To You - A Punishment

Or, At Best, A Chore
But to Conrad, a convivial way of passing the time.  

No!  I don't mean brewing and drinking pints of loose-leaf tea to be taken without milk or (shudder) sugar.  No!  I don't mean taking compulsory exercise by walking the dog, because that gives me time alone to compose clerihews and test them on Edna, who loves them. That is, I think she loves them because she whimpers with enthusiasm when she hears the word "Walkies"; maybe the dog treats have something to do with it.
     "Enough of what's not the issue, Conrad!" I hear you quibble.  "Clarify what you are blethering on about."
     Well okay.  My collection of "Purnell's History of the Second World War".  Art?

Scads of 'em!

     I got them in a bundle from the late-lamented Oxfam bookshop in Rochdale a good few years ago now, and have never bothered to organise them until last night.  "96 Weekly Issues" states the blurb under the title.
     (If you aren't a bean-counting number-crunching pedantic hair-splitter you may want to jump to the next item).
     Well, I have 79 of them, so that's 17 missing, right?
     Wrong!  There are no copies from either Volume 1 or Volume 5; they start at Issue 1 of Volume 2 - "Hitler's Revenge on Yugoslavia", which is mid-1941 for the historically incapable.  Nor is there anything about D-Day or the aftermath, thus a lot of 1944 appears to be missing.
     So there appear to be 33 missing, which is confirmed by a quick check on Wiki; the original run of 96 issues was extended to a 7th additional Volume.
     I enjoyed counting and arranging them, although, as today's title suggests, your mileage will almost certainly vary.

You see?  You see what I'm missing?

     The next question is, do I bother going after the missing copies to make a complete collection*?

Okay, the messing about with numbers and beans is over, you can come out now.  Let the motley begin!

More About Fyre: Less About Burning And More Of Bungling
Ah yes, that delicious feeling of Schadenfreude - the malicious enjoyment of other people's misery.  I did touch on this festival yesterday and came across a verrrrry interesting article by one woman who had been recruited to be a talent liaison for the festival.  Herein the link:

https://www.thecut.com/2017/04/fyre-festival-exumas-bahamas-disaster.html

     Chloe - the talent liaison lady, not just a random female name - flew to the island to begin her job.  She was warned not to swim in the sea - sharks.  She should also have been warned off the beach - sandflies. This is mid-March, mind, and the festival was supposed to begin at the end of April, yet nothing had been built.

Putting up a luxury villa tent.

     There was no stage, no sound gear and no lighting, which - as this was going to be a music festival - is kind of a major stumbling block.  No luxury villas, either.  Conrad is pretty much a novice when it comes to construction, but if you haven't even begun building, let alone providing power, light, heating, water and sanitation to those buildings, and you're on a six-week deadline, things have gone badly wrong.  
     It gets worse.  None of the acts supposedly appearing had been paid, which means - musicians being quite devoted to getting their dollar - that they wouldn't be appearing, let alone performing.  Another stumbling block for a MUSIC festival.
     Ja Rule, who appears to have a rudimentary musical background, turned up to party on a yacht whilst this trainwreck rumbled on.  One presumes, since he has possibly graced a stage or two in his time, that he noticed the conspicuous absence of any music festival infrastructure.  Or perhaps not, because - yacht.

A yacht.  Well, it would have been at the Fyre Festival

     Chloe's production team were all sacked at the point where wiser heads amongst the planners calculated it would cost $50 million to stage the festival, and it still wouldn't hit the promised levels of luxury.
     She chose to quit, and ends her expose with the telling detail that nobody at Fyre bothered to have her sign a Non Disclosure Agreement.
     Ah, delicious Schadenfreude!

Here's A Festival That Worked
The one that was happening in Sadler's Yard on Friday, remember?  Strictly limited in size and scope, dedicated to that most basic of human activities, drinking beer.  Art?

     They had a great big marquee, lots of different types of beer, some street food vendors and wandering security chaps.  Plus you didn't have to pay £76,000 to get in, which helps.

Finally -
Do please retain a place in your hearts for the Walrus.  This unfortunate creature looks both odd and scary, as if someone designed a seal whilst drunk.

