Safe storage, another bomb and bad aiming

18 December 2013

I have at long last managed to open a Dropbox account. At the moment I save my work to a USB stick as well as the lappy hard drive, but I keep reading about how much we need to keep copies in a more secure location. These same articles also say that 'the cloud' is the safest place. Well, at the minute it might well be but I don't think it will be long before some smart arse hacker manages to get through their security and knacker the whole lot. Because of that I will continue to keep a couple more copies to hand.

Yet another incendiary bomb has been found locally, in Atherstone this time. I'm not surprised really, after all, the A5 rand through the town in the 1940s as well as a main railway line, part of the West Coast line. Just south of Atherstone and off to one side was a bomber base, now MIRA and around six miles off was a Polish air base too, now known as Gamecock Barracks. There was a lot of industry in the area too, all tempting targets for the Luftwaffe.

Bomb aiming wasn't all that accurate in those days - and still isn't really - and with Dorktown's closeness to Coventry meant that the town was regularly hit by stray bombs meant for Coventry, the A5 or the railway. If you ever drive south on the A5 close to town and look to the east you will see large trees growing around holes in the fields. These are bomb craters that have been left to over grow. I remember my mother telling me one time that her and a friend had gone to the pictures in a cinema in Attleborough. They left at the end and spoke to friends as they left went into the place not knowing that they wouldn't see those ever again. This too was a stray bomb that hit the cinema killing everyone in there.

I remember reading sometime time ago about a program to view ariel photos of bomb damage looking for craters or holes in buildings which didn't have any serious damage to them. The idea was that those locations were where unexploded bombs might lie. That would mean that efforts could be made to fins as many as they could and get rid of them before someone managed to set them off accidentally.  No idea if they did actually found any though.

No bomb photos, sorry, but I do have this ... 

A Vulcan bomber.

And a funny ...

A man was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching his  wife, who was looking at herself in the mirror. Since her birthday was not far off he asked what she'd like to have for her birthday.
'I'd like to be six again', she replied, still looking in the mirror .
On the morning of her Birthday, he arose early, made her a nice big bowl of Lucky Charms, and then took her to Six Flags theme park. What a day! He put her on every ride in the park; the Death Slide, the Wall of Fear, the Screaming Roller Coaster, everything there was.
Five hours later they staggered out of the theme park. Her head was reeling and her stomach felt upside down. He then took her to a McDonald's where he ordered her a Happy Meal with extra fries and a chocolate shake.
Then it was off to a movie, popcorn, a soda pop, and her favourite  candy, M&M's. What a fabulous adventure!
Finally she wobbled home with her husband and collapsed into bed exhausted.
He leaned over his wife with a big smile and lovingly asked, 'Well Dear, what was it like being six again?'
Her eyes slowly opened and her expression suddenly changed.
'I meant my dress size, you f--ing idiot!!!!'