Flickering Torches

 Here is a three way split DL and review of The Flickering Torch mystery. For those not in the know, this is one of those Hardy boys stories that got a full on revised edition, totally different from the original.

Here in the UK we just got a condensed edit of the original and the new version was ignored entirely. A fitting end as its not very good.

Original.

The original and UK version revolve around thefts of silkworms from Asa Grable's experimental farm out in the wilds of the Bayport countryside. There is a parallel story about Fenton Hardy looking into thefts of supplies from road construction jobs and that. Gee could they be tied in.

The story is a good one, the experimental farm, which looks into future farming methods such as growing hydroponically (soilless mediums) and using horses to get around. Down to the pay off and spoiler whatever Cobalastrum is (I'm guessing some sort of rare earth) the gang are digging up under Widow Trumper's property.

It all sounds feasible and relatable in this day and age so why it got such a bad remake version is anyones guess.

African Lily. 

A minor thing from this, This plant with the vile scented pollen is not African and not a lily. So what is it?

My guess is some sort of Amorphophallus species. AKA Titan Arum. It's not a lily, it's not African and it smells bad. Plus it's also huge and rare. 

Asa Grable and his "assistant" Archibald

I know this is a horrible modern take on this, but, reading between the lines, these two have to be a couple of poofs right. They come across as a couple in the story. Archie deeply cares for his boss, if you read right, whether that crosses the line into a full on relationship is never expressed, but feels like it is.

Anyway Original and condensed UK version is available here and here

Remake

This version is along with the Flying Express one is one of the worse of the two modern Hardy boys mysteries. 

Want to know how bad? The boys form a folk rock band and as the youth say its cringe. 

Does anyone remember the Harry Enfield bit where he says I like that, its got a good beat, style of patronizing condescension. It's this all  the way through. And where as the original were lights from the road crew used to signal. The Flickering torch in the remake is either a youth club or an oil rig.

The band is as follows, if you care: 

Frank Rhythm guitar

Joe     Lead guitar

Biff    Bass guitar

Tony Prito Drums

Phil Cohen Organ

Chet Morton is not part of the band, as, although it would totally be canon him learning an instrument. He is of course building a plane. That's right, a plane in his back yard.

Of course its all connected the club is used as a front for peddling radioactive material and the junk yard, where the boys and Chet visit is also a front too.

If you want to know more, then you can read it here.

Review of 2021 pt3.

 So for the final part of the round up of the year. You know the deal, it's all the stuff I've forgotten over the past two posts and its also any books, films, online vids or games which I can shoehorn in.

Books.

Been going through the Hardy boys back catalogue now, for the past two years. We have Flickering Torch to upload tomorrow. btw. But I've been consistently surprised on how good the original stories are. Where its a sly paeon to mental health in Secret of the Caves to some weird cross dressing Chinese in Footprints under the window. There's been something to give food for thought. 

Also new Jack Reacher, Better off Dead isn't all that sadly, will have to see if it gets better.

Gaming.

Have recently gotten me a cheap Switch lite. It has a Euro Charger and a whopping 128gb card in it. So how I got it so cheap, hell knows. All I can say is, I'm now playing current era games. 

My current 3 faves are. 

Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin. 

Imagine Harvest Moon / Story of Seasons. Now cut down all your crop choices to just growing rice. In obsessive detail. The other half is a platform beat em up, where you wail on various woodland creatures. But it's mainly rice cultivation and talking with the various humans you are exiled on this god forsaken island with.

The best part is the end of year one where everyone brings in the rice harvest and sings a traditional folk song to do so. Spine tingling stuff.

Suikoden: Tsugumareshi no ki. PSP

Konami's last ever Suikoden, on the PSP. It allows you some brief time travel in a select area back 100 years via a magic tree. You cannot leave the area and are reliant on your ancestors to deliver the messages and deliver the tree saplings. Apart from that its good. A good B tier PSP RPG. Makes you wonder what else is on their list.

Cave Story. PSP homebrew.

Had to rebuild my SD card interface as the original cracked and the SD card got corrupted. So this and a few other gems were downloaded. It's been on a few systems, but the PSP version is actually a pretty nice port. Its a platform run n gun style game, where you have to rescue the cute Mimigas and have to stop a bad guy from turning the world to shit. Via berserk red flowers. 

Finally a little Youtube to calm my soul.

The only thing I can recommend is a 40 minute deep dive into Trackers and the MOD community. Seriously fuck Fl studio and the likes. This is still how you make music.

Review of the Year Pt2

 This is our annual round up of what was good part and bad in the year, but part 2. Traditionally focusing on all things TV.

The most depressing thing is that there is hardly any good stuff now its all middle of the road crap. If there is a bunch of adverts in here its because I've got more enjoyment out of these more than anything else, over the year.

First of all the good.

Inspector Dalgleish mysteries Channel 5.

A nice reboot of the P D James mysteries in a style similar to Endeavour but set somewhat later in the mid 70's. Not that woke and with a nice attention to detail. And for once didn't sleep through it.

Vermin Media ad. My old mans a junglist. 

Thanks for reminding me of an era in pirate radio where every cunt, and I mean every cunt wanted to be an MC. Feels like the end of old pirate radio and this is its epitaph. And yeah its on point that his daughter would be a grime MC and not a junglist. 

Marc Jacobs Daisy.

This has a strange vibe almost like an old Chriddof parody, I've been playing Safely remove parasites and their eggs over the music and it works pretty well.

K Dolce and Gabber gabber hey. ad.

Don't care for the ad just tab off and play bring the noise by public enemy and thank me later.

Miranda awards for televisual effluence.

The Watch.

Do you want a woke version of Terry Pratchetts the Nightwatch / Guards Guards. Where half the characters appear for oppression Olympics points. You do, how about we Kill off Detritus the troll after episode 1. Make death look like shit, Vetinari is a woman and fuck it. Memory hole Sergeant Colon and Nobby Nobbs. Cos those stories are all about Colon and Nobbs, and Keel.

Oh and CMOT Dibbler is a fucking cripple. Its shot on a budget of 20p and if that is not bad enough its a fucking mess if you've ever read any of Pratchett's work. Oh and before I forget Commie goblins literally before snuff, and the football one made them.

Review of the Year

 Happy Christmas. If you're a regular, Hah, you'll know what's coming but if you are new this is the time of year where I do a big round up of tracks I've heard that are good and bad. 

First up the good.

Can't say I've heard a lot of stuff that can be classed as good this year. Whereas 2020 kept us out the office, this year its fully distanced hell for you all, so Kiss FM is back on.

Doge Cat (Doja Cat) Wumma (Woman)

Could really do without the rap in this but have been spamming the acapella of this and waiting for someone to do a decent remix. The original isn't bad but its afrobeat so not good.

Justin Bieber Peaches.

It's not bad, but 2010 me still thinks the best thing he's done is get killed on CSI.

Noizu summer 91.

I know you're trying to be an oldskool hardcore track with the Angelo Badalamenti samples like Moby but he never did that gay ass drop back then and its what kills it for me. Listen to DJ Seduction or Manix to see how its done.

Black Madonna We Lost Dancing

I don't care what you call yourself now, this is still the best thing Kiss aired all year. And passable house at that.

Bad

Thanks to the drill explosion on the charts, this year is much worse than ever.

Russ Millions, Tion Wayne and Arr Tard Body.

Drill is probably the worst music that has been invented and perhaps the best example to kids, stay in school and don't listen to this shit. You wonder why kids stab each other. This.

Honourable mention. Arr Tard Oliver Twist and that other track he did that rips of T2 feat Jodie Heartbroken. Both stinkers.

Topic ATB. 9pm Till I Come

No one, needs to have a corny vocal line added to this, its fuck awful and the original wasn't all that either. This is some train wreck update.  On the upside there is a nice guitar cover of this that sounds like Fleetwood Mac.

