- him being a big fat coward, just that there's a touch of a theme tonight. Guns! Knives! Razor blades! Also fountain pens and scribbles, but you can't have everything.
From The Trenches
You will recall Conrad banging on yesterday about "An Infant In Arms", Graham Greenwell's autobiography. Graham, mercifully, avoids showing how clever he is with quotations from Horace or Juvenal; still, his idiom throws one somewhat, coming as it does from almost a century ago. So-and-so is described as being from "B.N.C" with no elaboration - an institute at Oxford? Then there is a substance called "Frozacalone", which not even the mighty Google can identify, nor the less-mighty Yahoo. Answers on a postcard to the Mansion, please.
One article mentioned in AIIA that is readily apparent is the "Dayfield Body Shield", an early and primitive form of body-armour.
 |
| Not natty, in fact ratty and tatty |
Mumblety-Peg
I know, I know, another example of things sloshing around in Conrad's mind until they appear here. He remembered reading about this game but never recalled the concept of what it is.
And what is it?
Dangerous!
It consists of two persons attempting to throw knives at their own feet, the one who gets the closest wins, especially if he* manages to impale himself with his own knife. In one variant, competitors have to extract the knife from the ground with their teeth, bringing with it the possibility of tetanus infection if they misjudge distance-to-blade incorrectly ...
 |
| How to win BIG at mumblety-peg! |
Conrad, being as mentioned a person of quivering gamboge** tint, experienced the unpleasant feeling this morning of shaving with what felt like a set of blunt weasel's teeth.
"Owww!" he cursed, flinging the errant razor in the bin. He tried another from the same packet and found that the teeth were now those of a piranha - but still blunt.
 |
| O horrid object. |
The Cake, Dressed
You saw the naked wanton last night, now you can see it with a zesty lemon frosting:
 |
| Courgette and Lemon cake - that's two of your five-a-day! |
A Five-Bar Gate
Ah, me, the digital generation. An e-mail at work requested that staff track particular incoming calls with a "five bar gate".
"What's a five bar gate?" queried several of the younger staff, plainly at a loss.
They were apprised of the tally: four vertical lines with a fifth running diagonally across them, thus denoting five items and in a manner resembling a gate of the sort seen in hedges.
| The only five-bar gate I could find. |
Hmmmm. Perhaps they're just townies, but Conrad suspects that it's because they never write anything - if it doesn't exist as a mobile phone app, it doesn't exist at all. See next post for writing implements!
Pay Attention You Younger Folk
Imagine a grumpy old man waving a stick - wait a minute - the grumpy old man is me - and that's not a stick, it's a fountain pen.
You don't often see these in the office, since that modern horror the ballpoint has taken over, much as the grey squirrel*** has displaced our native red squirrel.
Here is a short photo-essay on Conrad re-filling his Workday pen:
 |
| "Pen" on left, "Ink" on right. |
 |
| Pen broken down into barrel and nib units |
 |
| The ink bottle is opened. At this point ink always gets on one's hands |
 |
| Filling the nib unit |
 |
| Close-up of nib unit showing the valve with ink inside |
 |
| All back together, bottle top on |
 |
| A Humourous Caption to close. |
* The odds are very much against the word "she" ever occurring here, as women are too sensible (or cowardly) to try this
** Yellow for the pretentious
*** A.k.a. the "Furry-tailed Rat"
No comments:
Post a Comment