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To Coin A Phrase

I shall explicate.  As you should surely know, I frequently post items on BOOJUM! that refer to terrifying revenge or malicious compliance up the wazoo, and in nearly all cases it's a tale from South Canada.  Hence the title.  Because, you see, most of these stories would be illegal and liable to prosecution in This Sceptred Isle and the rest of Europe.  Wonderful labour laws, rubbish for generating content.  Art!

     We of Perfidious Albion even gave the South Canadians a chance to build a new White House, after we got rid of the old one for them, that's how generous we are.

     ANYWAY Original Poster was working in a shop - 'store' to our South Canadian readers - in the rear, receiving deliveries, loading and unloading trucks, assembling furniture, putting it out on the shop floor.  A supervisor position came free, to which he applied but didn't get it, as another worker with more experience got the promotion.  Art!

     A year later this supervisor decided there's more to life than humping crated furniture around and stops showing up for work, without giving notice.  OP did the supervising whilst the store manager  tried to contact the absent supervisor (who was probably chilling on a beach in Thailand) and eventually fired him 4 weeks later.  OP thinks he's a shoo-in for the supervisor role -

     But no.  Otherwise it would be a short Intro, wouldn't it?  Manager not only refuses to approve the promotion, he openly mocks OP.

     What goes around comes around.  OP stops doing the supervision and after 5 days of this the manager notices and comes to rail at him for not doing his job.  Art!

     In true manglement style, the manager agrees that OP isn't worth the supervisor's pay BUT STILL HAS TO DO THE JOB.  I dunno, maybe he was off his meds?  OP points out to Mister Dense that if he's not being paid for the job then he's not going to do it, and to behave with a bit more respect considering they're already a man short.

     So, of course - obviously! - MD fires him.  Yeah, we could see that coming.  OP is a tad bemused, because now the back-end of the store is down to 3 people, not the minimum 5 needed, and none of these people were at all experienced.

     The very next day MD calls him, saying maybe they can negotiate about a promo - at which OP cuts him off, replying that he's not coming back and already has another job, and then hangs up on him.  Art!

I bet that felt satisfying

     It turns out DM was incapable of filling the two empty positions, and the excessive workload led to 2 of the 3 back-end employees resigning as well.  The store closed down and MD was suddenly unemployed.  Karma is sweet! (and has no calorific content).  OP was able to enjoy a little justified schadenfreude (which is also non-fattening).

     

Meanwhile, In Singapore ...

When last we mentioned 'West Point', previously 'SS America', she had sailed into Singapore at the end of January 1942.  This was during the Japanese assault on the island, when things were plainly going badly wrong for the Commonwealth garrison.  SS A/WP was docked in Keppel harbour when Japanese bombers attacked and bore a charmed life as bombs hit all around her, damaging the docks and sinking or badly damaging other ships but missing her.

     She was loaded up with civilian refugees, dockyard workers, spare soldiers and sailors and other human flotsam and left harbour on 30th January.  Her good luck stood fair and low cloud and squally weather prevented any air attack from the Japanese.  Art!

     No doubt all aboard breathed a collective sigh of relief with a heartfelt 'phew!' and exhale.  Next stop Ceylon!

     O, by the way, Singapore capitulated on 15th February before which time the Japanese air force ruled the skies.

A Snake In Salford

We have covered this before, but industrial archaeologist Martin Zero on his Youtube channel dug up more images and ones I'd not seen before.  Yes, we are talking about the Anaconda Cut.

     The River Irwell, you see, meandered a bit along it's route through Salford, and one particular loop was especially prone to flooding.  Art!

     There was nowhere for floodwater to go except into the local housing, and Martin came up with a photograph of the loop's top end, which gives one an idea of how badly people were likely to be affected.  Art!

     The bottom picture is Lower Broughton in 1946, when the area was hit by the worst flooding in 70 years.  It was up to three feet deep in places, and led to a decision to 'cut' the loop by digging a new channel for the Irwell - the Anaconda Cut.  It wasn't very long but it meant no more flooding for Lower Broughton.  Art!

     Whilst under construction.  Finally completed in 1970 and Salford's been flood-free for 53 years since then.

     Photos and pics courtesy Martin Zero.

"The Sea Of Sand"

Sarah is trying to find makework, to keep her thoughts from dwelling on how inaccessible the TARDIS is, having been stolen by the bio-vores.

Thanks,’ she replied moodily.  ‘I think I’ll try and make a meal.  Can you show me where tinned food is kept?’  It was very domestic and rather stereotypical, but it would take her mind off the unpromising situation.

          It took a while, trial and error, a broken tin opener and searching with a torch amongst tins stored in a decrepit mud hut, but Sarah managed a very passable stew, cooked in a big metal ammunition box she scrubbed clean with sand.

          ‘Tinned stew, tinned potatoes, tinned beans, salt and other bits and pieces,’ she declared proudly.  ‘Cooked over three of those little spirit stoves.’

          Tam and Davey were taken dixies of the stew, fell upon it gratefully and devoured it in minutes.

