Kayo Dot!

No, Victoria, not a "yoof phrase"
     At least I don't think so.  They are a music group.  Ian at work praised them, and promised to put together a CD of selected tracks.  Conrad, like most middle-aged men trying to cling to a long-vanished youth, was quite chuffed at this, as it might help to cement his "hipster dad" credentials.  Might.  So I have deliberately avoided tracking them down on Grooveshark or Googling about them.
     'Might take a few listens,' warned Ian.  Conrad will therefore be playing it in the car where he is his own captive audience.  At present it is playing in my upstairs lair, turned down low as Wonder Wife will instantly disparage them were she to overhear.

Kayo Dot.  Obviously!  What, you thought it might be Broken Social Scene?  Tish - how little you know!

Baking again
     I test-drove a new 2 1/2 lb loaf tin this afternoon, with excellent results. A loaf that isn't burnt, asymmetrical or with excessively droopy sides.  Given that I have to go downstairs to see how the Halloween Pumpkin Cake is doing*, I will come up with a photograph.  This bread, mind you, isn't that horrid doughy pap that comes wrapped in waxed paper.  No.  This bread will put hair on your chest, develop muscles you didn't know you had and sweep your bowels clear like an internal squeegee.

 

Behold the bread!

  

 Broken Social Scene
     After being sneeringly dismissive above, Mr Hand pointed out that I didn't know what Broken Social Scene look like either.
     Like this, apparently:

The other nine aren't present.

So now we know.  All part of your rounded education here at BOOJUM!

 <short pause as Conrad imbibes some Old Golden Hen and decides that he likes Kayo Dot>

That Zombie Novel
     It's called - working title, may need to change it - "Revelations".  There's a pun in there.  You can't tell because you haven't read it yet and this is definitely a first draft.  I was practicing dialogue with myself this afternoon, an activity easily misinterpreted by casual onlookers, so I did it in the dungeons.  The airy upper dungeons, of course!  since the lower ones have no daylight.  And occasional giant moles.

And these, but only once.  So far.

Shopping!
     As any regular reader well knows, Conrad jovially detests doing the weekly shop as Darling Daughter or Wonder Wife are guaranteed to ask "Did you get Gerschon's Travelling Matte Wallpaper Biscuit Bars?" or "Why no Elephant-Flavoured Purple Ham Shreddies?"   Lack of telepathy no excuse.
     Anyway, I ordered Wonder Wife not to help with unpacking and putting away yesterday's shopping, which contrarily guaranteed (that word again) that she would. Consequently she found the "John Carter of Mars" DVD and spent several minutes mocking Conrad's choice of film.
     What the hell, at least it's not the Asylum version!

Asylum.  Still making a profit and films.  So someone is buying them, right?

Conrad muses -
     John Carpenter is going to write and produce (directing is too much bother for him now) a TV series about a secret, hidden society of telepaths.   Mere days before production is due to begin, a group of businessmen approach him with a cheque for $150 million.  Would he like to make a film, carte blanche, no suit involvement at all, and when he hesitates they up the pot to $175 million.
     So John makes his dream film, IIRC a musical set in a nuclear power plant, which tanks at the box office but hell, he got to make his dream film.
     The TV series never gets made.  Years later John wonders if that wasn't the point after all ...

* Poorly!  Taking ages to bake and it's gone over the tin.

Right.  Off to conquer the world.  The kitchen!  Sorry, the kitchen.  The world is tomorrow.

"Last night I dreamt of Manderley*"

Actually That's A Lie, Because -
     last night Conrad dreamt of Eden Underwood, an apparently placid English country village, picturesque, tranquil, full of greenery - and evil to the core!  Yes.  There was a standing stone known as "The Barn Door", since it resembled one, set out in the fields.  Cattle avoided it, and to walk where the missing second door would be was to invite terrible retribution.  One winding country path around the village ran between earthen banks, and two bulging rocks  at one point narrowed the path so one could barely squeeze past; and if you squeezed but touched one of the rocks - oops, soul forfeit, since they were sinister sacrificial rocks!  Up by the canal was what seemed to be a - under-used - vertical climbing frame - actually a subtly-distorted copy of a scaffold where people had been hung, built in homage.  And you couldn't trust all the villagers, either, since many had an unhealthy interest in "outsiders", who might be brought into the community - or sacrificed to their pagan gods.  Conrad's character in the dream was warned by one of the non-pagan residents:  "They're interested in you.  Either for yourself, or for your girlfriend.  Beware."
     It'll teach me not to eat cheese before bedtime.  Mind you, as a background for a story ...