Runners up. Aya doing glitched out pop on Bandcamp, Anthony Rother adding a free electro album for Xmas also Bandcamp. Ventla's daily synth jams on twitter, which are an utter joy to behold. Seriously dubbed out toys and payphones. Oh and Autechre doing a mix for Sophie just before they 42% themselves taking a selfie, the most Rod Hull thing ever.

 

Round up again.

 Not a lot going on here at the moment. Saw the lights up town yesterday and managed to dodge the antivax cucks that have swallowed up the right as of late. As a bonus finally managed to get secret Santa done. Which as a mindless, soulless robot, hate with a vengeance. 

Also have my third jab to sort out which is going to be problematic, as I normally take a day off to do this but seeing as its Christmas, will have to wangle some after work appointment, which means another dead arm and aches for a few days.

Apart from that its fine.

Nazi Eastenders

 So it looks like 30 years after the main stronghold of fascism in London died off, we're getting new Nazi's in Eastenders of all places.

A word of warning now, I don't watch Eastenders much, anymore. After the pandemic killed it off for a while, I did other things and learned to not waste my time with the soaps. Apparently, the guy in question is the cab drivers son and his sister is dating sister killer and Muslim convert Bobby Beale.

Worse, looking at the few episodes I've seen, he seems to be a massive strawman and the type of racist not seen since the BNP were run out of Welling back in the late 90's.  

I know that railing on woke culture is a thing, in fact one of my favourites. Looking at people push back against activists isn't racist, nor is questioning cancel culture or feminism. Hell even poking back at the science and  SARS 2 Electric Boogaloo even though the right have turned into largely vaccine cucks. 

FYI I'm pro science, abortion and pro vax. I'm also pro shutting the fuck up. If you have a story I do not need to hear it.

Anyway back on track, Eastenders, and apparently the only place in London in the last 30 years that hasn't gotten a mosque is apparently Walford. That's the east end of London where Brick lane is largely Bangladeshi, or taking the 5 bus along from Canning Town to Romford and looking at the amount of Masjids and South Asian owned shops, with only the Hall Churches from the Africans posing a real challenge to the status quo. 

Yeah, that east London.

Because apparently we're in a grip of a Far Right explosion (3 men and a dog, as always). That is the only reason we've gotten a far right candidate, and yeah, he's a right cunt. The sort that beat up cab drivers for being Asian with his fruity little gang of far right fags. 

You know we've suffered 7/7. trucks of peace outside Downing Street, an attack that was repelled by some dude with a Narwhal tusk, and a horrific attack at Streatham, and I'll leave it up to you to guess at who carried out these attacks. 

But you know, we never got the slightest mention of these in the show. not even 30 odd years back when Steve Lawrence and Rolan Adams was killed by the fash. And fuck me, back then it would have been much more on the nose and relevant than making a right wing character some 30 years after the event's took place

In other words, how come, after all these years we get one strawman Nazi on Eastenders and yet at the same time, not one Chinese family or even main character.

 

Acid Anniversary The top ten acid.

 This is according to Computer Music magazine, who coincidentally are celebrating their 303rd issue with all things TB303. They've ceased to be relevant as they've long since deprecated their tracker and demoscene column but as its acid, I've decided to bite the bullet and get a copy.

It's a bit of a strange one this, with it very much on the you will rent and be happy Roland cloud subs model rather than the various devilfish, TT303 clone hardware. 

Props for putting up with Phocyon and Yooz for the acid software, but nothing on Propellerheads Rebirth or Signaldust's Dolphin for freeware.

Now we come to the main track list and its a bit strange to say the least. The official line up is this:

A Guy Called Gerald Voodoo Ray

Josh Wink / Winx Higher State Of Consciousness

Phuture Acid Tracks

Fat Boy Slim Everybody Needs a 303

Hardfloor Acperience1

Aphex Twin . . . 

Orbital Chime

Imagination . . .

808 State Pacific State

Orange Juice Rip It Up

First of all both the 808 State and Guy Called Gerald Tracks can be dealt with together as they are from the same heritage and Gerald Simpson himself was a member of 808 State at one time.

Pacific State has a great making of on Instagram of all places, thanks to 808 state trying to get it re released along with their old back catalogue from ZTT. FYI it's Graham Massey on sax on this, but really has no acid and for me I'd sub out Pacific State for Dr Lowfruit Newbuild, as that is proper acid.

Second Orange Juice Rip It Up and the unspecified tracks from Imagination can also be dealt with in one paragraph, they are both early users of the Roland 3o3, for bass sounds. Orange Juice doesn't do it for me whereas Imagination are the sort of disco sound a mate of mine listens to, and is very well done.

I would put the one UB40 track that treats the 303 with reverence here but I'll go with Ice T Squeeze the Trigger simply because what rap track these days would use both the 303 and TR909 drums for backing.

The third lumping of Hardfloor, aka Oliver Bondzio and Ramon Zenker and the first ever acid track by Phuture (culled down from an hour long tape session IIRC) Even if I would go for stuff like Hardfloor Insert Coin or Phuture Will Survive, They're classics and can't be touched.

The final accumulation is Winx Higher State and Fatboy Slim, whereas they're both good tracks I would definitely go for more of a modern house style like, Posthuman or Lauren Flax in place of Fatboy slim.

Higher state is an anthem though and has to stay.

Orbital I really can't think of anything with a 303 they did that can replace Chime for it being an out and out choon. 

Which leaves us with the unspecified Aphex Twin track. The text says the acid version of Windowlicker, which is all well and good but they overlook Cock Ver10. or Steppingfilter 101 from Analord 1 which make a much stronger case for inclusion. The former being typical Aphex chopped breaks and style, the latter being a real melodic acid track.

Honourable mentions go to, Recondite Tie In just for being lovely and Aaliyah Try Again which I've always corrupted to crash the plane.

Days out.

Had a few nights out, including a talk and our annual Xmas dinner.

The talk was by Paul Hoxey, and covered new avenues down the Mantaro river Peru. Largely due to new roads opening up the area, and largely because of mining reasons that this can be explored now.

He reckons he's found a few new species, including a short flowered Cleistocactus and a few species of Corryocactus he can't place. Also a Lymanbensonia with red flowers which looks boss.

My other day out was our Xmas meal at a pub down in Petts Wood. A lovely old building, that sadly was quite cold and such. We were in a back room that had high ceilings which didn't help, the upside of this was the food was nice and unlike work I don't have to pretend not to drink to fit in. Which is nice.

Footprints Review

 So Footprints Under The Window. 

Is one of those stories that got a modern as well as a classic edition, and for once, both stories run along the same lines. Sort of.

Revised edition.

The story revolves around refugees taken from a fictional island nation off of French Guiana, ending up in Bayport and targeting a local  tech start up called Micro-Eye, to nick the plans of an advanced satellite camera. Or such.

I always imagined that French Guiana was one of those countries that had been renamed along the lines of Belize, but, no it's still French Guiana. The island chain off the coast, The Huellas (way ass aka footprints islands) are a sort of micro Cuba, a dictatorship run by Juan Posada that the boys visit over the course of their investigation.   

There is involvement from a local tycoon called Orrin North, who predictably turns out to be the main culprit. Along with Posadas right hand man Bedoya, they end up getting trapped in a rusted hulk of a ship before being sprung out by their father.

Notes.

There are a few common points about this, refugees from a foreign nation, a Laundry company being involved and Orrin North as the main criminal. It still stands up as a story, even if there is some high tech nonsense tacked on for the modern era.

Part of the plot involves a keyhole limpet used as a dead drop for messages, not found in this part of the coast. It also gives a range of where the Hardy's actually live. Wikipedia says its found from New Jersey to Brazil and looking on a few maps its sort of cuts across Chesapeake bay with Maryland as its limit. Which means Bayport can be found around New Jersey or at the most New York State. Looking at a map there are a ton of small islands on the East Coast in that vicinity so that area makes sense.

Original Edition.