          ‘That were fu- hmph! – that were great,’ declared Tam, handing back the empty dixie.  Davey was too busy scoffing his to reply, soaking up the remains with a stale wad.

          Sarah stood back and looked at the impressive construction the two soldiers had made.  A great six-foot high arc of sandbags, behind which were ammunition boxes of .303 bullets.  Two Vickers machine guns had been set up to fire between narrow slots in the sandbag barrier.

          ‘Doctor Smith said a thick enough barrier of metal would stop the ray guns,’ explained Tam.  ‘And we’ve got the sandbags, too.’

          ‘This is solid ground, as well.  We’re not going to get glassed.’

     Good recovery there, Tam!

Finally -

I've finally started to watch "1917", one of my Christmas presents, with mixed feelings, because as you ought to know by now, I am a fearful bore when it comes to getting the details right in historical war films.  Please don't force me to relive the horror of "Battle of the Bulge" where they have M24 Chaffees pretending to be Shermans, and M47 AMERICAN Pattons pretending to be King Tigers <pause to recover and lower my blood pressure> so - my first impression is that everyone is far too clean, because being in trenches all the time meant you got filthy from the feet up pretty quickly.   We shall see.  We shall see.  Art!

Here In The Rear

 It's That Time Again

When we bait the hook with a sleazy image and hope it mis-directs enough people to make the editorial staff feel justified in their existence.  Hopefully also not causing folks to feel they've been swindled and swear off BOOJUM! until the heat-death of the Universe.  Art!

     Hmmmm well, who knew skating had a sleazy side?  Not Your Humble Scribe.  Vice Vice Baby?

     And with that loaded pun, let us proceed to unleash our linky screed.

2022

BOOJUM!: Band Of Bothers (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

BOOJUM!: All Hail Armoured Underwear! (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2021

BOOJUM!: Hack, Slash And Balderdash! (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

(Nothing for the 5th, I must have gone out for the evening)

2020

BOOJUM!: - And Came Down A Spaceship (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2019

BOOJUM!: Lightning Skrikes (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2018

BOOJUM!: Traffic (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2017

BOOJUM!: Much Of The Rump (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2016

BOOJUM!: Repeater Cheater (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2015

BOOJUM!: I Stand Vindicated! (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2014

BOOJUM!: Pay Attention! There Will Be A Quiz Later (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

Were I To Say "SS America"

You Might Misunderstand

And mis-interpret what I was trying to say, influenced no doubt by that very entertaining and interesting 'counter-factual' by Len Deighton, "SS-GB", which is set a year or so after Nazi Germany successfully invaded This Sceptred Isle.  Art!

     Note that the Teuton font used is Fraktur, which was banned in 1941 because it had too much Jewish heritage to it.  Also note that Craft Ol' Len avoids entirely how the invasion managed to be successful, rather hand-waving it away because there's no way it could have been achieved.

     ANYWAY - you might also be wondering if this is an oblique reference to the South Canadian television series "The Man In The High Castle" written by the inestimable Philip K. Dick.  In Phil's unpleasant alternate reality South Canada is a rump state, sitting between the Nazi-occupied East Coast and the Nipponese-occupied West Coat.  Art!

     Seeing a hoarding with this emblazoned upon it gave Your Humble Scribe a start.

     ANYWAY of course - obviously! - neither of those are what I meant.  'SS America' is the name given to a South Canadian merchant vessel, and when last we looked at her, she'd been taking German and Italian diplomatic legations back to Europe.

     At this point, summer of 1941, the South Canadians were still technically 'neutral', except they were as neutral as Eire and Portugal and leaned distinctly towards the UK.  SS America was to rendezvous at Halifax with a British convoy as part of a six-vessel convoy that would take aboard British troops for transit to India.  SS A took on 6,000 British soldiers and a company of American troops, which meant that any U-boat attack would be upon a South Canadian vessel carrying South Canadian troops.  That kind of provocation would most assuredly lead to a declaration of war.  She was also renamed 'West Point' which is only going to confuse things so she shall remain the SS America in BOOJUM!'s rheumy eyes.  Art!

     As part of convoy WS-12X, SS A sailed under the protection of the US Navy, who provided an aircraft carrier, two cruisers and a flotilla of destroyers.  Quite possibly because of this hefty helping hand, the convoy experienced no problems and arrived at Bombay in late December 1941, by which time South Canada had undergone attack at Pearl Harbour and was now at war with the Teutons, too.

     The next adventure for SS A, after having off-loaded all her troops, was to sail in Convoy BM 11 to Singapore in January 1942.  Yes, that Singapore, the island fortress currently under relentless Japanese attack.  What could possibly go wrong!  Art?

SS America in wartime livery

     Of course, all this is a bit anti-climactic since we all know she survived the war, only to be driven ashore on the Canary Islands and broken in two as the 'American Star'.  That shouldn't be a surprise to you since we wrote about it in the blog a couple of weeks ago, hmmmm?

O Dearie Me!

Conrad said, whilst tweaking the ends of his moustache and rubbing his hands - no simultaneously, you understand, just one action after the other.