Eden Underwood.  Population 167 sorry 166.

On The Theme of Creepy -
     How would you feel, getting out of bed in the dark to visit the bathroom, and THIS confronts you -

"Hello!  No need to visit the loo any more, is there?"

This creation is one of Darling Daughter's, made out of papier mache and I think is hollow enough to be able - should the whimsy take you - to fit your head inside.
     No, I'm not sure quite what it's supposed to be.  We had to move it out of the lounge.  The eyes seemed to follow you wherever you went ...
 


Eden Underwood.  Population 166 sorry 165.











Our Word For Tonight
     Is "Palimpsest".  To even the most casual reader, this is clearly - clearly! - an Austro-Hungarian word referring to lighter-than-air craft dating back to the early days of the Twentieth Century, where dashing young blades from the KoK's air arm disported in the heavens over Vienna, charming young ladies out of their liberty-bodices.
     Clearly.
     Hang on, it's not?
     Bah.  Apparently it means "something - usually vellum or papyrus - that has been scraped clear and re-written upon."
     I definitely prefer the BOOJUM! definition.

You can hear those liberty-bodices being thrown ...




Eden Underwood.  Population 165 sorry 164
(163 of whom are human)



Okay, I now have to go off and sponsor Anna, who is doing a half-marathon to raise money for desperate dogs.  I swear, she cares more for those dogs than her fellow-workers.  "If I don't feed them steak and salmon, they go into a decline!" she states.  This is quite besides the parrots, piranhas, pangolins and pythons she has in her menagerie.

* From the film "Rebecca", a chick-lit forties flick you may not be aware of.  Worth a tickle.

Tomorrow: Audubon's Book Of North American Werebirds

Halloween, eh?

Pursuant to the Geneva Convention -
     This year the small ragged children coming to beg for comestibles are not to be hurled into the lower dungeons of BOOJUM! mansion to keep company with the walsprots, plappergeists and snarks amid the bones of last years beggars. 

The airy upper dungeons, with occasional sunlight, some rainwater and plenty of moss

Q.  What do you call His Highness of Halloween?
A.  Pumpking.

More of Pumpkins
     May I present to you the carving skills of Wonder Wife:

Wide angle shot


A rather better contrast shot
 

There you go, what a bit of ingenuity and a sharp knife can do.  Don't go away now, there is more.  What did Conrad do with the extracted* flesh?  Why I put it in a pie.  A cheesecake, actually.

Still cooling so still in tin

Since I have now completed my jury service, I'll be taking this into work tomorrow for the charity scoff, much to Darling Daughter's displeasure as she fondly if a little naievely expected just stick her face into it, solo**.

 Q. What does a camel eat at Halloween?
A. Humpkin

Battleships again
     This is the USS Zumwalt, actually a destroyer and thus much smaller than a battleship, but I have to keep the strained analogy going:

At the helm, Captain Kirk.  Yes, really!

The prow struck me as curious, since battleships of a century ago had a similar convex hull shape.  In their case it was a "Torpedo bulge" intended to prevent those sinister submarine weapons from breaching the hull.  The hull above - well, who knows ...

Q. How do aristocrats celebrate Halloween?
A. With a Pompkin

Back to Battleships
     Only the paper version:

Before

This is the first puzzle I got utterly lost on.  Having gotten rid of the pencil scrawl, I am going to have another go.  Look for results tomorrow.

*Pumpkin flesh.  Pumpkin!  and definitely not human.
** If this was a banoffee pie she would indeed scarf the whole thing, solo.

Pub Quiz beckons - I now have to go trawl tabloid tat newsites, for vapid celebrity gossip about people I don't know doing things I don't care about for reasons I don't like.  O the hardship!