The original edition revolves around the disappearance of a former pillar of the Chinese community and someone doping the fuck out of Aunt Gertrude as she travels via a steamer back to Bayport. Also the launderette that the Hardys used being a front for smuggling Chinese nationals into Bayport with cooperation from Orrin North.

A word of warning, this is an old book and if you aren't comfortable with every fresh off the boat Chinese basically being a whopping stereotype, then this is not for you, hell even an unwoke bastard like me finds it hard going trying to work out what they're saying half of the time.

There are two stereotypes here for you, an evil Fu Manchu type that runs the laundry now (Called Louie Fong) and various hapless immigrants who seem to have trouble with their L's and R's (is that even a thing in Chinese,).

Although if you want a modern thing, they dress up some poor dude they rescue as a girl to smuggle back to their home as a safe house. So convincing is it that Callie and Iola get jealous and Chet Morton tries to hit on her / him. 

Notes.

There are no vacation trips out of the country in the old Hardy Boys books. Nor are any of Fentons staff like Jack Wayne or Sam Radley encountered either. I wonder if they are products of the revised edits.

This seems to be the last of the books where the boys use their bikes, the roadster they drive round in is a heavily restored car bought during the Shore Road mystery.

The big fight at the docks, amongst the Chinese reminds me of something, maybe an old news story, but still seems modern. I can imagine them running a boot sale stall now, peddling bent DVDs instead of a laundry service.

Anyway when complete you can download both books here and here.

Ilford trip and cactus news

 This is just a few lines to basically say, I've decided to cross over back to the other side of the river again. I haven't been down that way in ages, and every time I go there there seems to be less charity shops and more nutters out.

The way  I go is via Gants Hill tube. You can exit and walk through the park to end up on Ilford high street. Occasionally you'll see a rat in the park, but mostly its all about the ducks and geese and of course the squirrels.

This time they seemed to have their squirrel spawner set up to 11 as there was an absolute load of them scurrying around. Setting still for a moment gets you at least three come up to see if you have any food for them and kinda felt bad not having any monkey nuts for them to hand out. By my counting I must have seen 30 or so of them just walking through. After that Ilford wasn't all that.

This sort of thing.

New species to be split from Antimima.

I'm part of a Facebook group dedicated to the more popular Mesembryanthemaceae  such as Lithops and Conophytum. These get most of the photos, but sometimes we have posted things from the stranger, more shrubbier mesembs.

Antimima was part of Ruschia a supergroup of shrubby pink flowering bushes native to South Africa, they basically made up a group in the group of more mat-forming, or dome shaped colonies. A guy posts a photo of a white flowered plant in flower and says its from MSG (Mesemb Study Group) seed, does anyone know what it is:

The reply is from Peter Van Wyk.

It is Antimima pilosula. I had the species DNA sequenced in 2020 by Dr Klak. The strange morphology does not fit with Antimima and so did the DNA also showed, it falls in a clade with 5 other species from three other genera in the eastern Richtersveld and Boesmanland and will be placed rightfully into a new genus in the future.

If I get any update on what the outcome of this research or what this new taxon will be called, I will of course update this post. 

Scorpion stings

 Finally finished editing the last of the original Canon titles, this of course being the Sting of the Scorpion. Which in the UK is one of those books held back for "contractual reasons" actually a dispute between publisher Collins and an older publisher, who also had the Hardy's licence.

It doesn't really matter, mind, as this is one of the good ones, whereas Witchmaster's Key was a massive clusterfuck, this wasn't. A good story, with some previous nods to the series, just like the original stories, and the whole gang assembled to help fight, the crooks.

The story centers around two things mini airships and  a wildlife park which is the target of the Scorpio gang. There is also a general scorpion related theme to it, too, with a scorpion hidden in a tree trunk at one point and a harmless whip scorpion sent to Aunt Gertrude, under the guise of a new cooking product.

Quite a few elephants added in this as well with a grumpy tusker and and exploding elephant too (though spoiler alert this was a mini airship with an explosive charge.)

I won't ruin it further, even the exploding 'phant isn't that central to the plot, as, like the scorpion in the tree before mentioned, its in chapter 1.

You can read the original story here. 

Shore roads and Youview boxes

 Here is a weird one, got a comment on Secret Of the Caves about if I've uploaded the Shore Road Mystery and while it's most certainly up there I have no recollection of what it was called and what it was under.

It's the one where the boys buy a flashy car and wait for it to be stolen from the Shore Road. You can see bits of it mouldering in the garage in Caves as it turns out to be a lemon.

 Anyway, original here and remake here.

On a side note, been messing with a Youview box I've found at work and decided to look over it on PC. 

It is, of course a Linux format drive, not ExFat but something along those lines, so you'll diskinternals Linux viewer to look at it on PC and fork out actual money to recover anything from it.

Or, you could just grab Rufus and an ISO of something like Linux Mint or ubuntu and burn yourself a live booting Linux pendrive to cut out the middleman.

There's a bunch of partitions and everything is in TS mpeg streams which is nice but not really viewable sadly. Worse it seems that they were a Big Bang Theory fan so with that insult I formatted the bastard and got myself a 500gb drive to upgrade a found PS3.

Down the tubes.

 Here is a brief update to the upside down tube map post I did a year or two ago. You can read it here if you're desperate.

There is a guy who talks about tube stations on Youtube, its quite informative and there is a video about why there's hardly any tube down south.

Turns out that we have really bad soil and a proliferation of train lines that take over most of south London in a way that they don't up north.

The soil bit is interesting, as a kid I can remember it being quite a lot of sand and oyster shell material in a bank at what would become my current workplace. You can see what it was like in the wiki link posted and how its not really suitable for tunneling and such. Though the DLR at Woolwich seems to manage OK, I guess modern methods help.

Cave secrets

 Here is a few new files for you and a review of sorts. 

The secret of the caves is the thirteenth book in the Hardy boys series, at least in the UK. It has both an original text and a revised version that has about half the old text in it with a new story tacked on. Its not an entirely original story like Flickering Torch which I'm reading now, nor is it an extended edit like The Hooded Hawk Mystery, its somewhere halfway in between.

The revised story goes something like this. 

Chet Morton has a new hobby as a metal detectorist, after finding Joe's old toy Fire Engine in the front yard, he wants to go to Honeycomb caves because of some treasure about buried treasure. A girl called Mary Todd shows up and asks them to find her professor brother, Todham, as he has vanished, presumed kidnapped.

She stays with the Mortons and they head down the coast to check out the caves and find a suspicious French diner cum antique shop is the focus of much of the trouble and that there is a strange old man living down on the sea shore in a cave who could be crazy. There is also a technology angle as a telescope up on the coast is the subject of sabotage by a foreign power.

All in all its not a bad story, just typical for most of the revised output.

The original story on the other hand is much more interesting...

The basic outlines are the same except it has ties in with The Shore Road mystery, as the earliest books were considered as part of a series, with the boys growing up and graduating from high school. This time it's one of the car thieves that has escaped from jail.

The boys rescue an old lady called Evangeline Todd who asks them to look for her brother, Todham. Which leads them down to Honeycomb caves, and a strange old man called Captain Royal. Its a much more interesting story and quite modern as it deals with mental health issues and amnesiacs. I won't spoil it too much, but I found it to be quite the better story for this. Chet, as per the usual original text doesn't get any hobbies which, having read a few stories, seem to be entirely for the remakes.

Also on a final note, no one could really spell coconut back then. Its listed as cocoanut, in the text and such and have seen various variations in this from older stories and posters and the like.

You can read the remake and originals here, and here.

Kew Japan Month

 So this is a thing, Kew has its own Momijigari trail along with a Japan festival for the whole of October, so if you want to explore the garden and have an interest in Japanese culture then this will probably do it. 

A warning though, book online, its a good £2 cheaper and they do not take cash at the main gates, card only sadly. Also I only got to see some of the permanent things there, including the gravel garden and Chokushi mon gate, as there was a massive queue to get in to the main event in the temperate house.