     To what do I refer?  The EU's ban on imported Ruffian refined fuels and the imposition of a price cap on this stuff when exported by sea.  According to the ever-reliable Joe Blogs, this is going to really hurt Putin's pockets, because it will also create a synergy with the already-extant crude oil measures.  Art!

40% of Ruffians don't have an indoor toilet

     In fact Joe estimates the annual affect of these measures combined comes to a total of $90 billions or about 5% of the entire Ruffian GDP, at least as it was pre-war.  By now it's probably more like 6% as the Ruffian economy had shrunk by at least 2.5% last year, which is what they admitted to.

     "It's all going according to plan," said Peter The Petrol Pimp.

How To Destroy A Business From Within

Ah yes, another caustic lesson in why South Canadian businesses so often fail.  OP took the first job he could land after leaving the Army, working as a network engineer in IT in a large airport, and he had to stick with it, being an expectant father.  Art!

     He had a manager I classed as a 'Lloyd-George' type; always on hand to take credit for things and always absent when responsibility for failure needed to be taken.  This LGM bodged the transfer of an e-mail system whilst OP was off doing his National Guard fortnight, and when called on the carpet blamed OP for everything.  If anything went wrong, OP got the blame.  Finally, having proof that LGM had made an utter bumbletuck, he was completely ignored by the Chief Information Officer who proceeded to lecture him.  Again.  Conrad at this point is pretty certain that LGM either had blackmail material on CIO or was having an affair with her, because he was a terminal liability, as we shall see.

     At this point OP has had enough and quits on the spot after enduring over 2 years of this nonsense.  Art!

     He immediately gets a much better job with $30 thousand more and far less stress.

     Meanwhile, back at the airport, someone is hired to do OP's old job.  They quit the first time LGM throws them under the bus.   Meanwhile, back at the airport, someone is hired to do OP's old job.  They quit the first time LGM throws them under the bus.   Meanwhile, back at the airport, someone is hired to do OP's old job.  They quit the first time LGM throws them under the bus.

     Yes, this happened three times.  I tell you, LHM had blackmail info on the CIO.

     OP then updates from a couple of years later.  LGM had been escorted out of the building by security, having been caught embezzling airport IT funds to purchase software and hardware for his own start-up.  He was taken to court for the theft of over $1,000,000.  No word on the CIO.

"The Sea Of Sand"

The Doctor has shared rather glum news with Sarah: the invading bio-vores have acquired the TARDIS, forcing him to confront a dilemma.

‘Surely a nuclear bomb can’t destroy the TARDIS?’

          ‘No,’ replied the Doctor patiently.  ‘But don’t forget the HAD System is still functioning.  Under a nuclear attack I hate to think how far away in temporal terms the old girl would vanish to.  Even if she stayed put, I don’t really relish the prospect of trying to release her from being trapped in a cubic  mile of radioactive glass.’

          When they got back to the smokey, hazy depot, the sun had nearly set. 

          ‘Avoid grouping if possible,’ cautioned the Doctor.  ‘The bio-vores have technology that can detect living organisms.  I think we’re safe from an attack here, since there aren’t many of us.’

          ‘Bloody marvellous,’ complained Davey.  ‘Come on, Tam, I know where there’s a crate of Vickers’.  I’m not going to have them nose-goblins creep up on us.’

          Sarah took the opportunity to acquire a change of clothing – a pair of olive drab trousers and a shirt.  She’d have loved a shower, too, and then felt selfish and ungrateful of such shallow thoughts. 

          ‘Keep your sleeves rolled down,’ suggested Roger when she emerged from the mud hut after changing.  ‘Otherwise you’ll burn tomorrow in daylight.’

          The 'Vickers' in question is a heavy machine gun, FYI

Finally -

We're already at count, so I'll keep this coda short and savoury.  As you should surely know, Conrad has been indulging in Korean cookery of late, and whilst clearing out the cupboard that stores all his ingredients, came across a large jar with a rubber seal.  All  it contained were pickled mushrooms, which got transferred to a smaller jar, and now the large one is full of - Art!

     Baechu Kim Chee!  It needs a couple of days to properly mature or ferment NOT 'GO ROTTEN' AS WONDER WIFEY HAS IT and then it's eaten as a side dish or mixed into other recipes.  Go me!

Lewd Crude Dude

 Are You Bemused?

Ha!  Do you see wha - O you do.

     First, an aside.  Yes, already!  I see that there's quite a bit of internet chatter about a certain television program - NO!  Not 'Countdown'.  It's a conversion to television from a computer game - "The Last Of Us".  Art!

     Conrad has never played the computer game and probably never will; computer games eat up your time worse than Quora does.  The premise is that the parasitic fungi Cordyceps jumps the infection gap from insects and infects humans, who undergo a transformation into fungus-riddled homicidal zombies.  The whole world collapses over a long weekend, because it got into staple foodstuffs - wheat flour and sugar are mentioned as infection vectors - that are all delivered to retail outlets at the same time.  Art!

EYES ON THE ROAD!

