Finally! For we are talking about a tale of revenge, set in South Canada, where the Put Upon Narrator, hereafter PUN, lived in an apartment block, beneath which was a sushi restaurant. He had no problems with noise or commotion until the elderly couple who owned the restaurant retired and sold it.
Enter Greedy Invasive Toe-rag, hereafter GIT, whom had noticed that everything else in the neighbourhood closed early, so he bought the restaurant with the intent of turning it into a bar, where all the customers would congregate after everything else closed. That was his Cunning Plan. Art!
It stayed open until 1 am on weekdays, 2 am at the weekends, and the front had been replaced with a single giant door that opened like a garage door. When this was raised PUN got to hear all the bar noise and chatter, which got louder after midnight, or when the smokers came out for their gaspers. Being directly above the bar meant PUN was affected most of all, but his neighbours were all affected as well. Not good.
PUN, being diplomatic, found out when the owner would be present in the bar and approached him about the noise pollution. It did not go well. He was dismissed sneeringly - I'm adding that verb in myself since it seems so apt - with the comment 'If you don't like it, move'. Not good. Art!
This was exactly the wrong thing to say to PUN, who had an enquiring and mischievous mind. Having gotten thoroughly fed up with the late night noise, they connected up their mobile phone to a Bluetooth speaker and blasted 'Jingle Bells' as sung by Frank Sinatra at the bar, on a loop. PUN did this whenever things got rowdy at the bar, and began to notice that the door was closed a lot during his sonic revenge, and that the bar was closing earlier - eating into GIT's profits, boo hoo*.
Much to PUN's surprise, neither the bar's manager nor GIT came to chase or chastise him about the noise he was making. Stick a pin in this, we'll come back to it. Art!
Things got much worse on the July 4th celebration of the South Canadian treachery against the glorious B ANYWAY things got extremely rowdy, a fight spilled out into the street and the bar closed down for the night. The police were very unimpressed with this, and informed what PUN calls the 'LCB', which Conrad knows means 'Liquor Control Board', whom deal with any premises selling alcohol. They promptly revoked the bar's licence until a hearing could be scheduled, which the bar avoided by closing down. Art!
The San Fran LCB
It opened nine weeks later, same name but now focussing on the restaurant side of the business not the bar, and with closing times of 22:00. Much quieter and more civilised. Not only that, the owner's business partner was taking over the running of the business, as GIT was being divorced and coping by drinking themselves into a stupor. PUN was unsure if GIT was such a bottomhole because he was getting divorced, or was being divorced because they were such a bottomhole.
PUN got a lot of background info by going into the restaurant and getting a meal, then speaking to the bartender. The reason why neither GIT nor the bar manager tried sparring with PUN? They were afraid he'd go to the city Zoning Commission, because they didn't have either a licence or permission to run a bar in a residential area.
More Of Punt
After I had posted yesteryon's blog where we focussed on Punt, the land, the boat and the kick, another phrase popped into my head - 'Punt Gun'. Was I making this up due to old age and gun gin?
Nope. Art!
This formidable piece of artillery is indeed a punt gun and this picture is merely to illustrate the scale of the thing, as firing it like this would deafen one man and knock the other one over. They were fitted into punts in order to hunt and slay waterfowl by the dozen all at once. Art!
Conrad believes they were banned before there were no waterfowl left to slay.
Pour Me A Glass Of Schadenfreude!
Excuse me if I presume a little. I see that the BBC have allowed Comments on a ballfoot article which concerns Manchester United Dairies, so I need to pop over and read, perhaps to copy any realllllly citric Comments.
Joking aside, from what Your Humble Scribe has determined, the teams at the top of the Premium Laager are so close to each other that a few games lost at the beginning of the season can scotch their chances of winning the Laager.
ohyes
08:01
Yes, but everybody loves to dogpile on United Dairies and ladle invective o'er them.
Marston
08:01
Damning with faint praise indeed. Tee hee!
A Touch Of Jingo Alongside The Dingo
Not actually alongside the Dingo. But it rhymes. Yes, we're back at Bovvie and this item is not composed of steel and rubber. Art!
The somewhat battered Union Jack here present is not tatty because it was left in the attic for forty years. It is battered because it was hoisted aloft by the British garrison at Tobruk from April 1941 to November 1941, whilst the harbour and town were under siege from the Axis forces.
Beneath it, in an appropriately inferior position, is a captured Nazi flag, mostly blocked by passing members of the public. Ha! Art!
Outside, where we got rather rubbish positions because there were thousands there already. Fortunately no rain!
This is the M5 Stuart, being taken out and put through it's paces which, in the lower photograph, broke down and couldn't move forward at all. It reversed into the back corner and stayed there. Ooops! Embarrassing, but proof that even a tank lavished with care and attention can go wrong; how much worse must things have been under combat conditions in the real world.
Here's Something Conrad Can Get Behind
Young people in Saint Petersburg got together to have a bit of a celebration last night, which might not sound very profound, yet it will make the Kremlin worried, because they were kind of protesting against Putin's war in Ukraine. Art!
Conrad rather wonders if the failure of the police to crack down is due to a lack of numbers - they are down over a quarter million men for umpteen reasons. The authorities got caught with their pants down here, you might say.
AND WITH THAT WE ARE SO VERY VERY DONE!
* Or tee hee.
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