BBOJUM! - Back With A Bang!

O Irony, Please Extract Your Teeth From My Ass
     Due to Circumstances, I didn't post any blog yesterday.  I did put a silly place-holder blog on this morning, three sentences with a picture of a vampire carrot.  So far this has had 15 visitors, more than Monday and Tuesday's blogs combined - vampire vegetables are clearly the wave of the future, people!

Yes, vampire vegetables, because vampire fruit is just so stupid.

Eating Cake For Charity.  A Dirty Job, But Someone's Got To Do It
     Dom, a.k.a. Dan (after his initials), had arranged a cake-themed day in order to collect monies for the charity Francis House.
     Boy, did he ever.  We raised £80 from the cakes alone - 

This is about a third of what got laid out originally

 - Dom, not one to spurn a challenge, had also declared his intent to go Homer.  Nothing to do with sexuality, rather an intent to get his head shaved and coloured in order to look like Homer Simpson.

Dom:  12 o'clock view

Dom: 6 o'clock view

     Bear in mind that Dom had to walk the length of Deansgate ( a long, verrrrry busy street in Manchester city centre) in order to get to work, and you may realise why he got many strange looks.

Circumstance
     This is what prevented a blog yesterday.  I went directly from work to Picadilly Station, in order to catch the train to Leeds, and the Original Oak pub over in Headingly.

The pub in question

  This event had been lightly-planned by Dave and Brendan, to celebrate the forthcoming weddings of John, Dan and Dom (no, no, an entirely different Dom).  Nature smiled on us: we left a grey, overcast Manchester oozing monochrome drizzle upon a concrete landscape, and found the sun shining in Leeds.
     We constituted a happy 13, breaking up into discrete groups at times, which is when the mobile phone came in handy, guiding later parties to rendezvous.
     At the second venue, "The Box", Conrad was inveigled into playing a game called "pool".  I don't know why the name, as no water or swimming is involved (come to think of it, there wasn't anything "boxy" about The Box, either).  This game consists of hitting one ball against another at speed, to impel them into pockets - stop me if this is familiar - oh it is?  Sorry.

The stag attendees swap banter whilst hitting ba - hang on, hang on -

Proper pool.  In this case we are looking at the London Olympic Pool with a mass - no,wait -

   Third venue was a club called "Trio".  There is a clause in all club's licencing that requires them to have a sound system driven to 180Db so that nobody can hear anyone else and sign language (or writing) is required.  Not only that, the music at Trio was dreadful 80's stuff that should have stayed in the box.
     Fortunately for Conrad, he had to duck out of this sonic assault at 10:15, in order to catch a train back to Manchester to catch the last night bus to Oldham to get a taxi from there to home.
     Which he did!  Conrad was sleeping the sleep of the blameless and blessed whilst others in our party were attending a venue called "Silks Gentleman's Club", where young ladies cavort <Mister Hand intervenes to point out that this is a family-friendly blog...>

Signage
     This being - signs.  Conrad takes note of these, especially if they can be mis-interpreted, slandered, amended for puns or otherwise pad out the blog a bit.

"Caravan Storage" - seen outside a caravan retailers that possessed about an acre of caravans for sale.
     "Wow!" reflected Conrad.  "They must have REALLY BIG SHELVES!"

"Adult Store" - seen outside a retailers on Oldham Street.
     "Wow!" reflected Conrad.  "I know where to go if I need an adult - hang on, is that legal?"

"Leeds Civil Hearing Centre" - seen on an official, mock-Georgian building en route to Headingly.
     "Wow!" reflected Conrad.  "Who knew, since by implication there must be a "Leeds Bad-Tempered Hearing Centre."

Hit With The Coincidence Hammer - Sort Of
     My taxi-driver to Leeds Railway Station got honked at by another taxi-driver.  They wound windows down whilst travelling at speed and conversed in Punjabi*.  It turned out they both knew each other but hadn't met in four years.
     Phil?  Phil, can we have a quote, please?

"No aliens this time, Conrad, just you and your paranoia."

Hit With The Coincidence Hammer - Definitely
     Whilst sitting in the Original Oak, Dom (not the yeller-headed feller) enlarged on a theme he's obviously given thought to:  the shift in perception and attitude of male prisoners who undergo a long-term sentence in jail, from heterosexual to homosexual.
     Predictaby, with alcohol-fuelled tongues a-wagging this brought on a lambasting from Brendan, who can be quite inventive with rude words.
     Into this crossfire steps - metaphorically, I was actually sitting on a stool - Conrad, who can't quite believe his ears.  I reached into my bag and brought forth Larry Niven's "Tales Of Known Space", mentioning "How The Heroes Die", and displayed it to the assembled - because that transition in sexuality is a central plot point.
     Brendan then embarrasses generations of Celtic poetry by pointing out how the cover illustration resembles an anus.  Thank you, Brendan.  Keeping it real!
     Er - Phil?

"Larry Niven?  Archetypal hard sci-fi author.  Oh!  The coincidence?  Yep.  Aliens subverting reality.  Again!"

Finally
     You may recall out domesticated wolf, Edna, who has decided to tackle large trees in order to develop her jaw muscles:

The branch, now down to half-size after gnawed