BOOJUM! - Bustling and Baking

 - and Biscuit-Basing
     In anticipation of returning to work as per usual Friday, I have been busy this evening, for is not Conrad a creature of his word?
     Yes he is.  So, since Manisha had selected Pumpkin Cheesecake weeks ago when there were no pumpkins, I had to saw the top of our giant vegetable purchase, then use an ice-cream scoop to remove the pith and seeds, then scrape the flesh out with a metal spoon.
     I shall have to puree some 150g of the flesh tomorrow, since I haven't got enough cream cheese to make the cheesecake part.  I did make the biscuit base, however, whilst watching "Masterclass" - an offspring of the Great British Bake-Off where the judges show you how to make the recipes they chose.
     So!  Tomorrow I do the cheesecake.
     Meanwhile tonight I've got a load of bread dough proving.  No, I shall not abandon the bread to cook unloved and unwatched in the oven!

Burnt bread or meteorite?  Only you can decide!

Yes, Free-Form Rock
     Not long ago, Darling Daughter came into the kitchen, where I was playing "Close To The Edge" by Yes.
     "Why are you listening to free-form rock?" she asked.  Conrad blustered a bit about how it's a classic album from the Seventies.
     She did strike a chord*, though.  I've always felt Yes were closer to jazz than that hideous label bandied about back in the day "ethereal quasi-classical".
     Conrad.  Who's been about a bit.  And who still can't make sense of Jon Anderson's lyrics.

It looks great.  What is it?

You May Be Wondering ...
     How come BOOJUM! is still here, after the imminent assault by the Cuddly Piranhas two nights ago.
     The remains of the Cuddly Piranhas:

Filleted fish

 Help arrived at the last minute - the defecting messenger-mice decided that life at the  BOOJUM! mansion was infinitely preferable to life in the wild - smelly, dirty and no Wi-Fi - and returned just in time to annihilate the feral fish.

Mess not with mutant monster messenger-mice.

 Right, off to babysit bread!

Tomorrow - Audubon's Guide to the Vampire Fowl of North America

* Sorry, couldn't resist the pun.

Aha! Today's Theme - Doctor Who

Way back in time -
     Not long arrived on the planet, Conrad grew up with children's television programmes like "The Woodentops", "Supercar" and "Pinky and Perky".
     Then along came Doctor Who.  The theme music was a terrifying electronic score, the background to a bleak and un-nerving title sequence, there were Daleks, and lots of people got killed.  It terrified me; I would flee to the top of the stairs when it came on, arriving slightly earlier each week until able to sit through a whole episode.  The Cybermen still creep me out.

The Doctor is In.

Let's Time Travel
     Because we can.  I mentioned "Empire", the film magazine, yesterday.  This is a potentially dangerous artefact that needs to be treated with care, as you can carelessly pick it up, browse for a few minutes and then discover an hour and a half have gone by.  What did I see in it?  This photo:

No it's not a robot - vintage 1960 television camera

That's David Bradley, not William Hartnell, and I had to look closely to realise who it was and who it wasn't.  Someone, somewhere, in Casting, made a good choice.  Have a BOOJUM!-powered pat on the back!

Why So Popular? - or - The Doctor Is In
     In ages past, Doctor Who was seen by the powers-that-be at the BBC as something rather distasteful, vulgar and silly and "Wouldn't you rather buy our Bristol wildlife series or a funny game-show with Bruce Forsyth?"
     The view became less set over time, with the video releases earning the BBC about £10 million.  By 2005, people in the corridors of power were those who had grown up with the programme and they didn't see it as trivial or worthless.
     Hey pesto!  The Doctor reappears after a sixteen year hiatus, to universal acclaim.  I still have to pinch myself to see if this is real.
     It is real, isn't it? 

A question I ask myself every single day!

 A Confession
     The zombie novel didn't get any input last night because <ahem> I was reading an old fan-fiction novel I'd written years ago.  "City In The Sky", probably still available on the Fanfiction website. Yes, Doctor Who.  No, this one is Seventh Doctor and Ace.

[A moment's ferreting-about on the internet occurs]

Herein the link:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6385277/1/CITY-IN-THE-SKY

Warning: it is quite long.

