Dr No Know

No!*
I am not simply putting up a James Bond title in the fervent hope that this will generate additional blog traffic from the curious, although if that does happen then I shan't complain.  You see, I came across a paperback of said novel in our makeshift canteen space, up on Floor 17 of the Dark Tower.  Art?

The very same edition

     I'm only borrowing it, in case you were worried: I have a sound moral compass.**
     It is a fascinating glimpse into the world of yesteryear, being published in 1958, back when Perfidious Albion still had an empire,  the printed press was supreme, and chaps like James could drink like fish, smoke like chimneys, bed woman with gay abandon (yes, going for irony there) and still be regarded as a jolly good sort.

Pipe and gun: let's hope he puts the right one in his mouth!

     There is a whole chapter dedicated to which particular firearm Bond is going to carry from now on, and M lets him know in no uncertain terms that it's not going to be his old Beretta M1934.  It jammed on him previously, and given the calibre, it doesn't have a lot of stopping power; you'd need to get someone dead-on in a vital spot to help them shuffle of this mortal coil.  This is all entirely accurate, which Fleming probably knew from hands-on experience.  Being an actual spy and all.
     As well as technical details about guns, Fleming also describes the history and value of guano in some detail, so I now know more about Guano than I ever did before.

An island spit, made up of bird -

     We may revisit this subject, since you don't often get the opportunity to travel back in time and visit what was pop culture then.

 - unless you know this chap

     Right!  Now that we've exhausted all the puns about Doctors and No, let us proceed to superglue the motley to the aircraft wing and take off!

Still Banging On
 - about Perfidious Albion's anti-tank guns of the Second Unpleasantness, especially in North Africa.  Strictly speaking, the Bofors 40 mm was an anti-aircraft gun, designed with a high muzzle velocity to chase those pesky fast aircraft at a distance, and with a rapid rate of fire to put as many shells as possible close to those same pesky fast aircraft.  Art?

The article in question

     As I said, it wasn't supposed to be used to shoot tanks, though this did happen on occasion.  It's 2 pound shot had an even higher velocity than the specially-designed 2 pounder anti-tank gun's, although being a high explosive round it had limited amour piercing performance.  However, these things could fire 5 rounds per second and would almost certainly immobilise a tank by blowing off tracks, bogies, road wheels, quite besides jamming the turret and shattering all the optics.
     Perfidious Albion at work, eh?

Heh

"Werewolves Of London"
Another hilarious and dark musical fable by long-gone Warren Zevon, and it is indeed about what the title states: werewolves, in Babylon-on-Thames.  How can you not like a song with the lines "He's the hairy-handed gent, who ran amuk in Kent"?
     Although Kent is not within the boundaries of London, we will give WZ a pass there.  He did his homework, Mayfair and Soho also get a mention.  Oh, and HM the Queen, too.  Art?

Impeccably groomed, as in the song.
(Fan art by Chet Phillips)

     That does lead into an idea I had ...

Picture The Scene -
London, 1895, in the smoking room of The Zitonia Club, where the gentlemen detectives gather on a foggy night to discuss their latest case or cases.

Like this, but with fog

     One of them has a copy of the London Evening Gazette, whose lurid headline screams "Latest Werewolf Slaying!  Scotland Yard Baffled, Citizens Terified" (the editor was in a hurry).  They all begin discussing what, or who, is committing these ghastly crimes, when they realise a stranger is sitting in a corner, silently watching them.
     "I can tell you, gentlemen seekers, that these appalling crimes are not being committed by the London lycanthrope," he suavely yet sinisterly informs them.  Art?

Oooh, spot on!

     (this shows that he's being rather clever: "Ziton" is Greek for "seeker", and "lycanthrope" is the Greek for "werewolf").
     "How do you know that?" rasps Sir James Tolliver d'Arcy d'Arcy, the club's president.
     "Because," explains their strange visitor, "I am the London lycanthrope."

What do you think?  Does it have merit?

I found another No pun!

*  Do you see what - O you do
**  This is a lie <the unpleasant truth courtesy Mister Hand>

Using My Loaf

A Touch Of Idiom
If any of you out there reading this live in the benighted blasted barren borderlands that are not part of the Rink of Eden,* then you have my sympathies, and since you may be slightly baffled by my title, I shall explicate.
     First, an aside.  I popped into the Co-Op in Royton on the way home from work, only to discover that they had no bread left.  None whatsoever.  Art?