On the other hand though, those events are strictly optional and included in your entry fee. In fact over half term 16 - 31st Oct there's a Gruffalo event as well, which is worth mentioning for families.

What did  I actually see then?

Mostly quite a bit of the lower garden, including the Palm House, Princess of Wales Glasshouse and the Chokushi Gate and Yoshino Cherry pathway. Mental note, come back in spring time to see if they are in full bloom for sakura season.

Palm house is the main tropical house, holding palms and cycads but also many tropical trees such as Tamarind and a Banana in flower when I was there. Holds the oldest pot plant a massive cycad; the last of its kind.

Princess of Wales Greenhouse is not named after Princess Di but Princess Augusta although it was opened by her in 1987 and she has a memorial Maple in the garden which I also saw. making this the only Momiji of the trip.

They have a reasonable selection of cacti as it's my prime interest might actually be there for mesemb season. Caught a few conos in flower along with one of two Lithops. There were a few Opuntia in flower also. Mostly though a few odd species were in flower including a Plectranthus, an Elephant's foot yam and a Stoeberia, which can get to about 8ft making it the worlds biggest mesemb species.

Outside I saw a Jay as well as the usual crows and Magpie common to London. The chestnuts were in fruit and I saw the Gingko as well. Topped it off with a walk around the gate before going home.

Banana Flower

Dioscorea Elephantipes Flower

Stoeberia Frutescens bloom.

Paulownia Crests on the Chokushi gate.

Unknown Hoya in the Orchid section

Flickering torches

 A weird one this. This looks to be one of those three way splits that they did from time to time, a la Melted Coins.

I can't remember the original Flickering Torch Mystery though reading the blurb on the back of my original copy it has something to do with silkworms. If you hadn't guessed we got a revised edition of the original text here in the UK.

Currently 3 chapters in so far and its not good. The boys are starting a folk rock band complete with electric guitars and Tony Prito on Drums and Phil Cohen on Organ. There is some subplot about a radioactive plane engine and the boys losing time on their watches. But so far its all about the folk.

I can't really remember them playing guitars before, a few bits about them listening to the radio and news bulletins whilst driving and for some reason going to a play back in the Hidden Harbour mystery as part of the plot. Nothing screams out that they are into playing any sort of instruments.

 The upshot is this knowing nothing of the original story except that its a Les Macfarlane story, means I get to dig it out of the cupboard and read through the condensed version after I read this.

Finally I saw this on Instaspam, Yeah I'm mainly there for the shitposters and such, but it's an overlap and seeing as I've just come off editing up the original *cabin island and such thought it would make a good point to end it here.

*except its American numbering and its Phantom Freighter instead.

Mexican Weekend

 This weekend is Lullingstone's Mexican Weekend, a two day event covering all things cactus and succulent. 

It's ten quid to get in, (half price for BCSS members) and that gets you a look around the world garden as well. I've been to a few events there, and its always been good. But never really on my own.

The first thing was working out how to get there without a car, I don't drive, and if Lullingstone has a station or bus service (both answers are no and no although there is a viaduct that passes over near the grounds if trains are your thing.)

The good news is that there is a station close by, Eynsford, from which you can walk. Looking on the online map, it definitely seemed doable, and while I'm not the fittest, I will walk most places if in range.

The next easiest bit was the bus connections, seeing as its my bootsale route and that we would be going on a Saturday, they should be more frequent than the Sunday service. Plus 2 trips in an hour means its a flat £1.55 fare, each way. 

The train was the tricky bit, looking on South Eastern's network map it seemed we needed the Sevenoaks train, and that it ran from Blackfriars via Swanley. Want to know why we don't travel by train much, an off peak return fare is £4.10 and that is one stop from Swanley to Eynsford. 

Main trip planned out, it all went swimmingly, I managed to get both connections and failed only on the train front as it was in the station as I arrived and had 30 minute wait for the next train. Pro tip get there on the hour or half hour and you'll only wait a few minutes.

The next step was the walk down to Lullingstone, which was not so harsh as its right in the middle of where I wanted to go. Tried the route I'd plotted online the find the gate closed, so retraced my steps and went the other route which passed through the infamous ford there and along by the Roman ruins and the eagle centre.

Paid my way inside, and had a look at the stalls, the Haworthia society were selling bare rooted Haworthias for £10 upwards. Our secretary had a stall selling plants from our late treasurer. Alongside him, John Pilbeam had his stall selling his books. Hadn't seen him in ages, so it was nice to catch up.

New branch Rother valley had a bunch of good things for sale, including some seedlings and such so got a bunch of stuff including a Haageocereus and a few Mesembs.

There was a massive Begonia for sale which was cool and by the time I had finished the Auction was getting going so decided to look around the world garden. 

There was  a small kid in there picking up stone which reminded me as a kid. (Used to do that.) Had a look around the main garden and the most incredible scent was there. Do not know were it came from, my guess its the Salvia's as they were in full bloom. They had a Colletia which smelt of butterscotch, though as its a spiky boi, the challenge was getting close enough to tell, and a there was a mint which had a liquorice scent to it.

Had a look in the hot and spikey house, there was an Opuntia in bloom along with a few other nice things. Another Begonia, a Kleinia and a few other things such a Clerodendron from Kenya.

By that time I decided enough was enough and went home, this time via the country park and found the road I should have taken the first time. It's about a kilometer in distance to the station from Lullingstone castle that way and seems the shorter route.

Plectranthus

Not the Begonia for sale but still nice.

Horse.

Europa statue.

Opuntia possibly Engelmanni.

Six of one.

Or why this is America's 5/11.

This is a brief bit about the capital riots that happened back in January. Where a bunch of Qanon types did a guided tour of the capitols finest sites before nicking a lectern and AOC's shoes.

Of course some people died in this and such, which is bad, but no more than those that died in the George Floyd riots last summer, and with a lot less looting and burning. My main one take away from this is the little old lady standing there and the people in queues lining up.

The more I think about it, the more I get a whole Guy Fawkes vibe from it all. For those not British, Guy Fawkes was a Catholic who plotted to blow up parliament, but was caught and as of the order of the day executed. A holiday was set up where you would construct a bonfire, and set off fireworks. 

This morphed into a month long firework fest through the whole of October with a Guy made of old rags and you would ask money from passers by (i.e. a penny for the guy) before it got put on the bonfire to burn. No child has done this since the mid 90's sadly as Halloween has risen in importance since then.

If you think about it, it was a failed coup in the same vein, but with out the hanging and drawing as such. Maybe we could encourage Americans to embrace it the next year by going on guided tours and nicking lecterns.

Plane crash Holiday.

 Where were you when the planes hit the twin towers? It's twenty years ago that the planes hit and not that any one really wanted to know, I'll tell you exactly where I was, when I first heard.

It was about 3pm when I heard via work radio, that the twin towers had been hit. We had two way radios to keep in touch with and with a 3pm tea break, as we worked longer hours then, we were sitting down to a cuppa and some banter, the kind when you get a bunch of blokes together when we got a call through.

I've just heard the tail end of the news, a jet plane has just gone into the world trade center.

We of course switch on the radio and its a full bulletin of how a bunch of terrorists had committed a mass atrocity in the name of their fruity little religion.

Haunted Forts

 Another Hardy Boys book upload for you to enjoy. It's the UK version of The Haunted Fort, in which our chums head out Chet's uncle's place in Cedartown, in order to track down the legendary treasure of Fort Senandaga, a revolutionary war era fort on the lake.

It's not a bad tale either, Chet's uncle runs an art school and of course, Chet's hobby, this time is painting, which he has some flair for. There is a vague supernatural element as there is a lake monster (fake though) in the lake set up as an elaborate prank to harass local art critic Chanucey Gilman (rendered as Oilman in the file I had). 

