Helium Horses Now Available!

Soubriquet Labs is happy to announce that the new lightweight horses are now available.
We recommend the carrying of sandbags and water-ballast during all long distance rides. Customers are warned against riding over water without wearing suitable flotation aids, as any outbursts of equine flatulence can result in a sudden loss of altitude.

Walrus Gets His Birthday Gift

via: across the board blogspot

Steampunk Zeppelin?

No, it's The Corn Exchange in Leeds, (Yorkshire, England). In the 1970s the interior was a big open space, with the desks of the corn merchants in rows. Time moves on. Corn selling is by different means now, and this lovely building is now full of shops.
It was built in 1862, and was seen then as a stunning piece of modern architecture. The same architect, Cuthbert Broderick, designed the Leeds Town Hall, an altogether more conventional building. In the Corn Exchange, though, he excelled, using an altogether new technology to create the broad pillarless span of the roof. This was a period where Victorian engineers were creating wide arched railway stations, and also circular domes, but this, an elliptical dome, to me this is a masterwork, before its time. And if Broderick had lived to see the great airships, I think he'd have been well placed to become an aviation designer.

Flood Driving.

I do have reservations about posting this. Truth is, those police officers were probably on their way to some thing that desperately needed their presence.
But then. What muppetry from the driver. It's a Renault van, not a big truck, or Land Rover. It's a diesel engined vehicle, so although it has no water-fearing HT leads, Renault, in the past, have been a bit notorious for low engine air intakes.
The driver should, of course, be trained to cope. And the first rule of flood driving is to know the water depth. He did not wait long enough to properly gauge that. And he should have proceeded at a gentler pace.
If you get the speed right, you minimise the splashing, and form a bow-wave, which sails along in front of you, leaving a lower trough under the front of the vehicle.
This driver, in all probability wrecked the engine. When a diesel engine ingests a lump of water, the results are not pretty. Very strong things bend or break. The engine does not run again.
At half the speed, they would have driven out the other side. Reason for the stop was incompetent driving, no other.
Any emergency vehicle driver should know the adage, "It's better to get there a little bit late, than not get there at all."

Me? A smartypants? Hmm. Well yes. I do drive through deep water, on a fairly regular basis... rather deeper than that. And I've yet to stuff an engine.

The floods were recent. Judging by the voices, I'd place the incident in South Yorkshire, or maybe just over the border in Derbyshire.

Update...
My estimate, based on the video and examination of a similar van is that the water was between seven and nine inches deep.
I note 11 hits on this site from a Police-Net ISP, resolving to Sheffield.... Comments, guys?

On Not Posting.

Sometimes in my life, I've been a prolific writer. People told me I should write.
I do, constantly, in my head, as I go about my daily life.
But give me a keyboard, and I am often struck dumb. Not for me the discipline of a thousand words before lunchtime, every day. J.K.Rowling, you have nothing to fear from me.
I quite like the idea of inhabiting a lighthouse on an island, or some remote headland.
The Lighthouse at Cape Wrath, the northerlymost point of the Scottish Mainland rather appealed to me. What a beautiful place.
I'm not afraid of solitude, I don't need shopping malls and cinemas, and to be honest.... It might be a good idea to leave behind the broadband connection.
The computer is a great tool for eating up time, and allied to the World Wide Web, oh dear.... I get lost in there. I can wander for hours... Days even.
But Write? this blog was at first, a bit of an experiment, I wondered if it might stimulate me to creativity. So far, that has not often happened, instead, I use it, I think, as a scrapbook, where I place things which I like, things which amuse me, leave them here for you.
You.
The mystery reader.
Some of the regular visitors I know, in a way, I read their blogs, wonder at their creativity, enjoy their stories.
Others come by strange routes.Search engines mostly. Some referrals from other blogs. And that intrigues me too.
Who is the person from Ulan Bator, Outer Mongolia, who keeps visiting? I wonder if it was because I posted music by Yat Kha, from Tuva?
Or some other link I don't know?
Recently.
Well, for quite a while, I've not posted anything much, or not anything really requiring much of me. And I'm really busy, and a bad organiser, so I might as well post a few things tonight, in the spirit of..... of.... of?
See, I really still don't have any idea what all this is about. Feel free to enlighten me if you know.

Something or other Shoeday.

A keen blogspot poet and fashionista started something she called 'Fantasy Shoe Day'
I started noticing bizarrities of shoe imagery on my wanderings within the web, and either posted links to her or set them up here.
She, however, for personal reasons stopped blogging, which was a loss to the rest of us, leaving me with a backlog of silly shoe pics....

And of course, I lose track of where I found them, the whys and wherefores.
Here are a few.
There might be more, sometime.

freddy the rat perishes

By Don Marquis, in "archy and mehitabel," 1927

listen to me there have
been some doings here since last
i wrote there has been a battle
behind that rusty typewriter cover
in the corner
you remember freddy the rat well
freddy is no more but
he died game the other
day a stranger with a lot of
legs came into our
little circle a tough looking kid
he was with a bad eye

who are you said a thousand legs
if i bite you once
said the stranger you won t ask
again he he little poison tongue said
the thousand legs who gave you hydrophobia
i got it by biting myself said
the stranger i m bad keep away
from me where i step a weed dies
if i was to walk on your forehead it would
raise measles and if
you give me any lip i ll do it

they mixed it then
and the thousand legs succumbed
well we found out this fellow
was a tarantula he had come up from
south america in a bunch of bananas
for days he bossed us life
was not worth living he would stand in
the middle of the floor and taunt
us ha ha he would say where i
step a weed dies do
you want any of my game i was
raised on red pepper and blood i am
so hot if you scratch me i will light
like a match you better
dodge me when i m feeling mean and
i don t feel any other way i was nursed
on a tabasco bottle if i was to slap
your wrist in kindness you
would boil over like job and heaven
help you if i get angry give me
room i feel a wicked spell coming on

last night he made a break at freddy
the rat keep your distance
little one said freddy i m not
feeling well myself somebody poisoned some
cheese for me im as full of
death as a drug store i
feel that i am going to die anyhow
come on little torpedo don t stop
to visit and search then they
went at it and both are no more please
throw a late edition on the floor i want to
keep up with china we dropped freddy
off the fire escape into the alley with
military honors

archy

Rainy Days and Mondays