Only the locked doors prevented the tumbleweed getting in

     It was the same in Lidl next door.  An assistant in the Co-Op explained that they were getting deliveries of bread, it just flew off the shelves the instant it came in.  I joked that I'd better get busy making my own loaf.  I can, you know, it's just been years since I did the old yeast-'n'-knead.  What madness stalks the land that - well, it confirmed my well-plotted semi-breakdown of society when the Zombie Apocalypse arrives in my novel <Mister Hand moves in to hurry matters along> in France.
     Getting back on track, there is a phrase in English that goes something like "Use your loaf", meaning to utilise one's intellect.  Quite how the human cerebellum came to be associated with a piece of leavened flour is a story for another day (code for "I have no idea).
     So!  Let us call upon that semi-human sloven Ace, for a bit of illustration is needed.  Art!

Chocolate and Coffee Loaf

     This was an experiment: I was using a recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook, which tends to have ones that are more fiddly than other cookbooks, but which are worth the fuss, since they are very good.  For this one I was using gluten-free flour and a magic bullet - xanthan gum, which is actually a powder, and which you add to GF flour to mimic the action of gluten in wheat flour.
     It worked! as you can see from the above.  It's well-risen, which is good, as the batter was spectacularly thick and tried to climb out of the mixing bowl.
     Of course, since it was a chocolate sponge, your humble scribe wanted nothing to do with the horrid confection.  Other folks seemed to like it, however.**

The embodiment of braininess

   Now, time to throw snowballs made of frozen nitroglycerine at the motley! and move on

Conrad: Late To The Party
I have recently taken up the musical stylings of one Warren Zevon, a South Canadian singer-songwriter-player who, alas, passed away in 2003.  I must say, his songs, even when delivered in a sprightly, poppy style, have very dark lyrics indeed.  Normally when Conrad analyses a song the composers cringe under a desk, but there's no danger of that for Warren.  Even if he weren't dead.

Warren, in better days
(You know, being alive and all that)

     Take his classic "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner", which I vaguely remember hearing on the also sadly-missed Alexis Korner's radio programme.
     Here an aside.  Yes, two in one blog post - don't you know it's rude to count?  The Thompson sub-machine gun - Art?

Thompson M1 wartime iteration

     - led to the nickname "Tommy Gun" being coined, applied beyond the weapon itself.  Alexander Solzhenitsyn used the term when referring to the PPSH41, as does Field Marshall Slim in his memoirs, when he means the Sten gun.

Norway - only exporting the very finest Thompson gunners

      Okay, back to Roland.  He's a mercenary, fighting in Biafra in the Sixties, and WZ makes mention of the Congolese - another African conflict with mercenaries - and the Bantu, and Johannesburg - a city of apartheid South Africa.  It's all period-correct, partly because WZ had fallen in with an ex-mercenary in Spain in 1974.
     Not, you have to admit, your average pop song.
That's bread and bullets - we're beginning to sound like a 19th Century revolutionary slogan.  Let us alter literary trajectory and explore the fascinating world of EXPOXY RESIN FORMULATION RESEARCH!


Only kidding.  Let's see, yesterday we had a mention of the Alvis Saracen, an ugly and intimidating piece of kit that functioned as a battle taxi.  It was actually derived from -


Saladin
Not the Ottoman emperor, but an armoured car.  It was quite the beast, being 11 tons in weight and mounting a rather big gun for a vehicle whose purpose was to sneak around and spy out the land and the enemy.  If we cattle-prod Art awake -

Nobody is going to bother that it's over the lines there

     A six-wheeled monster that did well in the desert, the one above is actually owned privately by a South Canadian citizen, and yes, the 76 mm gun and Browning machine gun are both real and functional.  One rather suspects that they park where they like, and that other road users politely defer to it at roundabouts.

(or not)

Well well, we've been so very martial today that I think we need a bit of effete decoration to balance things out.  How about a pretty flower?

Hmmm.  Probably poisonous, too.

     Fate seems to think otherwise.  Er - happy gambolling lambs?

Maybe not.
Oh well.

     And that's it for today, for I am typing this in the Dark Tower, at work.  In between phone calls, of course, as your humble scribe has a tremendous work ethic.***  This being-at-work lark means I won't be able to post BOOJUM! properly until I get home, which will be in the early evening.  Possibly later if I detour to try and find some of that rare and precious bread stuff that is so in demand at present.



*  Garden, Pond or Rink - all titles weather-dependent.  Britain, if we're being formal.
**  People are weird, eh?
***  This may be a lie.^
^  Okay, it is a lie.