     Conrad knows this is not how retail logistics works but we'll allow them a pass on that.  No, what I wondered was how NOBODY is talking about "The Girl With All The Gifts", because in that novel (and film) the 'Hungries' are fungus-riddled homicidal zombies, created because Cordyceps jumped the insect-human barrier and infected Hom. Sap.  The author hints that this was done thanks to human intervention, without explaining whom or why.  "I know, let's create a killer biological warfare agent that doesn't stop at political borders!" said nobody sane ever.  Art!

Excellent film, by the way

     ANYWAY of course - obviously! - none of that has to do with crude oil, and indeed this Intro only has a passing reference to crude, because 'Refined Petroleum Products' just doesn't scan or fit in a metre.

     Okay, cast your gin-addled minds back to early December.  A price cap was imposed on Ruffian crude oil being transported by sea, because the G7 and EU and generally The West could audit and control such commerce.  The Ruffians huffed and puffed and ranted and tanted, and then quietly complied, because they could still get $60 per barrel, whereas if they tried to sell it at $80 PB they'd get nothing.

     Now, I have to thank the outstanding Vlogs that Joe Blogs puts out on these matters, because he can explain in terms non-economists can understand, and reduce complex matters to the readily explicable.

RUSSIAN Oil Disaster as New Oil Price Cap & Bans Looms & Russia Signs Supply Deal with Pakistan - YouTube

     That's the link to his most recent on Ruffia.  Art!

     You see, tomorrow a new cap comes into place on refined Ruffian oil products, which include fuels such as petrol, diesel, fuel oil and kerosene.  These are what you end up with after fractional distillation of crude oil, and the chart above shows purchase volumes globally.  The thin red line at the bottom is Chinese purchases, and the equally thin yellow line are Indian purchases.  You can see they buy very little refined Ruffian products, because 1) They are expensive and 2) India and China have their own distillation plant and refineries.  It's far cheaper for them to buy crude and distil it themselves.

     The blue part is European purchases, which will rapidly tail off after 05/02/2023.  The cap is to be set at $100 PB, down to about two-thirds of what the current retail price is, so not only will volumes crash, the revenue from same will decline dramatically, too.  Art!

Ooooh, someone's not happy

     The West and EU and G7 have the Ruffians over a barrel - ha! Do you s O you do - because as with crude oil, they own the marine tankers and nearly all the marine insurance companies that Ruffia needs to use to transport these refined products.  They are going to have to suck it up and comply.  Nor can Peter The Average blithely say 'O I'll just pivot and sell to India and China', because they don't want or need his expensive refined product, and will continue to gouge him for big discounts.  Art!

     This is the chart for crude oil, with that barely-visible vertical line at far right being when the cap came in.  As you can see, European purchases have dwindled to nil, China didn't increase it's purchases by much, and India has almost stopped buying, since their storage facilities are full.  Expect a similar change for refined petroleum exports later this month.

     Right, that's a very long Intro, let's move on sharpish!

Lord Peter's Bafflingly Hard Crossword

Conrad might have had a chance at the previous clue, but not this one.  The - er - 'clue' goes: "Ye gods!  Think also of that godess' name, Whose might two hours on end the mob proclaim (2)."

     You what?  Is this another acronym?  Neither of us are going to get the solution, so let me just add it here: DI

     I think this is a reference to the godess Diana, but don't quote me on that, and Your Humble Scribe has NO IDEA what that second sentence means.  Art!

Ol' Stony Face herself.

"The Sea Of Sand"

Scavenging for equipment, the Doctor is looking to build an atomic bomb, because every man's got to have a hobby. 

The Doctor explained.  He had spotted a tell-tale square imprint in the desert sands that might have been the result of the TARDIS landing once the Hostile Automatic Displacement system stopped operating.  A square imprint, appearing from nowhere.  In coroborration, the Arab caravan travelling from west to east had diverted to investigate the ground-trace. So too had the bio-vores, only since they won the skirmish they had retained the trophy.

‘Where is the TARDIS now?’

‘Probably back at the dig.  Taken there for further study.’

Sarah chewed her lip.  No TARDIS?  That meant she and the Doctor were stranded here in early 1941, stuck in the contemporary without any means of achieving the hypertemporary.  Well, she was stuck.  The Doctor could endure ten times the wait she could without any ill-effects, given his lifespan.  In fact some of his Time Lord mates could well drop by in a decade or two to see what had happened to him.

          ‘So you see we do have a slight dilemma.  Cobble together a crude nuclear weapon and destroy the alien trans-mat complex, at the cost of losing the TARDIS.  Or, find our transport and leave, only for the invaders to over-run this world and destroy our future.’

          Sarah recalled an earlier incarnation of the Doctor, and what he’d said – boasted, really – about the TARDIS.

     An unpleasant dilemma to be upon the horns of, to mangle English a little.

The Big Frieze

Forgive the pun.  You will recall, unless you're a goldfish with a lobotomy, that this word was a Lord Peter Crossword solution.  In contemporary fashion it's an item of interior decoration, yet it's history goes back to antiquity, when it was an architectural feature.  Art!