"I know - we'll give ick vampire fansgsh."

   



*  Yes!

Tea Or Two

No!  That Isn't A Typo
You ought to know that by now.  Conrad is a hateful humourless harridan when it comes to spelling and grammar; if the title says "Or" then that's what it means, not "For".
     The title is explained thus:  at the weekend your modest artisan makes tea by the potful, and the pot in question has a 1 lit - 2 pint capacity.  I might even have a snap of the pot in question.  Art?  A quick trawl through the archives, please.

     Your humble hack starts the day off with a pot of English Breakfast, which means it has to be brewed before mid-day, as otherwise it wouldn't be breakfast, and then I couldn't drink it.  The question is, do I go for another pot (Loose Leaf Darjeeling by choice) in the afternoon?  As you may be aware in light of the old quotation, tea is "the cup that cheers and not inebriates", to which might be added "but it certainly makes bladders dilates" and there does seem to be a <ahem> tipping point after which I shall be trotting to the toilet all too often.
     So - One Tea Or Two? 
     I shall have a beer whilst I contemplate.

Further Of Festivals
Last night your humble scribe was oscillating mildly* with other folks celebrating Hannah's departure from my Coyly Un-named Em- oh okay, it was the Co-Op - in Sadler's Yard -
     - hang on, does it have an apostrophe or not?  In the interests of correct punctuation (and given my opening paragraph!) allow me to check - and it does, so we're not talking plurals here -
     Art?

Aaron, Katie and Hannah.  I'm not telling you which is Hannah.

     - and Anna, she of the Hidden Wicked, explicated a bit about having been to Glastonbury.  For those of you who are unfamiliar, this is a music festival in the middle of nowhere that charges a lot for admission; these factors keep out the rabble.  For Conrad's fancy it smacks far too of a medieval fayre, except with electricity - which is to say, mud, primitive toilet facilities and roasted-rat-on-a-stick**.  Art?

Like the battle of the Somme, minus artillery

     In my never-ending pursuit of trying to stay one step ahead of the Grim Reaper, whilst simultaneously chasing that ever-elusive Street Cred, I mentioned to Pete if he'd ever heard of the 'Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival'.

ECSPF - the aftermath

     "Is that the one in the Caribbean where people were promised luxury accomodation and free food and big name bands and it all went ****-up?" he replied.
     "No, you're thinking of the Fyre Festival," I countered.  
     What crops up on the Beeb website today but an article on one of the FF's founders being arrested for fraud?

$100,000 for this?  Bargain!

     It really does seem to have been an epic disaster; expect a film about it in a few years time when tempers have cooled a little, with Mark Wahlberg playing a hapless trust-fund Everyman, stuck in a portaloo for three days, and Andre Brougher a put-upon Bahamanian official.  There you go Hollywood, £77,000 for that treatment, please.

That's Mark, trapped!

     Festivals - best watched from the comfort of one's sitting room.

The Perils Of Pup
Conrad still insists he is not a dog person. The domesticated wolf, because that's all they are, requires a lot more input and quality time than a cat, and frequently display all the attitude of a sulky teenager not getting their own way.  Teenagers grow out of it; domesticated wolves do not.
     Anyway, here's a picture of the pitfalls of pooch.  Art?

"Need - help - cannot- cannot reach beer ..."

     The angle is a bit odd, yet you can hopefully tell that Conrad has a dog sprawled across his lap.  Not only can I not reach my beer, I cannot even reach my laptop to type out Words of Wonder.
     Oh well.

I'm a bit stuck now - I did have a slew of clerihew to do, but that will take me way over the word count for tonight and leave me short of material for tomorrow.  What's a scribe to do?

Aha!  Google is your friend -

Inter-Continental Ballistic Weasel!

     I egged the pudding there, rather.  They're only HARM missiles used by the South Canadian 'Wild Weasel" jet squadrons, which would detect and home in on radars - Homing Anti-Radiation Missile, and when they hit they would indeed inflict harm.

Remember - only Weasels can prevent radar!!!


*  The Smiths reference there
**  If this sparks an interest, I want royalties!