The other players in this are an old English hermit living on one of the lake islands who claims that the redcoats are the last to leave the fort, whereas a Frenchman, Rene Follette claims that the French forces were the last to leave the fort. Add in Mr. Davenport, eccentric owner of the fort and art thief Alan Copler (rendered as copier in the text file I have.) and you have quite the good story.

The story itself centers around a clue in a picture painted by the mysterious prisoner painter, interred in the fort around the time of the revolutionary war of 1776. There is a clue to a fabulous treasure in one of the paintings, one of which is housed in the Bayport museum and is of course stolen by Copler, in the course of the adventure. 

You can read more here.

Chatham

Took a trip out to Chatham today, a place I've never been to before. A place that had a  proud naval history that is now long gone. I know that there are plenty of places that are worse, Croydon and Woolwich for one but Chatham seems to be one of those places where its just vaguely depressing. 

It's not multicultural and run down like Croydon, or just a shit hole that Woolwich is. Or smug and left wing shithole like Hackney with no proper shops. It has a Smiths and Poundland for christ sakes, its a proper high street.

No, I think its just a lot of people on electric scooters riding round that have put me off. A general twat chariot, for road men and dealers. Most of the pound shops were shut, they did have a gadget shop selling over priced records, but they did have modern stuff even if you needed discogs app to tell you what it is.

To make matters worse we wanted to go to Maidstone but got lost, so this is the compromise trip instead. Hopefully Maidstone is better. If we ever go.

Hiatus

 This was supposed to be a hiatus of such. On Wednesday we were meant to be going to Benalmadena, on the Costa Del Sol but thanks to SARS 2 electric boogaloo, we had our holiday cancelled not once but twice. I've just got done cancelling our parking reservations for the airport and with any luck we'll get a refund.

Now all I have left is a shed load of leave that I've not cancelled and maybe I can get some scanning done and the conservatory cleaned out. It's not what I wanted to do but seeing as the alternative is a staycation which is pricey. Then a bunch of projects seems much more worthwhile.

In fact, thanks to the amount of forest fires going on across the med, mostly Greece and Italy and a massive incursion of what can be called murder heat (50oF 120oC near enough recorded in the past week alone). Maybe its not such a bad idea after all.

Disappearing floors and files.

 I thought I had a post to this already but I have finally uploaded the UK version of The Disappearing Floor a legendary train wreck of a story in its original form. 

You know what also disappeared, the PDF of The mystery of Cabin Island, as we found out that the final chapter is missing from the original, so we've  taken it down.

Also I've placed and received an order for the original and there is a nice coincidence as it came yesterday which I'll share.

Our copy came from World of books down on the Sussex coast along with Secret of the Caves. It has a library label in it from Greenwich library in Greenwich which is not a million miles away from us here and to make it worse it was stored at the Metropolitan Joint Fiction Reserve at Plumstead which happened to be our local library. 

Weirdly it feels like its come home, so will have to scan and OCR it to give you a proper PDF of this.

Anyway the Disappearing floor.

Its strange one in the original where the boys deal with, bank robbers, strange Wilhelm Reich style cultists and a crazy mansion where the floors move and the laws of electricity are disregarded. Poor old Fenton gets attacked by tigers and shocked by untold amount of volts from Aden Darrow's machines.

The remake cuts down on most of the craziness, relegating the tiger bites to Tiger's Bight a small bay in Barmet. Our bank robbers have become jewel thieves and the story flows a lot better for it.

You can read both of them, here and here

Porn for kids.

 Here is a thing. A lot of galaxy brained weirdos are going on about pron for children. Dedicated soft core stuff. Whether it's an MP's daughter or Radio 4's Women's Hour. They are all pro this sort of stuff.

It doesn't horrify me as much as all the other people commenting on this, basically its been my one mainstay growing up and through adulthood. What they seem to be advocating is the old jazz mags in the hedge type of pron we used to get, growing up in the 80's and 90's in the UK before hardcore was really allowed here.

How much better would it be if we could sit down and basically cover this in sex ed without some God freaks going off on one about thinking of the children. Telling kids that porn is OK but not remotely real life and that, and to generally respect your partner.

Sky G(One)

Sky One is to close 20 years after it ceased to be relevant. It's being superseded by two new channels both of which are, if we're honest, too little far too late. If anything Sky Living was what Sky One was in the past few years, back before it became Sky Witless, but, as I grew up watching Sky its time for some memories, that I've probably aired before.

The DJ Kat show

With cool cat, DJ Kat, and Rod Hull's daughter it was an excuse to play a load of obscure and cheap cartoons such as the English version of Spoon Obasasn, and the full version of Super Mario Bros Super Show with Lou Albarno. Later gained a mouse puppet called Yummi Ticklemouse.

Card Sharps / Concentration / Jeopardy / Press Your Luck

American Gameshows were an early staple of Sky, Card Sharps is just a Rebranded Play Your  Cards Right with Bob Eubanks  rather than good ol' Brucie. Jeopardy is the Paul Coia version which no one remembers.

In Living Color.

Comedy show with the Wayans brothers and a little known comic called Jim Carrey. I wonder if he ever made it big? 

The Simpsons.

6:30 on a Sunday night, where you could watch the greatest show of all time, So much good writing and probably shaped me more as a person than anything else save Beavis and Butthead.

The X Files.

Never cared about the big two sci fi series Stars Trek and Wars. This was my jam with a strong female lead and Mulder who just didn't give two fucks. The show ended with season 9 as did any relevancy that Sky One was going to be decent again.

Fun Factory.

The weekend equivalent to the DJ Kat show, this was a cartoon block presented in the early days by Crocker the Crocodile and Snook the Seal. Later would scrap them entirely and just play decent cartoons such as Fox's Peter Pan and Ultraman.

Pokemon and Yu gi oh!

What you don't realize is that Sky One was the home of Pokemon from about 1999 onwards, Yu-gi-oh! was the final gasp of the weekend cartoon covering all the way up to the Darts / Eye of Timaeus story arc before it withered and died.

There was a few more things that I should mention, such as the original Flash series and Stargate airing but I think that was Sky 2 of all things.

Edit totally forgot about ALF and Sale of The Century, both mainstays of early Sky.

Cabin Island

 This is basically the Hardy Boys at Christmas. A trip out to the deserted Cabin Island by way of a gift from Elroy Jefferson, thanks to them recovering his car in the Shore Road Mystery.

As this is the UK and that was 16 books previously rather than a subsequent issue its a rather belated gift. Anyway it's not a bad book, they camp out on the island and have to deal with ghosts and look for not only Elroy's grandson Johnny but also a bunch of medals stolen by a former employee John Sparewell.

The main gimmick this time is ice-yachts, a flat beamed craft used for skimming over the ice of a frozen bay. Which begs to differ, how cold does Bayport get. Is it Midwest states cold I.E. 30 below C in winter or more like New York which I gather is more minus 5 or so.

You'll get two versions this time. The original is a PDF file culled from archive.org, so its a bit bigger than the usual small plain text PDF scan you are used to.   Ignore this we have sourced and scanned our own copy and its a normal sized PDF.

The UK text was hand typed as for most of the time my scanner refused to work, due to it requiring new ink. Yes that is a thing.

There are few differences between the two texts, in the original the boys are give rifles for Christmas with the explicit instructions to not shoot too many rabbits. I'm pretty sure it was mackinaw shirts and boots in the remake.

Also Chet is outed as someone who is all mouth and no trousers (he didn't worry against squaring off against bigger lads as long as someone was with him), as the boys face off against Ike & Tad, a pair of delinquent youths and owners of the Hawk, a rival ice yacht to the Hardy's Seagull.

UK remake here. Proper original here.

Edit. Those rifles they got for Xmas, basically are used for signalling and killing foxes. 

It's coming home

 Without any trophies, save for a runners up medal and or a participation badge.

I did, for my sins watch the second half and extra time and penalties, that is only because there was nothing of any use to watch apart from football.