     There you have a rather weary frieze on a piece of classical Greek architecture.  Technically, it was the central portion of what was an 'entablature', with the architrave being above it and the cornice below.  So now we all know more than we did five minutes ago.  Go us!

Finally -

Conrad is making a batch of Kim Chee, the Korean staple foodstuff, and now has to go downstairs to de-salt the Chinese leaves, then roll them up with the rest of the mixture as a filling.  You may get a picture, you may not - I'm horrid that way.  Art!

NOT MINE!

     There are about a million different types of kim chee out there, because every Korean's grandma had a different recipe for creating same.

Pip pip!

Labour

South Canadians Please Note The Correct Spelling

Conrad is being deliberately obscure here, because 1) He can and 2) It's amusing to keep people guessing.

     Now, we try to avoid Politics here on the blog, so you can bet quite safely that it's nothing to do with the British political party.

     Also, we would avoid anything like childbirth as this is something Conrad is glad he's never had to experience at first hand.

     So, that leaves - working.  Art!

     No, nothing to do with labour or working, I was just struck by the moral dilemma I would face under those circumstances: yes, stealing is WRONG but Dog Buns! - FREE BEER!

     ANYWAY across The Pond in South Canada, employers tend to treat their workers as indentured slaves, going so far as to often break the law, safe in the knowledge that lots of people don't know what legal protection they have.

     Enter the State Labour Board, known by various aliases in different states.  It is a federally-funded body devoted to ensure fair pay for workers, and no employer should ever welcome being on their radar.  Art!

     Let us begin the narrative.  Original Poster (on Quora) was a fresh-faced 18 year old hired into a data entry job straight out of school.  Her boss, the owner, was a bit of a bottomhole who claimed every other person who'd done the job prior had messed it up.  He trained her for two days, then checked her input every day for two weeks before leaving for the day.

     No complaints.

     Then, after 3 weeks, she was suddenly called into BOAB's office and fired, because her work was 'unacceptable'.  Utterly stunned, she asked what she'd done wrong, at which BOAB exploded with rage, told her she had 3 minutes to leave or he'd call the police.  Art!

     Fortunately for OP, her dad was wise in the ways of work.  He knew she should have been cut a paycheck before leaving the building with no nonsense about it being posted out to her.

     So she rang BOAB, who said the cheque would be in the post Monday and never to ring him again.

     Guess what?  No cheque the next week.

     At this point OP realised she'd been the victim of a scam.  BOAB would periodically hire young people to do three weeks work, then fire them and never pay them, gambling that their naievety about the world of work and employment law meant they'd just take it.

     Not OP.  She went to the State Labour Board, probably informed about it's existence by her dad.

     

Sounds forbidding, doesn't it?

     They paid BOAB a visit, and told him he needed to pay OP within 3 days, and to call her no later than mid-day Friday to come collect the paycheck by Friday, as he claimed he couldn't do it straightaway.  If he didn't co-operate then 'further action would be taken.'

     Guess what?  No phone call by Friday noon.

     OP then rang the SLB.

     Monday morning the SLB and OHSA (Occupational Health and Safety Administration, they monitor workplaces and can shut them down instantly and impose swingeing fines) both turned up.  The SLB informed BAOB that he would be prosecuted for failing to pay an employee and to expect his day in court, O and by the way the OHSA are fining you.

     BOAB rang OP, frothing with rage, and in between swears, told her that her cheque was in the post - surprise surprise, it turned up.  She cashed it immediately, which turned out to be wise.

     It doesn't end there.

     Three weeks later she drove past her old workplace and it was closed down and boarded up.  BOAB had gone out of business thanks to the prosecution and fines, all for three weeks pay.

     State Labor Boards.  They have teeth.  Big ones!

Lord Peter Wimsey's Crossword

Conrad is unsure he would have gotten this one, as it's a bit punny yet it doesn't require intimate knowledge of Shakespeare, the Classics, the Bible or acronyms.  "Running all around, never setting foot to floor, If there isn't one in this room there may be one next door (6)"

     Give up?  Okay, the answer is FRIEZE.  Art!

An example

     The word itself has quite a history, coming from French via Latin, where it was originally 'Phrygium', that meaning 'From Phrygia' a region famous for gold embroidery.
     Don't fret if you don't like these crossword articles, there's only seven words left to work on.

More Of Munching

It is an internet cliche that people are fascinated by what you had for lunch, or at least you think they are, when in all probability they couldn't care less.  I shall now show you a picture of food.  Art!

     Those are hand-cut chips from some rather blackish Maris Pipers that must have gotten a good bounce-around in transit, I had to peel loads off them.  And I Ninja'd them on the 'thick-cut' setting when they're not that thick, hence a bit overdone.  Still delicious!  The sausages were split in half and then stuffed with a bit of cheese and a lot of Wonder Wifey's delicious salsa, and were Kreplach! delicious.  

     Edna, the lucky lump, got to lick the plate.

