A Bridging Lone

If Any Of You -
 - wabheaded nadgers* come back at me with "You spelled it wrong" then I will reach down your broadband connection and pull your nostril hairs out, one by one.
     Here an aside.  For a long time Your Humble Scribe was convinced that the cover art from Pink Floyd's album "Meddle" was of a human nose, close up.  Art?  Less coal more goal!

A reasonable assumption

     Yes, admittedly, a rather weird set of nostrils, but what else can you expect from an album that has a long section of electronic whale-song imitations, along with crows and dogs barking?
     It turns out to be a pig's ear.  There's a conceptual absurdist joke in there somewhere that I don't have time to dig out.
     Anyway, that has nothing to do with what I intend to bang on about now, which is What Would Life Be Like If The England To Continent Land-Bridge Was Still There?
     There is only one, so that's why it's "Lone".  Now do you see?

Sic

     Commercially, trade carried out from the east coast of England, and especially from London, would favour the North Sea and it's littoral, since trade eastwards would be a lot harder.  Not impossible, but with shipping needing to head north of Scotland in order to reach the Atlantic, more hazardous and time-consuming.  Or, this is where the ports of Over and Dover come in, because goods are transhipped overland between them. 
     Come the year 1900 (approximately) the new, big-ticket engineering project that Ferdinand De Lesseps undertakes is not the Suez Canal - it's the Dover to Over Canal.

As it might have been

    This would radically transform shipping freight from London and enable the exploitation of trans-Atlantic trade to increase enormously.  Then Ol' Ferdy can go dig up Suez.
     Okay, what I want to approach is the military potential of such a geographical feature, because now invasion to and from England is rendered a whole lot easier.  Because neither the French nor English are slow on the uptake, one can well imagine large earthwork defences raised on the landbridge itself to either prevent or slow down any such invasion attempts.  Over time these would become substituted by stone defences.  Art?

There is a precedent: Hadrian's Wall

     Prefacing the Dover to Over Canal, one can imagine that a defensive "moat" would be built across the land-bridge, to further retard any invasion attempts.  Or it could be mostly dug, with both ends left intact, and in time of trouble said ends are undermined, allowing the waters to flood in - and perhaps catching any invaders, to boot.
     There are other societal impacts that the land-bridge creates, which we'll leave until tomorrow.  I bet you never thought a simple bridge would create such profound influences, hmmm?  Wait until tomorrow!

Back To Baku
There was a ballfoot game that took place in the Olympic Stadium in Baku, Azerbaijan, last week, between - er - Chelsea and some other team.  The thing is, both teams were European, and Baku is in Asia.
     Now, Conrad has nothing against the Azeris, and the fans who went said that the locals were very friendly and accommodating, and Baku is a smart, modern city, but - Asia?  Really?

Baku, 100 years ago.  Those are oil wells.

     Enter the BBC's Have Your Say Comments section on the game - I really should know who the other team were but cannot bring myself to bother - and every second comment mentions how unsuitable Baku was as a venue, and why did UEFA (who seem to be an organising body for European ballfoot) award the venue to Azerbaijan?
     Well, the consensus is that UEFA were bribed.  I think every third comment makes this allegation; you might well dismiss this as one of those silly conspiracy theories that abound in the ballfoot world**, yet stay with me on this.

Baku nowadays.  No, those are not oil wells.

     There are no direct flights from the UK to Azerbaijan; not a lot of tourism going on as yet, methinks.  Any ballfoot fans wanting to travel had to fly or drive or rail or taxi hither and yon, at considerable expense.
     UEFA only allocated 5,000 tickets to each team playing, which is apparently a scandalously small amount - I take this on trust, as I have absolutely no idea myself.
     The actual venue was an athletics stadium, which - this gets technical here, for which I apologise - has a large athletics track area between spectators and the pitch itself.  If Art will stop mooning about Mara Corday -

Considerable gappage

     This kept cameras well away from the action, as well as the spectators.  Consequently if you were watching on television you saw some black dots moving on a small patch of green.
     Hotel accommodation prices abruptly spiralled just before the game, which the cynical amongst you might find a most curious coincidence ...
     Oh, and one commenter pointed out that Azerbaijan is a member of UEFA, so it is perfectly entitled to put on ballfoot games.  Yes, except, as already pointed out, Azerbaijan is in Asia, so that's no mean feat.

The point is made

     I could go on - the commenters did, there were 834 comments - but you can perhaps have a surfeit of scrivel.

     Wow.  I never even meant to comment on that.  Ah, yes, motley, I see you cowering in the coal-shed - did I tell you I'd bolted it from the outside after rattling a dozen tarantulas around in a bucket and dropping them in from that hole in the roof?

Freeze, motley!

Finally - 
Blimey, nearly at count, and we've only done two items this evening.  Quick!  Bring on something light and frothy -
     Okay, got it, except - well, there's nothing light or frothy about it.  Art?
             
                                  Tim, the law-breaker Joel                                            Tim, the law-maker Raylanlac
     I have been watching "Santa Clarita Diet" for a couple of months now, which was my introduction to Timothy Olyphant as Joel, the realtor whose life takes a turn for the strange when his wife morphs into a zombie.  I love the dialogue.
     Imagine my surprise when I see him play the part of Deputy US Marshall Raylan Givens, the laconic, stetson-wearing, deadly-with-a-gun character back in his native Kentucky, in "Justified".  That, folks, is acting.