I will say though it wasn't bad and we got a hell of a lot further than what we usually do. Also we have a new Gareth Southgate in Marcus Rashford who joins a long line of England players who've hit the post whilst taking penalties. Maybe they'll be an update of the old Pizza Hut advert with Sancho and Saka rubbing it in. Though its probably going to be a cold day in hell as we can't do humour now, and will be classed as racist.

There was a minority of racist comments, some, even from the UK, due to them missing the penalties, which provoked an absolute storm of anti racist activity. This included the mural of Rashford being defaced with slogans and then being defaced with more outpourings of love and support. I always thought it was weird, that I never saw what was written on it to begin with, 

And the only photo's I've seen, either blurred it out or just contain the after shots with the hearts and flowers. I can sort of see what it said, but I would like to see what it said.

Like I say there was an absolute swarm of anti racist types, as if you poked an ants nest and they all came out angry with them saying racism bad (it is) and taking the knee (which I don't agree with, though that is due to me hating all political point scoring.) You never really heard anyone take the mick or that, and apart from the few racist bits which were fucking minor compared to the anti stuff. 

Even at work among those who cared about football and Monday teatime was an absolute postmortem on the game. The consensus is we did well and have nothing to be ashamed about, 'cept that dude with the flare up his jacksy.

As for me, my message to the team is that of Young Mr Grace from Are You Being Served? and that is. 

You've all done very well.

VIking Symbols

So the Viking Symbol Mystery then. Or the Hardys trip to Great Slave Lake area in order to track down a Viking rune stone.

The stone in question is called the Horkel stone, and was brought by Leif the Viking on his one and only trip across Northern Canada. Along with a longboat and looted booty from Viking raids. The Great Slave lake is his final resting place... except Leif never existed. The closest they came was L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. 

It only exists in the story as the great McGuffin that everyone wants along with a book on Runes written by an English professor from the London Museum (which one is never specified, although we secretly hope its the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill). 

You get the whole gang tagging along this time, not just Chet Morton, but Biff Hooper and Tony Prito. Also Mr Hardy, too, takes to the great north in order to track down the crims.

There is also a French Canadien called Pierre Caron, who mainly tags along to settle his feud with Albert Dulac. Mostly says bon tonnerre. Its not a bad mystery and the boys get to learn how to pilot a float plane so they can land on the lakes around the area. 

The UK edition brings a few minor edits and expands (or mostly explains) the text in a few places. The next book is called the Missing Chums, where, we know it as the Missing Friends.

You can read it here.

Necrolog: Near

 Did a brief updating to my old whatever happened to Byuu, blog post last week, before I really knew what happened and that.

For those of you late to the party, Near as he was known took his own life last week thanks to an online hate via an old lolcow post up on Kiwifarms. 

Whether you think they are all a bunch empathy free cunts or class them as far right trolls these are the facts of the matter. Personally I like my humour edgy but even I draw the line here.

My own dealings with him are via Twitter, where he would post emulator updates on Ares, Higan and occasionally the meds he was on, oh and black metal, but no one is perfect.

I put up the whatever happened to Byuu post due to his last hiatus, and it seemed that all was well after he returned. Then after a few weeks of emu news, more radio silence and finally the awful news last Sunday.

I never really knew him personally, only through works. Emulation stuff, such as MSU1 expansion for SNES, BSNES emulator and its multi system offshoots, Higan and Ares.  Beat patching, and the whole, rescan the Super Nintendo Cart catalogue for accuracy sake. I wonder if people will still bother him for that one Pachinko revision that he dumped.

There is a longer and better written post with proper pronouns and that doing the rounds, though I can't find at the moment, we have a thread at RHDN if you'd like more.

Creationist Corner.

 A few weeks ago, I picked up a few books to read, the good Bill Hicks biography and as it was 2 for a quid a book on Creationism from a guy called Harun Yahya, complete with someones wedding photos stuffed in the pages, (this is why it was bought initially.)

The biography was good, and pretty much told me all I needed to know about one of the best comedians ever. Darwinism refuted however...

Let's get this over with, I fully believe in evolution, materialism and that the universe is unimaginably old. No, I do not know where life came from or how the universe began, I just know it doesn't have a designer, or that things are irreducibly complex.

That over, I will say, this book is a boring, shallow and contradictory pile of garbage I have had the displeasure to read. It's one differing feature being that Allah is the creator rather than the Christian God is new, but the arguments are the same. 

There is the eye and bacterium flagellum being held up as the pinnacle of irreducible complexity.

The old Junkyard 747 reconstruction hypothesis is given a run out. And in some magical serendipity IFM is playing Scrapyard by Tangerine Dream in the background. More on serendipity later.

We're spared anything on strata, focusing on various animals that have stayed the same despite millions of years without a shred of irony that they too have evolved. I quote from an old Digitizer video I saw, but it boils down to this: You are a crab, your daddy was a crab before you, hence you will always be a crab.

Finally we have the secret bit at the back, explaining that Allah dun it all. With quotes from the Quran to back up his "evidence" just like what Christians do with the Bible.

My favourite quote is that we are all shadows in a world where only Allah is real, which just reminds me of the Plato's Cave argument, rewritten by an Islamic apologist. 

Finally as we always have a few books on the go we have the current issue of Fortean Times open when finishing it off and there is an update about a certain Adnan Oktar, cult leader, sex trafficker and all round weirdo. Wiki has him sentenced to 9000 years in jail, whereas FT puts it at the much more modest 1000. That's a millennium in prison, and a Turkish prison at that. 

Oh and if you are wondering what is the link between the two. Harun Yahya is of course Adnan's pen name, which he pumped out a string of awful creationist literature, some of it aimed at kids.

 

Yellow Feathers and Curiosity Shows

Another book is up for your pleasure. This time it is the Yellow Feather Mystery, one of the top tier Hardy Boys adventures, and we've finally found another old show from The Children's Channel, on Twitter of all places.

The Curiosity Show

Along with Round the Twist and Kaboodle, this was the third part of the Aussie show trilogy to air on Cable back when I was small. While I remember fuck all about Kaboodle, I do remember the Curiosity show, two guys, who made things and games such as tip-cat (which my grandad, who was down at the time, said he used to play.) and some sort of berry that made everything sweet (Synsepalum). I also forgot what it was called. 

It didn't help that the That's Incredible bit from the Fast Show is a direct rip of this (more like affectionate homage.) and for years later. I'd think about the show, but without a name, it would be foolish to search.

Scrolling twitter midweek, and there is a clip of the familiar presenter showing an optical illusion. I scroll down the credits and there is a name. A good 35 years after I've seen the show, I finally have a name for it all. Best of all there is a Youtube Channel, and the original guys have the rights to it all.

Yellow Feather Mystery.

This seems to be an afterthought, after I found this, but we have finally finished typing up the latest book.

Both issues of the Yellow Feather Mystery, are classic Hardy Boys and can easily rank up there with the old, Les Macfarlane stories. 

The boys have been tasked with regaining a will for a Greg Woodson, whose grandfather ran the prestigious Woodson academy, a school that their father went to. A missing will and a shadowy character called the Yellow Feather seems to be out to stop the boys from succeeding. Its also one of the only stories I've come across where Chet seems to be heroic. He has an Ice sled in this as it's the depths of winter, and comes to the boys aid in the final chapter.

Anyway both Original and UK remake are available here and here. 

Round up again

 Here is a round up of some old articles and a new scan of stuff. First up is an update on Haiti, of all places.

Haiti.

The current BCSS journal has 10 page exploration of Haiti undertaken by Paul Hoxey and some fellows from the Gibraltar Botanic Garden. It focuses on a new Melocactus from the north of the island along with a discussion on the Opuntia offshoot Consolea in the islands. There is a huge obituary for Terry Smale which I also covered a few months back.