     

"The Sea Of Sand"

Our intrepid survivors have discovered both the crated equipment the Doctor wanted and a crate full of Amaretto bottles which was stamped 'Track sections' - obviously someone had been up to mischief.  The Doctor has bad news for Sarah.

Within an hour both crates they sought had been removed from the stack, then hoisted onto the Sahariana, which made heavy going back to their old rendezvous in the wadi.  Tenente Dominione’s face fell the instant he realised Sergente Capriccio wasn’t amongst the returnees.  Roger handed over the metal tag and the Doctor translated.

          ‘Dead?’ queried Sarah minutes later.  She wasn’t sure how she felt, remembering the Segente’s garlic-laden breath and wickedly-sharp knife when he’d taken her prisoner.  Not a gentle or civil man.

          ‘Killed whilst saving my life, and Tam’s,’ added the Doctor.  Sarah immediately felt like an ingrate and blushed to her boots.

          Within an hour of the three returning to their wadi hideout, argument broke out about where to stay.  Eventually the party voted, eight versus two, to return to Mersa Martuba.  The bio-vore sentries were dead, there were immense amounts of supplies at the depot and food in the wadi had nearly been exhausted.  Plus the Doctor needed a suitable environment in which to build his atomic bomb.

          ‘You and I have more basic worries, Sarah,’ he cautioned the young journalist whilst travelling in the back of the incredibly noisy Chevrolet.  ‘I fear the TARDIS materialised in the desert, right in front of a column of attacking bio-vores.’

          Sarah goggled in anxious disbelief.

          ‘What!  How do you know!’

      A right bit of sherlocking there, Conan Doyle would be proud of you.

Finally -

Right, now for a comfort-break and then it'll be off to take Edna for a trot, I need to get my step-count up, which isn't going to happen sitting here on my hairy white hindquarters tapping away on a keyboard.  Sorry if that paints a picture that you can't unsee, just think of it as - er - background info.

The Short Goodbye

All Those Readers Who Are Not Goldfish

Will probably be bored with this intro SIT BACK DOWN! It is interesting, really.  As you will be aware if you have a sentience level above that of a whelk, Conrad has been doing temp work for just over two months at Footasylum HQ up in Sandbrook Park, Rochdale.

     This had several plus points going for it.  Art!

     None of which are very exciting, so here's a Centurion AVRE (Assault Vehicle Royal Engineers), modified with a dozer blade and a demolition gun firing a 64 pound HESH round that would turn pillboxes into concrete gravel.  It could also carry a giant fascine bundle on the forward hull to fill in ditches o

     ANYWAY one advantage of the job was - no phone calls.  Out of perhaps 40 staff only three would be on phones, and then only taking perhaps half a dozen calls per day.  Conrad has no idea how they got through, there's no contact phone number for Footasylum, a fact that enraged many unhappy customers.  Art!

     Like the other temps, Your Humble Scribe dealt with What's App queries.

     Second, the bus stop at which I caught the 409 bus was mere feet from Tony's Fish And Chips, who do a monstrous Extra-Large Donner on nan that Conrad fell in love with; the thought of this was enough to sustain me through a very long day (which see later).  Art!

Taken from the bus stop

     Then again, it was only a 6-minute bus ride from home, which is a heck of a lot more convenient than an hour and a half into Gomorrah In The Irwell.

     There were negatives, too: doing a 40 week in only four days leaves little time for anything once one got home.  Tea (that kebab again), tomorrow's lunch, blog, bed.  Also, Dog Buns Kreplach! awful music playlists that were Rap, Drime and Grill FAR TOO OFTEN.  And a 15 minute walk from the bus stop that turned into a 25 minute one at weekends, because the back gate was shut.

     Conrad went out in a twinkle of glory, as I had done one of my Pomes, and here is the wretched doggerel.

I am about to make my way

So you'll no longer hear me say:

"I do not like the sound of this,

In fact it sounds like a pile of diss*"

Nor fervent requests for MORE BAGPIPES

And other exotic music types.

What I won't miss will be the rap 

 - unless 'twere played upon a dudelsack.

And - was that the sound of lowing cattle?

Why no! 'Tis but a passing rapping battle.

Young folk today - I mean what the heck,

He died in vain did poor Jeff Beck.

Jeff**: The guitarist's guitarist

Nor will I miss the dread canal towpath;

One false step and it's an early bath.

No more trudging Queensway in the dark:

I walk TEN MILES to get to Sandbrook Park!

I cannot finish until I mock -

My prime function - What's App, Doc?

     Notably I lied, it was a little under a mile weekdays and just over at the weekend.

     Presentation over, I was modestly surprised by a round of applause.

     Conrad retained his Temp Pass since otherwise I'd not get out of the building and nobody asked for it back - i wonder, could I still sneak in?  That's just me thinking aloud if anyone from Footlocker is- Ooops! sorry Footasylum is listening in.

The target
NO! Sorry, I meant to say 'The place I used to work in'.  Honest.

