Bedraggled But Back

Forsooth! The Rain in Spain - has apparently followed football fans here
     Conrad had to brave the angled torrents of H2O that threw themselves from the skies this morning, on a twenty minute trek to his current assigned workplace. 
     I cannot trust my hood to keep water off - when I used to drape it over the banister our cats would perch on it, and to remain on the sharply-angled surface, they would dig their claws in.  My waterproof hood is waterproof no longer.
     Nor was my umbrella up to the job.  I bought it for £1.50 in September last year and have gotten more than my money's worth out of it, poor mutilated leaking thing.
     As I got closer to work, I encountered a group of young men in "Real Sociedad" tee-shirts and football strip, trying to shelter under a single umbrella, getting as wet as I was.
     Well, I hope they enjoy their trip to Manchester, whatever the result* - and take the rain home with you!

Rain where it should be.  We've got enough!

Woeful and Wet
     Thanks to the precipitation described above, I was wet on the outside.  Thanks to not tightening the cap on my water bottle, my rucksack was wet on the inside.  Reading book and logic puzzle book are now a bit damp and soggy.  My notebook is unscathed, as is my diary.  Small mercies.

Seek a Greek Clique
     I know, I know, stretching it a bit with the rhyming there.  What, I hear you wonder, is Conrad wittering on about now?  Cooking? Plate-smashing?  Holidays abroad?  The History of the Peloponnesian War**?
     Music!  Nor am I talking about domestic Vangelis or bouzouki-strumming minstrels.  No, I mean the music of two and a half thousand years ago.

The BBC - font of all knowledge - has more details:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24611454

Now, Conrad has read a fair few Greek classics in his time (translated into English, I'm not that clever) and this seems like quite the revelation.  I look forward to seeing the results on Youtube.

Monkey See, Monkey Dough
     Excuse the horrid pun.  I came across a recipe for "Monkey Bread" recently, a bread made up of lots of dough balls, tossed in nuts, rum and cinnamon and baked in a springform ring tin.  I have the ingredients but not the tin -

The article in question.

I do have a springform tin.  The question is, can I find an item to substitute for the central flute?  And will it stay put under the impact of proving dough and then a very hot oven?
     Well, time permitting, I may find out tonight.

Probably a bit out of scale.  Just a smidgeon.

So - Tanks?
     I wanted to get a photo that gave an impression of size (or lack of it).


Behold the mighty Locust!  Appropriately enough, sitting in a barren field

This little chap is the M22 Locust, designed and intended to be used in airborne operations as it only weighed 7 tons and you could almost put it in your back pocket.

*  Conrad - not interested in football, won't bother looking up the result
** By Thucydides.  A very interesting book about the clash between Sparta and Athens, and their allies.  Required reading in the US Marine Corps because <Mr Hand intervenes to prevent death-by-boredom>