There is a great article on the succulent Malvaceae so all you Baobab fans will certainly get a kick out of this. Me, I haven't read it yet, just flicked through, though it does have the World tree from Maya lore aka the Ceiba along with Sterculia and Brachychiton, both Aussie bottle trees.

Edit, Article read now and it, indeed, rocks.

Amiga disk artwork.

Found this floppy whilst giving my room a clear out. Its in a hard plastic case and can remember getting this from Greytronics in Croydon, when we went to have our disk drive replaced. They had a few of these in a box on a shelf. I think I got relockick downgrader* and this and will scan that if I can find it.

Bombmania if the name doesn't explain it, is a Bomberman clone for the Amiga 1200, can't remember if it was a good PD game or not, just that for some reason it has a scroller for our dear daddy at Irata on the title screen._

 * Found it, it's called Kick 1.3 and is indeed a kickstart rom downgrader for Amiga 500+ through to Amiga 4000 computer line. It has a label and "Boxart" so will add this as an addendum, if I think of it.

Well printer needed ink in order for the scanner to function, which is triply fucked, but after selling a kidney to buy ink, we now have these scanned too.

I regret to inform you that the Gamers are "mass killing" again

Seems that us ragging on Jack Thompson back in the 90's wasn't enough for the hacks at the Daily Fail, as they've brought the old video game violence argument back, due to a spate of machete attacks across London. (Pro tip: Greenwich maybe leafy, but its basically the inner city with some trees.)

The original article is here if you want to see how much they've fucked up. And given the amount of people just clowning on the main points in the article, or, pointing out that the lax amount of justice dealt out to criminals who routinely carry knives, you can see their point.

Its been 30 years on from Mortal Kombat, a good 22 or so from GTA was released for the PS1 and although there has been regular studies showing no real link between video game violence and real world violence. These bastards still trot it out as if it was real, established fact.

Put it this way, given the massive amounts of surplus Fifa games that regularly turn up in bargain bins and charity shops, and that everything gaming has a real world effect. Shouldn't England (or Wales, or Scotland or Norn Iron. too) be absolutely awash with top rate footballers, instead of us crashing out at the quarter finals like in every world cup.

Cunmerries

I have been reading the excellent Fair Dinkum by Douglas Lockwood, a selection of true tales from his time up in the Northern Territories of Australia. It covers the war, the local Aborigines (pretty positive spin on them, which is always good to read.) and the miners with a handful of ghost stories and such thrown in.

However there is one story from page 68 that will be of some interest to those who like cryptozoology and the various beasts that hide from men.

The scene is this, various Aboriginals are settled round a campfire talking about stories with Douglas settling out of the wind. I quote directly as it does deserve to be wider known.

"I bin remember that time..." said the Left-Hand Boomerang Man. His voice was a song, a deep-throated purr... "that time I was working with that drover, Matt. We were taking a mob into The Isa when it happened."

"What happened?" some one asked.

"The cunmerries came over."

"The cunmerries? What are they?" one of the half castes asked. I noticed the other were silent and still, but as wide-eyed as children hearing for the first time about a fearsome bogey-man.

"It's a properly cheeky feller," Left-Hand said. "It's a big bird, about three times bigger'n that horse I was ridin'" 

"A bird, you say. Can he fly?"

"Yeah, he can fly all right," Agilyara said. "He's got wings wider'n that tree, and he can fly faster'n a galloping horse. He's got big hands like a crocodile with only four fingers, and red eyes, like that charcoal."

He pointed into the campfire and every eye, including mine, followed his. I was fascinated and considerably chilled by his recitation about something none of us understood.

"Have you seen these cunmerries?" I asked. I had wanted to remain on the outskirts to see and hear without being seen, but sheer driving curiosity had drawn me in.

"Oh, yeah, I've seen him, all right," Left-Hand said. "I seen him one moonlight night with Matt- not far from here."

Instinctively, we all drew closer to the fire.

"What was he like?" I asked, as credulous as any piccaninny. 

"My horse started to snort and shake and then he wanted to run," Agilyara said. "I was on night watch. Then the mob of cattle I'm tailin' got up and they're runnin' straightaway. Stampedin'. I yelled to Matt and went after them flat out. My horse ran faster that night than I've ever known a horse to run. He was bad scared. Then I heard a 'swish' over my head and I could see this big shadow with glarin' eyes flyin' on to the cattle. I seen him come down over the mob and pick up a bullock in his hands and fly away with him. The cattle all cried out, a kind of terrible cry that I never heard cattle make before."

We all stared into the fire, frozen.

"Matt came up then," Agilyara said. "He heard me yell and he was cursin' because he had to get out'a bed, and he wanted to know why the cattle was runnin'. So I told him. But he called me a black somethin' and said I was drunk and had been asleep on watch. He wouldn't believe me. He was properly wild and he sent another boy out to watch with me. The cattle didn't lie down again all that night and we had trouble holdin' 'em. My horse was still shakin' under me when daylight came."

"Is that the end of the story?"

"No," Agilyara said. "That bullock the cunmerrie took was right on the outside of the mob. They had been runnin' through soft ground, so next mornin' we followed the tracks. That one's tracks... they just stopped there... they didn't go anywhere.. the tracks just finished while he was still runnin'. Old Matt didn't understand that so he counted the heads... There was one missin', and after that he wasn't wild with me any more. But he didn't say nothin'."

Just what this cunmerrie was, real animal or entirely something of myth and legend. I thought it would be much better, if I shared it with you and let you make up your own minds about it.

What Happened At Midnight Redux

 Nothing much to add, except that both files are up now.

You can get the original and rewrite here and here.

Also, despite the weather, I managed to get my Gibbaeum to flower.

Flower size about 2cm.

Junk Tour Ilford

 First real junk tour since the lock down ended and decided to go to east London for a junk tour.

Ilford is one of the low tier places to visit, you can get there by bus from Stratford or to save bus fare, take the Tube to Gants Hill and walk through Valentines Park to reach the high street. Its a nice walk and you may even see a duck or a squirrel (by may, I of course mean, will.) on your walk through to civilisation.

The have a few charity shops there including a cancer research and a hospice shop. There is also a Salvations Barmy if you want some cheap gear, but that is the limit. There were fewer shops open and this time and a few that had closed entirely. What was open were doing deals on books and CDs so I've basically bought stuff to fill up numbers.

Cancer research had a few things on a deal. I got a few CD's and books including a double bill of Bill Hicks (Rant in E Minor and an autobiography- not the Bert Lahr one) and a strange Islamic book refuting Darwinism. The greatest thing about this is opening it up an finding some photographs of a random woman put inside. She looks Malaysian and seems to be part of a wedding, either the bride of friend of. God knows why they were stuffed in this book on intelligent design.

The book is a train wreck and if Bill's Biography is funnier then I will eat my words. 

The hospice was closed for lunch / restock so I visited Cex and saw my first PS5 in the wild. They really do look like a budget space heater. They wanted £780 each one and they had a few in stock so, if you want to pay stupid money for something with hardly any games, then Cex in Ilford is where you want to. I don't think I'll bother.

Salvation's Barmy was the last port of call, they had a similar deal on CDS there and got Tubular bells which is awful and New Order Power, Corruption and Lies both newspaper tie in's, when they gave away CDs in the mid 2000's to boost sales and such. They had a few records, but these all seemed to be Indie guitar trash so didn't bother. 

Jab

 A few boring bits and pieces that do not warrant their own blog entries.

SARS 2 Electric boogaloo jab.

I've finally gotten the jab up at my local hospital after some wrangling. It didn't hurt and apart from some non specific aches and pains (which have now settled into a sore arm), am largely symptom free. My follow up jab is at the end of July so fingers crossed it goes well.

I've seem so much vaccine hysteria on line about this, mostly from the loony right (the loony left, if you're wondering, is still mourning the loss of Jeremy Corbyn) anti vaxxer and anti masker weirdo's its untrue.

