BOOJUM!: Holiday Half-Way

Four And A Half Days Into A Nine -

Dearie me! This simply won't do. Dull, dull dull. Duller than a worn lead pencil. No, I want plenty of bang -

Bang-y enough?

and plenty of fizz -

No!

<ahem>

Better. Also has more musical talent ...

and raw rock power -

WRONG!

- hang on -

STILL WRONG!

Better. Conrad's wrath abates

Excuse me whilst I go get another cup of tea* -

- thank for being patient. Okay, it would be easy to whip up a post that consisted merely of pictures with witty captions, however Conrad knows that you yearn - how you yearn! - for his perspective on life and so there will be plenty of blather.

Black Books & Babysitting

Actually dog-sitting. Edna needed to be looked after so Conrad got the task; he sat on the setee and Edna sat on him. Whilst doing so, Conrad watched the first two episodes of "Black Books " again. He sat upright in astonishment that this series is 14 years old, and the younger readers may not be familiar with it.

Manny, Bernard and Fran

It's very good. I had to stop after two episodes; my laughter kept waking Edna.Bernard Black runs a bookshop - more accurately, owns a bookshop. He hates customers and selling books. He is a dishevelled, drunken, curmudgeonly man-child, although he does have his bad points, too. His best friend - more accurately, his only friend, Fran, owns the gift shop next door. Manny, escaping from a hated job in accountancy, arrives to provide a third leg of our comic triangle. Best line of the series has to be Manny's, complaining about the dirt and uncleanliness of Bernard's abode:"I'm eating scrambled eggs - out of a shoe! - with a comb!"

Edna? Any comments?

Made of solid "Awww!"

Excuse me I think there's maybe just half a cup of tea left in the pot -

- there was.

"Fleming"

Conrad witnessed this poster for what looked like a television series whilst driving, noting no more than the title and that it had a man in the background (I can't dawdle on the Queen's highway to ensure accurate observation for BOOJUM!, sorry - death on the roads and all that).

"Could it be?" wondered I. "Bob Fleming, that character wracked by bronchial troubles on "The Fast Show", has got his own, spin-off series?"

No, that would be silly! What could you do with such a one-trick character? Good for a single sketch, is all.

A little horse. Close enough

Aha! How about Sir Alexander Fleming? He of the Nobel Prize for - er - something really significant - oh yes, penicillin. That didn't seem to fit with the dark, brooding photograph. A biography of Sir Alex would feature men in white lab coats, peering into microscopes and making brews with Bunsen Burners.

Pencils. Close enough

Then it struck me that title might refer to Peter Fleming, British adventurer and inventor of dirty tricks during The Late Unpleasantness (a.k.a. World War 2). Dirty tricks? Why yes. He was called to put his sense of good-sportingness aside and create stay-behind teams of volunteer civilians if the bally Hun ever got his feet ashore in Britain. Then it struck me this would be a rather obscure character to base a series on.

Dirty sticks. Close enough

Curious - if I were pretentious I would blab on about "being piqued" - I relented and Googled and what do you know, it's a short series about Ian Fleming - Peter's younger brother. You know, the chap who invented "Chitty-chitty Bang-Bang"** and some obscure spy series.

Chitty-Chitty's "Childcatcher". The NCPCC want a word with you, matey -

Strange Fruit

Because I can -

Okay, so it's a vegetable. Close enough.

Germany

Apparently there are a few people in Germany who read the blog, so this one is directed at you.

The concept of "Germany" had quite an hiatus between 1945 and 1991. There was West Germany and there was East Germany, and West Berlin and East Berlin. The West was bright and cheerful and outgoing, and also dreadfully capitalistic poor dears; practically a modern Babylon; whilst the East was drab and grey and insular, and achingly communist poor souls, with all the appeal of wet concrete.

It is quite the bitter irony that in the First Unpleasantness and the Late Unpleasantness the Germans found themselves at war with the British, who had been allies for simply ages before C20. Look up the King's German Legion, or Marschall Blucher.

Talking of legions, the Germans gave the Romans a particularly severe stuffing at the battle of the Teutoberger Wald in 9 AD, led by "Arminius" which would be "Herman" in German. Herman the German learnin' 'em terminum, to coin a phrase.

The Germans also make a lot of nice beer. They drink a lot of it, too. One day Conrad will make it to the Oktoberfest ...