It's A Beautiful Day!

So Why Is Conrad Indoors, Tapping At A Keyboard?

     Sheesh, you sound like my mum.

     For your information, dear reader, I have already  been to Royton and back, and taken Edna for a walk, and watered the flowers.  Frankly, it's a bit hot out there at the moment for an old man with thinning hair and I'd not like my brain to simmer excessively, since it is currently chilling to Baroque Trumpet Concertos.  Not rock and roll, no, but tuneful and melodic.

That's Quite Enough Of That!

     The "that" in question is the hideous apparition that seems to be the official face of Vimto - "The Vimtoad".

Quick!  Kill it before it breeds*!

     First of all, Conrad is pretty certain that this is a frog, not a toad.  I am also given to understand that certain tropical frogs secrete hallucinogenic chemicals from their skin, and this must be what happened with the advertising agency behind this ghastly little creature - too much South American Vacuous Venom.

     Now, given that BOOJUM! is always trying to promote a better understanding of our unfortunate animal friends whose names begin with "W", may I put it to you that a far better promoter would be Vimtoeaselshark (say it out loud); altogether a proposition with a lot more bite ...

"Vimtoeaselshark!  Drink Vimto!
Or he'll leave a bitemark!"

"The Sun Has Got His Hat On"

     NO!  This must be the most egregiously inaccurate song in existence.

     Why?  A simple look at the lyrics will persuade.

     

     "The sun has got his hat on"

     For a start, the sun is a ball of gasses undergoing nuclear fusion - IT HAS NO GENDER!  The Herzsprung-Russell** diagram does not differentiate stars on whether they are "girls" or "boys".

     "Hip Hip Hip Hooray"

     The songwriter must have been British to be so pathetically grateful about a bit of sun that he writes a song about it.  Alright, go ahead, have fun while you can.  It's later than you think.

                                               "The sun has got his hat on"

     NO!  You would need to disintegrate every planet in the Solar System to make a hat-shaped artefact big enough to fit on the Sun.  NO! again, because the Sun's thermal output would instantly vapourise the hat-shaped artefect as the fleet of spaceships try to position it.

                                               "And he's coming out today"

     Conrad warned about gender - and now we have sexuality?  Away with you, song - go far away and do not return until you have acquired knowledge of astronomy.

What, I Ask, Is A Chafing Dish?

     There is a reason for this question, since Conrad happened to be cleaning up a milk pan at the time, so this time we can all explain why the question arose.

     "Chafing dish" seems to be the sort of thing that crops up in "Three Men In A Boat".  Allow me to illustrate:

Eminently suitable for use on a boat

     I also seem to recall that Tom, of "Tom and Jerry", usually ended up sitting on a lit chafing-dish, which seemed to hurt a lot rather than merely chafe.

Lemonade

     Conrad drinks a whole lot of this stuff, the kind that's bad for you - carbonated water with sweeteners and additives - that hasn't been within sniffing distance of a lemon.

     Until today!  Having found a recipe, here is the process:

Three lemons, 8 ounces of sugar and a litre of water

      Conrad first tried to blend the lemons with the food processor - not a success as the sealing gasket was missing so it leaked - hence recourse to the hand-held blender above.  Cannily, he dissolved the sugar in the water by heating on the stove; no worries about sugar hanging around the final product.

Tested on Darling Daughter

     Sally pronounced it a bit bitter, so it got diluted and poured into an empty Don Simon bottle.  I did consider leaving the label on as a terrific jape, but discretion and a sense of wanting to keep a whole hide won out.  So, the end product:

Now chilling in the fridge

"The Expendables III"
     No!  That's "The Expendables 3", not "The Expendables One Hundred and Eleven".  Although -
     No, no, anyway, back to the bus poster that inspired this post.  Conrad has seen "The Expendables", of course, and a fine thick-eared action flick it is, too.  Then there was the sequel and now we get a threequel.
     Given that Hollywood is run as much by accountants as artists, these films must be making a profit, even after the wage bill for all those names - I mean, Jason "The Stath" Statham doesn't come cheap, does he?

Testosterone!  Knives! Explosions! International animal-charity good-deeeds!

     I hope you don't expect Conrad to go working out the profits of these films and percentage returns, the gross versus the net - look elsewhere for that kind of bean-counting, gentle reader.

I Know What It Is
     - it being very bad taste indeed to ask "Do you know-' - well,  let us move on from  tawdry real-life.  Sally brought an arsenal of paints and brushes into the kitchen and began to sketch out on a canvas, before doing the background painting:

NO!  It's not "A Potato Wearing A Wig"

     Conrad knows what it is, and if you and he are both lucky we might get to see the end product.


*  Only joking!  (Disclaimer added otherwise there might be trouble from Anna)
**  This is a real thing, and you really ought to go find out more about it.