Yes, but what is it?
Another of those words that just happen to pop into Conrad's consciousness from time to time, impelled there by Dee*.
I know it sounds like a kind of hot sandwich made with salt beef on rye with pickles and mustard - but it's not. No.
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| Cabriolet for two? |
Awesome! I'd pay good money to see horses, singular or plural, sketching anything. How do they hold the pencil in their hooves?
Thank You Dee
Dee is Official Dream Theme Arranger in the fervid, kaleidoscopic hothouse that is Conrad's mind. He's a bit of a one. Sometimes the dreams are dull - pallid reconstructions of a day at work. Sometimes they're quite horrid - an unseen monster down the side of the bed is trying to drag all the blankets off and in the dream Conrad is still awake. Last night was a corker, though: superhero Conrad versus humans possessed by monsters/demons/aliens. Never found out which, and they tended to disintegrate when exposed to daylight or ultra-violet radiation, which is unfortunate for the humans in question but what the hell, you can't defeat alien/demon/monster invasions without breaking a few eggs.
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| Ultra-violet, ultra-violence, easily confused ... |
A certain weary resignation, maybe, but - Conrad finds that his spleen does not froth unto the boiling point, he does not grind his teeth, nor does he drive his nails into the palm and draw blood. No. Those are all symptoms of being stuck in a traffic jam whilst driving a car and Conrad is now utilising what are known as "Public Service Vehicles". Buses, for the less pretentious.
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| The bus ride to work (in Conrad's mind) |
Speaking Of Which -
I am sure that you, dear audience, are familiar with "Mondegreens" - music lyrics that are misunderstood, either through deafness on the part of the listener, or because the singer mumbles. Drugs most certainly have nothing to do with it!
Pin back your ears, gentle reader, and travel back in time to 1977 <cue cheap wibbly Quantel effect too crude even for Doctor Who> when Conrad's ears were certainly not dulled by the passage of time and Motorhead concerts**. He was listening to The Sex Pistols, a hot pop combo of the time, whose lead singer, Jonathon Rotten, wailed "I wanna destroy - PONSONBY!"
"Blimey!" exclaimed Conrad (for he spoke in Comic-ese even then). "They've really got it in for this "Ponsonby" bloke. Wonder what he did?"
Of course the lyric states "passers-by", not Ponsonby.
However, who do we find in "The History Of The Guards Division In The Great War"? That's right, Brigadier Ponsonby. Not only that, who wrote "The Grenadier Guards In The Great War"? That's right, Ponsonby.
Perhaps young Jonathon had been forced to read one of these histories at his public school? Eton or Harrow, at a guess. That would make it all so perfectly clear!
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| Harrow. This is how they discipline the pupils. No wonder Jonathon felt rotten! |
Today our Blue Bin finally arrived, cause enough for a 20 gun salute*** at the Mansion. Conrad wheeled it into position outside the kitchen window and Edna came to see what was going on. The more bins there are the happier she is, since it means more objects to skulk behind.
Yes, at this point Conrad began to wonder about the word "Skulk". We know what it means - to loiter or lurk in a calculating way prefatory to doing dirty deeds - but where does it come from?
From Scandinavia, actually - "Skulke". And from there it made it's way to Old English.
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| Skunk. Close enough. |
From Edna To Murda
I do apologise for mangling the word "murder" but there is no other way. Sorry and all that. One alias of our pocket Wunderhund is "Shredna", thanks to her diligent and tireless intentions of tearing to bits anything she can fish out of waste-paper baskets or bins in the Mansion.
"Shredna. Shredna. That reminds me of something," mused Conrad recently. "I say, Dee, can you do a bit of a trawl? Go back about thirty years or so."
What got stirred up? At first, "Shredni Vasta", until the dipthongs got rearranged and we ended up with "Sredni Vashta".
Sredni Vashta. It's a short story by Saki, about a great big monster ferret that KILLS! and that's how we get to murda. Excuse me! Murder.
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| This is Sredni Vashtar the killer polecat. Poledog. No, wait a minute - |
Time To Check The Baking
Conrad deemed it wise to bake something for the return of Wonder Wifey, given that she had hinted^ that it was about time some gluten-free cake got baked.
Yeah it looks okay. Just don't ask me to eat any of the horrid chocolate stuff.
* Short for "Devious". Conrad's shifty and untrustworthy subconscious.
** Erm, never actually seen them. I have seen The Ramones. Does that count?
*** It would be 21 but we have to keep one deployed against the Giant Moles
^ That is, instructed.
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