So - Tanks?
     NO!

A Note To Our Readers
     Due to customer feedback, please replace all prior mentions of "Wifey" with "Wonder Wife", and amend all references to darling daughter with the following capitalisation:  "Darling Daughter".  Thankyew.

Crikey Dick Van Dykey*!

Or, Serendipity
     Last night Conrad was musing in the kitchen, thinking deep dark thoughts.  "What was that BBC ghost story about a painter I saw decades ago?" inspired by nothing in particular.
     Like many a thought, this one passed without being recorded for posterity, until a couple of hours ago.  Conrad was perusing in the kitchen, specifically reading the latest edition of  "Empire", unseen till that very moment, and which publication you ought to be familiar with.  What did I come across on a page-sized advert listing BBC ghost stories?  Quite.  "Schalken The Painter", from 1979.

Mine was Serendipity.  Hers will be Traumadipity.

Perhaps I should have saved that one until Halloween.

More of Bread
     Last night's loaf, once the burnt crust had been scraped off, was perfectly edible.  To prove it wasn't just Conrad-made-it-he'll-damn-well-eat-it bloody-mindedness, Wifey had a couple of slices, toasted.
     Then today I pondered about making a French loaf.  Forget the baguettes in shops, the oven simply isn't big enough for those.  It did fit two foot-long baguettes - that is, two baguettes each a foot long as shown below:

Before Conrad sliced one open and scoffed some, just to test it.

These will now have to age a few days before I can comfortably dip them in a cup of hot Marmite.

Winter Plumage
     Darling daughter is currently cleaning, tidying and hoovering her room.  She discarded a fine furry hat that Conrad can now wear for the winter, with the addition of a layer of tinfoil on the inside, of course.  Can't be too careful.

Conrad, rendered speechless by darling daughter

"Speechless" because the untidiness of that room is legendary.  Our towels formed a liberation movement to free their comrades trapped in there, and textile scientists are asking curious questions about the layers of fossilized clothing found at the bottom of several piles in a corner.  Rumours about Japanese soldiers still hiding in cupboards are untrue, however (they were chased away by the Russian ones).

So - Tanks?
     No!  Battleships, instead.  Not the big steel things stuffed with guns and missiles, but the logic puzzle version thereof.  I had been miserably unsuccessful with two previous attempts, but this morning I nailed a third attempt, then went back and re-did the second.
     "We don't believe you!  Show us the evidence!" I hear you cry.  Well, okay:

The triple Logic tick of triumph

Well, that's all for to - what's that noise?

O Noes!  The cuddly piranhas are back, with jungle reinforcements!

Man the barricades!  Deploy the felt cannon and Velcro shotguns!  BOOJUM! prepares to go down fighting!


* Nothing in this post, or the entire blog for that matter, has anything to do with Mr Van Dyke, it's just that his name rhymes.

I Bake - But Not Of Cake

The Staff Of Life
     Bread, in other words.  For the first time in years, probably 4, I'm baking a loaf of bread.  This follows on from the Chelsea Buns, Muffins, Poppy Seed Roll and Monkey Bread.  Why the sudden concern with leavened goods?  Because I used to make them and re-discovered it's not that difficult.
     Having said that, I have managed to over-brown the bread by forgetting to turn it in the oven. Oh well, I'll know better next time.

Ten minutes later - make that "burnt" not the delicate euphemism "over-browned".  I should have been in the kitchen turning the tin every ten minutes and covering the whole with tinfoil well before 45 minutes were up.  After scraping the black away, it is still edible - I've just had two slices.
     Just hang on - I wouldn't do this for everyone -

A piebald loaf

 About that pumpkin -
     It was there on the windowledge, so -

Blender is there to give scale

 

Meanwhile, In A Nearby Glass ...
     Sat some of this:

Add caption

Wifey bought this for me as she was taken to the extremes of hilarity at the name.  For those of you who are not fluent in Yorkshire, this is dialect for "Shut your mouth".  And no, I don't know why there are monkeys on the label.

So - Tanks?
     Nope, not today.  Today we have - a Giant Whelk!

Trust me, it's huge.

Right! That zombie novel still needs working on.  Off I go