Anyway, this meant, as always, we had one seven year old, hopped up on life, confined within four walls.
And who wanted to make many things...cake, biscuits, milkshakes, a pie, a halo, wings, shoes with wings, a degu run the size of the flat, a fort, a maze, a sausage-making machine, a new dance move, some prog rock involving a violin and a guitar, a new no1 Christmas song, some streamers, and the stinkiest stink bombs in the world.
When faced with such a list, John came up trumps. And presented him with this:
It's a coded message, found attached to those pigeon-remains, from the second world war. Someone found it in their chimney a few weeks ago.
Of course, as soon as you say to Sherlock that 'no one can crack the code', he is immediately completely and utterly sure he can. Which has led to hours of blissful silence.... apart from his occasional criticism of my dance moves...
I feel sure he won't mind too much if we open it to you lot, too ;)
30 comments:
At a glance, I'd say the pigeon is definitely dead!
Good Luck with the code breaking.
He obviously really wants the whole pigeon and note, not just photos and videos of it.
That's a brilliant distraction technique! Well done John :-)
Pure luck finding it, especially in time for today's weather. Makes you wonder if someone just wrote a bunch of random letters down to confuse people in the future though.
yeah, yeah, just be all casually amazing, go on.
Bet you were hiding this up your sleeve waiting for a rainy day, to just look all calm and effortless while I'm trying to be entertaining by being a one-man-mosh-pit and create a halo that defies the laws of physics.
I wish I had your luck than John or your energy and creativity Greg, perfect partners in every situation you two ;-)
L - it was much more entertaining watching you. I almost didn't mention it at all. ;)
Mmm. I wonder about you sometimes :)
All I can think is that wherever it was they must have had a lot of smoky fires for years.
Shades of my childhood come back to me. I remember learning about ciphers and codes from a book called "Alvin's Secret Code" and then going out into the world and deciphering (or trying to decipher) the codes which were spray painted near all the manhole covers in my town.
I wonder if anyone has asked around to see if they can find someone who used to be in the Pigeon Service. They'd at least be able to tell you if it was a substitution cipher or a position cipher or a book code.
rsf
I don't think anyone would know what code it was apart from the person who sent it - and presumably the people who received it. Neither of whom are currently known, RSF. They're still trying to work out which unit the pigeon came from.
I was thinking type of code rather than the exact key. Presumably there was a standard methodology of some kind, even though it may have varied over the course of the war. (I was in a combat comm unit for a while, before it all got computerized, and we had definite protocols.)
I can't help but wonder what happened - or failed to happen - because the pigeon never made it to its destination.
rsf
but wouldn't the methodology depends on the unit it came from? I mean, I don't suppose they'd all do the same things.
And yeah, it makes you wonder what happened. Although the numbers at the bottom are pigeon numbers, and there's two - so hopefully the other one got home?
Which might mean that the message was decoded, unless the pigeon was eaten. No-one saw Speckled Jim, General Melchett.
SH, I think if the pigeon had been eaten we'd have a different collection of bones.
L, yes, to an extent the methodology would depend on which units were sending and receiving, but there aren't as many options as there might seem. The codemaker clearly is using some standard techniques -- breaking everything into "words" of five characters, for example. That would have been one of the protocols, since it obscures how long the words actually are. There were probably random letters like Q or Z tossed into the message before it was coded to make it come out to a multiple of five as well. But there might have been other options -- if it's Tuesday write the message backward, or put the first two lines at the bottom and start with the third line. That sort of thing. If it's a book code, of course, you'd need to know which book in order to decipher it, and that's harder to pin down, but the protocols, those are things someone is likely to remember, even after all these years. Repetition makes them surprisingly indelible.
rsf
RSF - but given we don't know when it was sent, exactly, that doesn't help decode it, right? There isn't enough information - all there is is what you see. So a time, a pigeon-number, and a sender.
I think they should let me go to the codebreaker place and look at all their stuff.
That would be cool Sherlock, if you get to go can I come as well? (I know I can't really but I'd REALLY like to)
RSF - I was assuming that there were two pigeons carrying the same message, which would make sense I think. One is stuck in the chimney, the other eaten by Blackadder.
Sherlock, I don't think they'd let you look at all their stuff, but if there's some kind of museum which includes the pigeon service you might be able to figure out when they started using forms that looked exactly like the one the code is on. That's a mighty big "if" though. A lot of records would have been lost by now.
There's a museum for the US pigeon service but I don't know if there's one in the UK. I did find picture of a pigeon service form from the collection of the Imperial War Museum but it doesn't look like this message form at all.
rsf
dunno, SH, if I ate a pigeon I'd chop off the head and legs too, eat the rest.
Of course, I wouldn't put the head and legs up a chimney... maybe a chimneysweep or Santa ate a snack, left those bits behind?
My guess:
"Hey, can you send over some more pigeon - the ones I've got a crap and never seem to get the message through. Reckon they skyve off and go and roost in chimneys. Thanks."
I like yours Greg, very believable.
Hows the evening going? relaxing or full of plan making for tomorrow?
LoL! Brilliant, L! That's about the same as the tech guys at my job telling us in an email on Friday afternoon that they were going to change how we could access our email on Saturday morning.
rsf
AnonyBob - fairly relaxing. Sherlock seems to be going to sleep fairly easily, too... not always the case when he's been in stir all day, as I'm sure you can appreciate.
Now I intend to sprawl all over John and burrow into his jumper.
he's a good lad that Sherlock, a trip to the park for some puddle bashing might be called for tommorow if its still wet maybe :-)
Enjoy your snuggle time.
Will you need to go see your mum tomorrow?
Anon - I don't know. I probably should, yeah. I'm not sure if I'd like John to come with me though, in which case I'll go in the week, when Sherlock's at school. It's not fair to leave him.
When my mother-in-law was in hospital after having a stroke, I was never sure if us visiting was a good thing or not; she was so miserable at being there, so angry at having some of her lifestyle choices challenged, and us being there only seemed to make it worse for her. On the other hand, she was desperately ill, and scared, and lonely, and I think visiting her - as tough as it was for all of us - was better than not.
However you decide to do it, with John or without, I hope it goes OK, and that she's recovering well. Sending supportive thought in your direction, fwiw.
Anon, when I was dealing with a stroke patient who was similarly angry, we had a doctor who explained how important stimulation was for the recovering brain. So you're right. In the long run, visiting her was better than not visiting. It certainly wasn't easy though.
rsf
Thanks. And it helps, yeah. I mean, I know no one knows what the right thing to do is, I'm not expecting any miracle answers.
I'll have to see how I'm feeling on the day, I guess.
Post a Comment