I Hope You Had To Squint To Make Sense Of That
The same letters, just applied in a different order. With, of course - obviously!- completely different meanings. Art!
No, I haven't seen it, but I like Gene Hackman, whom is the furthest from a 'hack' you can possibly imagine, and also Coppola, whom has an eye and ear for both spectacle and intimacy.
ANYWAY we are back onto the tour of IWM Duxford, which is an enormous site that took our party 7 hours to get through, and I think we managed to miss the 'Air Assault' museum exhibit. We are now on the 'Conservation In Action' hangar, and yes I mean aircraft hangar because these venue sites were immense. Art!
Is it a tank? Well, yes, kind of, with qualifications. Say hello to the Churchill 'Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers' which we have met at Bovington Tank Museum last year. Julie was with me at this point and asked if that Red was it's natural colour? No. No, in operations in Europe it would be painted olive drab or with big brown blotches on, in order to blend in with the terrain. This is a primer or undercoat prefatory to the end paint scheme being applied.
John Foley, a Churchill tank commander, related what happened to Teuton field fortifications in 'Mailed Fist'.
Step One: Breach with an AVRE 'Flying Dustbin'
Step Two: Apply Churchill Crocodile flamethrowing tank.
There was no 'Step Three'. Art!
You get a sense here of the sheer scale of equipment and accoutrements required to refit, repair, maintain or renovate one the larger aircraft at Duxford. Here we have an RAF Shackleton bomber. They were massive and if you need a refresher as to how large, look back at my posts about the Air And Space Museum in Manchester.
I would also like to comment about the smell here, one thing that you simply don't get on a blog. Conrad has perhaps 5% of normal Hom. Sap. smell, but could instantly detect the preservative chemicals being used in this hangar, meaning anyone else might have to use a gas-mask or risk hallucinations. Art!
The chap here was one of the few working on a Sunday. What he's doing is painting a turret and speeding the drying process with a giant hairdryer, effectively. I didn't ask any questions but he's working on a turret that might be from the Staghound armoured car, a monstrous South Canadian vehicle that the British used, or an M3 Lee tank, as both turrets used verrrry similar designs. Art!
Please note the pristine white interior, which may see the light of day if or when this becomes an exhibit. Art!
Once again, an illustration of how much kit it takes to keep the exhibits in prime display condition. Actually, I think the chassis you can see here is that of a Staghound armoured car, for which see above. Art!
I think, based on the cruciform stabiliser 'arms', that this is British 3.7 " anti-aircraft gun. No other information about what it's doing or when. Art!
Same place different angle. From here, as there are no label plaques detailing information, I think we have a PT-76 and a Bieber miniature submarine. No sign of Justin. Ho ho ho. Art!
Col and I agreed that the vehicle in the middle is one of the faux 'Tiger' tanks as used in 'Saving Private Ryan' as the turret is placed far too forward on the hull, thanks to it being a re-purposed FV 432. Art!
Hmmm I know we've got Darling Daughter for scale here against this brace of tanks, just not what they are. The sand-and-green camo vehicle is a Jagdpanther, which the Wehraboos salivate over. It's a Panther tank hull with the turret removed and the next-biggest tank gun installed; an 88 mm weapon. Doing without a turret like this makes production a lot simpler, since there's no requirement to have a complicated turret mechanism with traverse hydraulics and gearing. The downside is that the barbette thus created means the whole tank has to be moved left or right to get on target. Art!
No plaque, so we'll have to go with Conrad's nous. I think this is a Sinister tank based on the track design and track protection plates, and a bit of Google-fu intimates that we might be looking at a 'JS 2-M' variant, one of their late-Second Unpleasantness models that were involved in over-running the Baltics and the Land Of Teuton itself. Art!
That's enough Ruffia for one Intro.
IGNORE the Iraqi BMP in the background, what you need to be focussing on is the 'Matra' anti-tank missile in the foreground. The Matra <cont. Page 96>
No, I have not forgotten about the secret Cold War Yugoslav air base. BE PATIENT.
More Gentle Shoeing
Donold Judas Trump continues to prove that a man can operate with a brain made of mashed potato, as he wobbles and blurts his way into the mid-terms of 2026. Art!
Looking pretty melancholy - a word he cannot spell. Because Trump is a Bottomhole Beyond Belief, also known as a 'Malicious Narcissist', he likes to blame everyone except himself for getting things wrong. Thus, he has been once again -
- lying to his own acolytes about what is going bad and whom they need to blame. What you see there are arcs of seats without seaters, or an explanation of Bottomholtion.
THE THING IS he is the toad in the jacuzzi, making it all about himself.
Other, smarter political pundits have said that this period mirrors that of Dubya Bush in his 2006 mid-terms. Dubya had the common-sense to sit quietly in the White House and not drawn attention. As we have seen, DJT cannot manage such a retraction. Art!
"The 20 books on the classical world you need to read"
O really have you encountered my wallet yet? Conrad does not really want to fork out £400 plus on books that you decide are entitled to hoover his bank balance yet.
O go on. What have you got. Art!
15. Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity (1935)
by Arthur O Lovejoy and George Boas
Okay, so this work has been out there for almost a century. Where does 'primitisvim' come in? Art!
<Google-fu ensues>
Ah yes, the conception that things were better in the past. I had no idea that this mindset existed over 2,000 years ago but per this work our literary ancestors were working toward 'We are our solipsists' or 'Extentialism is it's own reward'. Apparently there is a whole tranche based on this trope the 'Noble Savage' that we may come back to. I bet you can hardly wait.
Shortly Due
Conrad is about due to turn over dog-sitting duties when the rest of the famility arrives home. Not before time!
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