Tot siens!

*  This is not a compliment.  Just to be clear.
**  Yes, really.

Transports Of Delight

Ha!  You'll See -

Meanwhile, I have been able to dig up and copy a photograph from the BBC's website that I'd intended to yark on about, except I'd not done so whilst typing this scrivel up in my Sekrit Layr.   I can't load up photographs at work, since the software won't let me, risks of viruses or NSFW imagery and all that.

     So!  Here it is.  Art?

    "What do footballers get up to when the season is over?"

     Not a question that has ever crossed my mind, especially since I don't care what they do before the season starts, or while the season is in being.  A pat answer would doubtless involve wheelbarrows full of cash and Instagramme (whatever that is).

     However, Conrad is convinced that they migrate to Egypt and burrow into the estuarine mud of the Nile delta, there to hibernate for the summer months.  Once the days start to shorten, out they pop.

Like swallows.

     Yeah, just like swallows.  Or, how those duffers in the ancient world believed swallows behaved.

<short pause as I go to turn the oven off>

"Four Years On The Western Front" By Aubrey Smith

You see?  Aubrey Smith?  In the transport section of the 1st London Rifle Brigade?  You see how it fits in with the title?

     Damn.  It's not funny if you've got to explain it.

     Anyway, I would like to report that one of Ol' Aub's nemeses (the plural of nemesis since there were two of 'em), namely the wicked and wilful horse Jack, died of some internal complaint.  "So what?" I hear you quip.  "A dead horse.  Now they can't flog it, can they?"

Nope

     You are unaware that the army of Perfidious Albion didn't like dead chattels lying about; it made the place look untidy.  Oh - and health reasons, too.  So the transport section had to dig a grave for Jack, which took a great deal of exertion, a horse being quite a sizeable object.  Once done, they put up a cross for the nasty beast, enscribed thus:

"Here lies a steed, a gallant steed, whose Christian name was Jack.

How often he lugged our limbers to the firing line and back.

Although he's loth to leave us, he is happy on this score -

He won't be in this [redacted] rotten Army any more."

     - which greatly amused the section's officers when they passed the grave.

     During late June of 1916, the transport section had camped down in a small wood, which meant they had to feed and water their steeds and do this before getting any scoff or brew themselves, tie the horses to a rope line to prevent straying, hang up harnesses and then settle themselves, at which point an NCO in the Royal Garrison Artillery came up and asked them not to go poking around any further to their right - there was a battery of "nine point twos" hidden alongside.

9.2s out in the open, manned by some Ockers

     The RGA manned the bigger guns, and a 9.2" going off nearby you is like getting hit in the chest with a shovel.  A battery would have four guns, and the combined fire of these in the proximity would likely terrify the horses.  Fortunately for Ol' Aub's peace of mind and hearing, before these guns began firing, they moved out.

     As shall we.

<Phew.  I may have over-reached myself with three jacket potatoes, a whole tub of left-over spag bol and two garlic chicken Kievs but I shall valiantly continue>

The Land-Bridge Lives!

Ah, so the spell-checker didn't like that word unless it was hyphenated.  Got it.  I may still put "Landbridge" merely to mess with it.*

     If you recall, Your Humble Scribe has made mention of the ancient landbridge (see?  Terrible person) that used to connect the Continent to England (and most definitely NOT the other way round), and what things would be like if it never got eroded and washed away.  Art?

Before this

     Firstly, you cannot circumnavigate Britain.  This might very result in two large port cities developing on either side of the land-bridge at the English end, opposite each other, as trade and people embark or disembark and travel to the other side.  Kind of Dover and it's sister town Over.

     Trade and commerce with the Continent would be far easier, since all you require is a stout pair of shoes at the very minimum, rather than a ship.  Or a horse and wagon, instead of a ship.  

     There would probably be a local change from the weather we have today, since the body of water to the south of our Sceptred Isle would no longer be moving in a constant throughput.  Whether it would be better or worse is a moot point; given the tendency of British weather to be dull, damp and depressing, "Worse" is highly unlikely.

"Damn you, land-bridge, DAMN YOU!"

     But it's always a possibility.

     There's more to come, which I won't grace this post with, as you can have too much of a good thing.  For example, there's still one baked potato and some spag bol left.

An Infinite Recursive Loop

I'm sorry, II accidentally looked back over my notebook and saw "Replicator Abuse", and - you know, the old brain never stops working, and I immediately wondered - if you had a replicator, could you instruct it to replicate the component parts for another, giant replicator?  Of course it would take a long time, as the replicator I imagine is about the size of a microwave: your government doesn't want you replicating tanks or jet fighters! so the components would need to be of a certain size or smaller.

The first stumbling step towards Conrad's vision

     Of course, once your Giant Replicator is assembled, you can either order it to replicate an Almost-Giant Replicator, or create pieces for an Enormously Giant Replicator.  Your electricity bill is going to be huge, though.

     Then you can command the replicators to build you a vast array of other huge replicators, and you can then command them to build you an instant army of Giant Killer Robots.  World Domination made easy and quick!

<cackles maniacally>

     

*  I know, I know, I'm a terrible person.