  

What Desperation Looks Like

As you may be aware, the Bloaty Gas Tout is having trouble exporting his oil and gas out of Ruffia nowadays.  Not only has the volume being exported fallen dramatically over the past year, the price has also fallen AND there's a cap on how much he can charge for a barrel of crude oil.  His regime ranted and tanted about how they wouldn't pay, it was incredibly unfair, Russophobia, you passed the port the wrong way round the table, etcetera - and then quietly complied.  Art!

     

     As Joe Blogs reported on his excellent Youtube vlog, Ruffia is now about to export oil to Pakistan, in a logistically complex process of railroading it to the Afghan border, transferring it to tankers, driving it to the Pakistan border and then loading it into Pakistani tankers.  

     The kicker is the volume being exported - 1,000 tons.  This might sound like a lot but it's a mere fraction of a fraction compared to crude transported by sea-going tankers.  It translates as 7,000 barrels, or $400,000 dollars worth.  And the further kicker is that Pakistan is almost bankrupt; they may not be able to even pay for it.

     FYI, a supertanker can carry 2,000,000 barrels of oil, or 285 times this shipment.

"The Sea Of Sand"

The survivors of the Italian and British garrisons are trawling through crated Italian supplies, attempting to get at equipment the Doctor wants.

‘Wellll – I dabble!’ beamed the Doctor, hoping not to become a focus of attention.  ‘You know how it is – widely read, widely travelled.  Been around a bit, seen a few things.’

          Roger, using the crane, swung a crate (“track spares for M11/39” according to his notations on the flimsies) over and across, dumping them abruptly on the gravelly ground.  His lack of care was rewarded with a shattered clinking sound and the release of a puddle from the crate.  A cloyingly sweet smell filled the air.

          ‘What the hell is in there!’ he asked nobody in particular, sounding astonished.

          Tam sniffed. 

          ‘Booze, sir.’

          ‘Amaretto,’ corrected the Doctor, sniffing also.  ‘Italian almond liquer,’ he informed the two British soldiers.

          When they prised the crate open with crowbars, they discovered twelve layers of liquer bottles, each layer consisting of twelve bottles.  The bottom two layers had been broken by Roger’s rough treatment, but one hundred and twenty intact bottles remained.

          Tam whistled.

          ‘This is not a licence to get paralytic, Corporal Mickleborough!’ snapped Roger sternly.

          ‘Did I mention whisky as effective against bio-vores?’ mused the Doctor aloud.  ‘For “whisky” read “Amaratto”.’  He cast a cynical eye over the crate of bottles.  Pretty obviously, someone had been up to mischief here, hiding alcohol in what ought to be a wooden box full of tank tracks.

     Hmmm what a serendipitous discovery!  How crafty the author, because you can guarantee this event is going to be a Chekhov's Gun moment.

Lord Peter's Make-You-Very-Crossword

What next, one wonders?  Well, wonder no longer, here's another of Ol' Dot's 'clues': "Whole without holes behold me here, My meaning should be wholly clear (6)"

     You know, I might have managed to solve this one, it's relatively straightforward for Dot.  The solution is: INTACT

Finally -

Okay, I wasn't planning on taking a trip into Royton BUT there is a parcel Wonder Wifey wants dropping off at Wraggs, which also offers an Evri service, and Your Humble Scribe forgot to get fat sausages yesteryon whilst doing the weekly shop, because he was very interested in her description of how you can slit them lengthwise, then add grated cheese and salsa and bake in the Ninja.  Conrad: thinks with his stomach.  True dat.

*  SFW at all times

**  Fingers and thumbs insured for £7,000,000

The Tautology Of Time

Yes, Back To Chronological Loops

Excuse me whilst I finish listening to Inhaler and "Cheer Up Baby".  I'd not heard of this band before Monday, until they cropped up on someone's playlist at the office - probably Alan's since his taste and mine seem to be similar.

     Here an aside.  He described, in passing, what must be one of the most Single Bachelor Cuisine ideas ever: a baked potato with a Pot Noodle filling.  You know Conrad, ever curious and driven by his stomach.  Big shop today <nods and winks>.

     Anyway, Inhaler.  Art!

When even a Blunt sword is dangerous

     We can have that because "Edge Of Tomorrow" is a time-loop film.  And it gives me an opportunity to make a terrible pun.  Sorry, Emily.

     Where were we?

     O yes, time-loops.  I did scout ideas from the rest of the family about other possible films or stories on this theme, because five heads are better than one.  I do have one of my own recall: "The Time Travellers", which I have seen.  Art!

     This one involves scientist experimenting with a time-portal that allows them to step into 2071 AD, where nearly all civilisation has been destroyed by global nuclear war.  Then the portal vanishes.  Ooops.  They manage to construct another, and go back in time to seconds before originally moving through the portal.  They then realise they've mucked up time and go through the portal again 100,000 years into the future.  This triggers a loop that speeds up and -

     - the film ends.  Pretty bleak.  Art!

     Moving sideways in time, it's an electric line - no, sorry, those are the lyrics to "Silver Machine" by Hawkwind, aren't they?  Moving to a different medium, there is the short story "A Little Something For Us Tempunauts" by the incomparable Philip K. Dick.  Art!