I don't agree with half and a quarter of what these liberty fags want. I will say this that China have covered it up and there is probably more to the story than Winnie the Pooh's commie cartel is telling us about the origins of the Wu flu.

FYI. Although I hate masks, I will wear them for my sakes rather than anyone else. Selfish, I know, but if I don't get SARS 2 then you don't get SARS2.

The Great Airport Mystery

 Could've sworn I'd put this up before, but, it seems I didn't. Anyway this is a review or sorts for The Great Airport Mystery, both in its original and revised editions.

PLOT

The original plot has the boys buzzed by a piss head of a pilot in his plane whilst driving down one of the dirt roads in town. It leads them to a mail thief and being framed for the crime by the Bayport police.

In order for them to get back their reputation and catch the crook, the boys, ignoring pressurization and temperature changes, stow away in the tail section of the crooks airplane and finally get the gang. Its been about a year or two since I've read this, so its not so fresh in my mind but this is the gist of what I remember of it.

The remake has them investigate a series of cargo thefts of platinum parts from the Stanwide airport co offices and the ghost of a pilot downed over a French part of the Caribbean. It's not a bad update although the ending seems a little rushed for my liking. 

The main story remains the same, even if its platinum parts rather than the company payroll, that is the object of the thieves crime.

You can read both the remake and the original here and here.

What Happened at Midnight review.

 Got done reading through both editions of What Happened at Midnight, as the title suggests, one of the old Les Macfarlane stories before it was rewritten in the sixties.

I'll start off  with the original text, as there are quite a few parallels between the two. First off all we have the set up. Chet Morton has gathered the gang downtown, to the opening of a brand new automat. Whilst pissing about ordering food, some out of town lads start making trouble and (to cut a story in half) Joe Hardy barrels into a tall blonde haired bloke.

The same guy is also bumped into again after the boys pick up their mum's diamond ring from the jewellers. And that is the start of their trouble. At a party at the Morton farm, on the stroke of midnight, Joe is kidnapped by the blonde haired guy. And it takes a frantic search by Frank and an unlikely tip from Aunt Gertrude before he is rescued from a cave on the Barmet Coast.

There are several drag backs in this book to earlier stories, the Shore Road mysteries where the boys set up a trojan car to apprehend a gang and later on in the story with a nascent Bayport airfield as seen in the Great Airport mystery.

Nothing much happens until the boys catch sight of Joe's kidnapper again and they trail him all the way to New York, where Frank has his pocket picked and their cash and return train tickets are stolen. 

They decide to sleep out in Central Park and then hitch home, lucking out where they work at a cafe for a bit before catching a lift back with some company men (DOJ) on the look out for a big time crook called Taffy Marr.

Marr is working at a jewellers in town and soon gets wind that the boys are onto him and gets a plane from Bayport Airfield to escape. The boys also get a plane  but as its a piece of junk it stalls and they, dramatically bail out before it crashes, parachuting to the ground.

The gang is finally wound up on the coast and the boys recap this back at the Morton farm where a party is held in their honour.

 Remake.

The remake text follows it quite closely, but has the boys play burglar to steal an super portable radio on behalf of its inventor, to stop it getting in the hands of Taffy Marr's gang. The blond haired guy still captures Joe, but this is more to do with him eavesdropping rather than being bumped into.

There is no hitching, or automats in this one and the plane crash is worked in as a vintage biplane club (its never explicitly described as a biplane in the original.) and its pilot, who provides the means to track Taffy's plane. 

The Agents are now FBI rather than DOJ men, and the boys rely much more on the cops to get them out of trouble when  they are stranded in New York. But in most regards its still the same story but much more fleshed out.

Conclusion.

Whether you read the original or the remake. Its not a bad story, whichever you choose. The original is more dated and barebones, but at least you don't have the Hardys playing housebreakers for some super transistor radio. The remake is shorter but feels much more fleshed out, Joes kidnapping is not the main emphasis of the tale as it is in the original. Its more the theft of the radio and jewels.

Finally we have one line that's bugging me from the original.

All to the Worcester(shire) sauce. which from context seems to be the equivalent of lets go get 'em line its not a quote, but maybe an old slogan for sauce that is long forgotten. I'll have to dig around and see what I can find.

Oh and the non bracketed version is how Worcestershire sauce is known in the UK. Seems to be a yank thing where its spelt right out.

Brief.

 Not much to say this week. Glad to have the Charity Shops open again as well as the bars and clubs I could give  not one solitary fuck about. 

We picked up some quality trip hop, this includes Dummy Portishead, and Blue Lines by Massive Attack.

Also if you are on the twatter, give a look out for Ventla, a guy who uses a bunch of toys and fx pedals to make music and stuff, excellent.

Finally some book news. Got the last Sue Grafton I've been after J for Justice and a new Hardy boys book the Original What Happened At Midnight, which will require it's own write up as its different to the remake.

Making of a Moral Panic

Been wanting to write about this for a week now. You would have gotten this, earlier, at Easter, but here it is. There seems to be another moral panic coming over pron in schools.

There is a massive sex scandal going round independent schools and such, Dulwich college springs to mind, but it's not the only place its going down. "Rape culture." is of course to blame, as is the easy access to porno. Which reminds me of the old saying correlation is not causation.

Then there are "moderates" like Sarah Vine, wife of Pob, writing about how pron is the worst and bringing up stuff like bikini shots and wider culture is to blame for sexualizing women, and lets get this straight, it's only women. 

Because gay porn does not exist, trans porn does not exist and Lesbian porn certainly does not exist. As does the consensual stuff, shot on a potato cam, badly lit in someone's bedroom, or porn directed by women for women, that I'm pretty sure does not exist. It's only the worst of the worst, rough sex porn clips you know the throat fucker type shit. yer Max Hardcore style degradation, which I personally hate. this is all porn is to those types. And no you do not get any links for those.

Its judging every film ever made, on someone viewing video nasties or torture porn horror movies, and then writing a bunch of words that this is all that movies are.

I don't doubt there is some sort of "rape culture" there. And yes you should educate young men that pron is not what fucking is IRL. There is a whole ball park of things that people will or will not do, respect and don't pressure them into doing stuff.

Oh and then there's this.

"But if there is one thing I could do, it would be this: put internet porn behind a paywall. Make it impossible – or at the very least less possible – for young children to see stuff their brains can’t comprehend. Protect them from this stuff until they are old enough not to let it damage them. Because until that happens we run the risk of blaming our children for the sins of us adults."

I will say this though growing up in the 80's and 90's there was always porno about. Either in the Newsagents on the top shelf, or ripped up in the local hedgerows and parks. Hell, in big school, you can remember when you saw your first pron mag, as sure as when the day a dog got into the school playground.  (can't have been the only one who remembers this from school, actually, every body remembers the dog in the playground.)

Rather than police what your kids do online and take an interest. Its all paywalls and stuff which will not work and kinda exist now for paysites, anyway.

Easter

This is strange thought of mine. Only really coming together over the past few days and such, but I've held some of these beliefs for a few years now. The last one in particular.

OK time to explain myself. The Easter story is essentially this. Jesus is betrayed, crucified and resurrects a few days later. Xmas is all about his birth which we have concrete day to celebrate, albeit one not specified in the bible. But Easter is different every year. If Jesus was real. and the resurrection is real, shouldn't there be a specified day for Easter every year, given that you only die once, or is it implied that Christ dies and resurrects every year. 

And if he did die once and resurrect as scripture says, then shouldn't some of his followers in antiquity have made a note of the day of his death and resurrection, and basically worship Easter on that day year after year instead of this crazy moveable feast we do, year after year.

The second question is a thought I've held for much, much longer. It boils down to this. Given there is no date for Xmas in the bible and that the themes of Easter are, mythologically speaking, more to do with winter. I know the bible has it to do with the festival of Passover, but shouldn't we really celebrate Xmas in spring, with its theme of life and celebration, and celebrate Easter at the end of the new year due to its death and resurrection themes.

Unrelated Picture