Lá fhéile Pádraig sona dhuit!

You Guessed It - 
     "Happy Saint Patrick's Day" in (Irish) Gaelic.
     Actually I have a quibble or two with Ireland's patron saint.  
     What is he most noted for?  
     Driving the snakes out of Ireland.  The only snakes you'll find in Ireland are in zoos or vivariums (vivaria plural?).  If you happen to go strolling the wild hinterlands of County Cork or the downy uplands of County Down, one thing you won't have to worry about is being bitten by snakes.
     So, then.  Ireland = snake-free environment.  

"No blaspheming, now, Conrad.  Else I'll crock you with my crook.!"

     Let us nip back lightly over the Irish Sea to - England.
     Are we here in England snake-free?  Well, almost.  We have two native species of snake.  The grass snake - 

Non-poisonous.  A bit wimpy, really

and the adder -

A bit poisonous.  Still rather wimpy.

     As the Forestry Commission says in regards to the adder:  "the worst effects are nausea and drowsiness, followed by severe swelling and bruising "  - so no worse than Sunday morning after an over-done Saturday night.
     My point is, where did Saint Pat do his practicing before his anti-charming activity on the Emerald Isle?  Obviously - obviously! - here in England, except he needed to tweak the snake-expelling charm a tad because he left us with the two above.  
     They are a bit crap as snakes go.  Not only are they entirely un-deadly, they are also surpassingly rare.  Conrad has never seen either in the wild despite being around for more than 50 summers.  

Wakey Wakey Cakey Bakey
     Herewith the evidence of the Polenta Cake with Raspberries and Lime Drizzle:

Sitting in a bath of Lime Drizzle

     Next time - if there is a next time, which Wonder Wifey assures me there will be - I'll omit the lime zest and juice, or use a fraction of the recipe amount.  A variation with strawberries would be interesting.
     I'm glad that the actual cake under the topping sank after coming out of the oven.  At first it had a central peak like a miniature Everest and I glumly visualised all the raspberries falling off.

Today's Library And Charity Shop Haul
     Conrad has not been to the library in Royton for lo! these many months.  Which meant he had an outstanding fine to pay, whoopee.  A persual of the sci-fi shelves revealed - well, firstly there weren't that many sci-fi shelves in the first place.  A whole heaping lot of "Fantasy", yes, tons of those <interject sneering tone here> but not much sci-fi - obviously the person selecting these is egregiously* biased against science-fiction books, if not science-fiction per se, because there's a ton of graphic novels/comic books over there.  Oh, and all the sci-fi stuff was recent publications.  None of the classic authors.

Eclectic, non?

     Which meant I had a bit of a gloat over the paperback in the upper left - Larry Niven's "Tales of Known Space", a collection of classic "hard" sci-fi short stories from 1960 onwards.  For 50p!
     I bought "Coping With Your Difficult Older Parent" for Darling Daughter Sally, thinking that this hilarious spoof would entertain -
- hang on, it's not a spoof.  It is, in fact, cold hard fact, not a comedy screed.
     Oops!

Revelations
     No, not the Biblical tract.  Yes, my zombie novel.  Now on Chapter Seven of Part Four, and the intent was to finish at Chapter Ten of Part Four.  At current progress this will mean falling a chapter short.  I could insert a chapter that doesn't revolve around the principal narrator, except I've done that already with two other chapters and I don't want to have even less of Dee than needs be.  A touch of the auteur is needed here.
     Oh.  Now, that word "auteur" gives me an idea.
     Watch this space!

Belevations.  Close enough.

So - Tanks?
     Welllll not really.  But close.  Sticking to the theme of St. Pat and snakes, let me introduce you to the Giant Viper:

Giant viper on the right

     Introduced in the 1950's, the Giant Viper is a 200 yard long tube packed with explodey stuffs, which is launched by rocket into minefields, where the explodey stuffs do their work and blast a 6 yards wide path across the minefield.

BANG!  Yes, Conrad likes explodey stuff

Actually Giant Viper is obsolete and is being replaced.  The new replacement?  Python!

Whoops Nearly Forgot -
     Not because she's cute, or clever, or easy to train.  No!  Edna appears solely to generate traffic for Dad's blog!

Conrad ruthlessly exploiting domesticated wolfette

*  How many times did you read this word today?