What Lies Beneath -

Yes Indeedy Ally Sheedy
No, she has nothing to do with the rest of this post, her name is merely a convenient rhyme.  Nor does this post have much to do with the film of the same name, "What Lies Beneath", starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford, except - SPOILER! - you might consider that what lies beneath the lake to be a metaphor for the human soul.
     Which is all very dry and philosophical, so let's break it up with a picture of - 

A Finnish Aerosan

     - actually that's a 'Hakaristi', the Finnish national symbol until the end of the Second Unpleasantness, when it got changed for understandable reasons.  The pot and brush are for painting the symbol onto the aerosan as it appears to have been captured from the Sinisters.  The Finns got a lot of their expensive kit that way.
     This ties up with the absence of any new post on BOOJUM! yesterday, because I was out in Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell to celebrate Hannah's finishing work at the Co-Op.  Yes I did get home for 10:20 but it takes an hour to compose these lines that greet your sight and I didn't fancy spending that time against the clock.

Er - close enough.

     "Yes, yes, but that stuff about being beneath?  Is it to do with the Wombles?" I hear you ask.
     NO!  It is not.  Although "A Wombling Merry Christmas" is truly a ballad for the ages -
     - where was I?  Oh yes, the celebrations.  They began at The Angel, a pub that is revered by the CAMRA crowd.  Art?

The salubrious exterior

     By CAMRA but not camera, as the shabby interior exhibits a lot of ceiling and wall water damage, perhaps as a means of driving away any urban suit-forms.  The more aesthetically discriminatory of our party (Katie) wanted away, so we hied off to Sadler's Yard.  Art?

Not a horse in sight

     That above is the Pilcrow, which has all the ambience of a garden shed with pretensions.  "Or a cricket pavilion" opined Pete.
     "This is all very well and good, Conrad," I hear you prattle on.  "But the 'Beneath' bit?"
     I was getting to that!  Okay, obligatory group photo.  Art?

Some of the suppers-up

     Not good enough.  What I want is a photo that displays the sweetly feminine charms of Anna - whom I am not alone in praising, Russell did as well, and he's gay so she has quite a lot of something going for her - 

Me on the left.  Just so we're clear

     She looks as delightful as a field of daisies, doesn't she?  Innocent, even?
     We beg to differ!  Allow me to sidestep wildly and introduce these - 

To be handled with tongs

     Which Anna bought and offered to the table: without warning.  Russell incautiously ate a whole one, ending up with a flushed face, tears and a numb tongue.  For twenty minutes!  Pete nibbled timidly on the end of one and refused to go further than that 1/2 inch portion.  Hannah disappeared to the ladies, doubtless to spit her Karkli down the khazi.  Conrad, no stranger to hot things, managed to gradually chew his way through three of them and won't be hurrying to try them in future, as it took half an hour for his mouth to completely recover.
     So, What Lies Beneath?

     
     A very wicked sense of mischief, obviously.  If this lady ever offers you a bag of crisps, check the Chilli Rating first.
     On other matters, it was jolly nice to meet up with some of the old gang from my Enormous Anonymous Employer, who had flattering things to say about your humble hack.  I'm not sure if this was respect or fear but I'll take a compliment out of it anyway.

Furthermore -
Allow me to produce Exhibit F, because in answer to the question What Lies Beneath? one of the answers would be - 

Edna!

     She is lying despondently on the floor, whimpering pitifully every so often, outraged - OUTRAGED! - that Conrad has not yet yielded up the chickenskins from the chicken drumsticks he has that she can smell and which so obviously belong to her - yeah, yeah, Edna, later if you're lucky.
     Hang on, here's a stray bit of Karkli, Edders - nice and crunchy!  Would you like*?

Finally - 
I see from Auntie Beeb's website that the Allotment, plus the Herbaceous Border of Eden**, have narrowly trounced the Polite Australians*** at the game of rugby.
     Why are they still using the term "Lions" for our rugby team!  Why!  

The weasel: Nature's natural Fly-Half

     Surely someday soon the Vice-regent of the Beasts will inherit it's rightful title?


*  Sadly not possible - Wonder Wifey would come after Conrad with a Challenger tank were he rash enough to offer the Wunderhund any such same.
**  Britain and Ireland, FYI
***  New Zealand