     This is a genuine child of the Cold War, with South Canada and the Sinister Union both engaged in a race to travel through time - the Sinister's name for their time-travellers is 'Chononauts', IIRC.  In this bleak - that word again - narrative, the US tempunauts manage only a few days travel into the future, and one decides to sabotage their 're-entry' back to the start date and point, in a somewhat nihilistic gesture, because the result is an infinitely-repeating time-loop.  For the whole universe.  

     On a slightly lighter note (not that it's particularly hard to be lighter) there is "The Key To Time" from the BBC's premier dramamentary, 'Doctor Who'.  Art!

     There you  see The Doctor, The Key itself and the perfectly delicious Romana PUT YOUR TONGUES BACK IN YOU SLOBBERING PERVERTS which is actually a contraction of her real name, which is extremely long.  At one point in "The Armageddon Factor" the Doctor manages to gimmick The Key to temporarily protect himself and Romana from attack, by throwing the bad guys in their armed starship into a time loop.  Art!

Guys, Bad, Two of

     The thing is, the time loop keeps stretching longer the more it runs, so it behoves the Doctor and Romana to get about their business quick smart, since if it runs long enough they'll get nuked.

     Okay, so we've had film, novels and television.  What media is left to plunder?  Why, comics of course!  Art!

     Yes, good old "2000AD" and here we have a story where the esteemed Doctor Dibworthy is trapped in a loop, forever inventing different methods of time travel, at first thanks to the inspirations of ripples in a cup of tea.  The next method is studying the serendipitous - not a word you expected to read today - wrinkles in a lump of crumpled-up paper.  Good luck, Doctor Dibworthy.

     There seems to be a lot more time loop material than I realised, which means you might be getting even more of going round in circles.  Good thing?  Bad thing?  Meh thing?  Only you can tell!

 There seems to be a lot more time loop material than I realised, which means you might be getting even more of going round in circles.  Good thing?  Bad thing?  Meh thing?  Only you can tell!

 There seems to be a lot more time loop material than I realised, which means you might be getting even more of going round in circles.  Good thing?  Bad thing?  Meh thing?  Only you c

     Ooops!  Had our own little loop there.  Sorry*.

More Of That Exigious Crossword

Just testing.  It's about the most opposite of exigious you can get.  Our next oblique clue - actually it makes 'oblique' look 'incredibly obvious'.  "An epithet for husky fellows, That stand, all robed in green and yellow (5)."

     You're not going to get this one, trust me, so we'll just get on with the solution, which is: AWNED.

     Ah,  No, got no idea.  Collins Concise no help.  Google?

     GOT IT!  The 'green and yellow' refers to grain before and after it ripens, and 'husky' refers not to the dog, nor to being roughly-spoken, but to the husks of grains.  Look up AWN.

     Blimey, that was an effort.

"The Sea Of Sand"

Our gallant band are busy shifting literal mountains of crates in order to get at supplies the Doctor needs, slow hard work.

‘You can’t lift this stuff with your bare hands,’ he warned, producing a pair of stout, battered leather gloves.  He passed a pair of crowbars to Tam and Doctor Smith, indicating how far they needed to shift the outer boxes in the stack.

          Tam found that Doctor Smith was far stronger than he looked, able to help shift wooden crates surprisingly easily, which gave the tough Geordie cause to pause and wonder.

          ‘What made ye chuck petrol over that nose-goblin?’ he asked, wanting a diversion from the slow, hard work.

          ‘Petrol evapourates rapidly and especially so in a high ambient temperature, and the latent heat of vapourisation, when applied to the epidermis of a non-excretory individual – ah.  Sorry.  In English?  The “nose-goblins” don’t sweat, Tam.  They have a very efficient system of keeping their body temperature in balance, probably based on a super-dense capillary  network.  Liquids like petrol, or after-shave, or even whisky, would dramatically destabilise that balance when they evapourate from the skin.  The “nose-goblin” goes into shock.’

          Tam nodded wisely, grateful for the slightly simpler explanation.

          ‘You’re a bit of a Renaissance man, Doctor Smith,’ announced Lieutenant Llewellyn, busily hauling chains on the one-ton crane and panting in rhythm whilst doing so.  ‘Biology, atomic physics, neurology, improvised weapons.’

     Ah yes, flattery, that's always a way to get round the Doctor.

Not A Problem Any Longer

One of the difficulties at catching the bus home from my recent temp job was that the bus stop was outside Tony's Fish And Chip Shop, and directly opposite the Blue Diamond Chinese restaurant and just across from the Sajaan Indian restaurant.  Consequently you'd get cars parking up in the 'Bus Stop' markings to go get their scoff, making it awkward for the bus to position itself.

     Then there were the recent diggings-up of the pavement, which reduced the space for parking even more.  Art!

     But no longer a problem!

Finally -

Your Humble Scribe did not fancy doing the weekly shop last night, not after only getting home at 19:45, so it's due to be done tonight.  Thus I need to go down to the kitchen and see what we lack and what we need and what we want - which are not the same things.

Chin chin!

*  It did up the word count, mind.