Not Quite Rock'n'Roll

Laundry, Dishes And Cutting Down A Tree
     But, Conrad did manage his usual Sunday start - giant pot of tea and a bunch of crumpets.  He also managed to finish "Trouble With Lichen", a modest little novel by John Wyndham, which itself has generated a few questions about vocabulary - but more of that in a bit.
     I should put "cutting down part of a tree", not the whole thing itself.  We've lopped off branches and bits of trunk and the tree barely looks disturbed.  Take a look at the amount of greenery we hacked off:

Which is tree and which is bush?

     The tree remains substantially intact, just with fewer dangerously protuberant bits.  Now, excuse whilst I go inspect the Schlemmertopf ...
..... and not before time.  Joint and veg now cooked.

Before -

After.  Yes there is a difference, thank you!

     Any sordid comments about bushes and trimming will be condemned to the Spam bin.

Excuse Me?
     Conrad is still not entirely sure how his mind works.  It does, or you wouldn't be reading this, but it's operations are something of a mystery.
     Take, as an example, the abbreviation: "NIYWTLJOE" that he came across in the Intermediate Notebook.  Copying a recipe for Sophie, if you need to know why he was working in that particular volume.
     What does it mean?  I could be cruel and not tell until tomorrow - but I shan't.  It's "Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth" by the Dandy Warhols.  
     Why did I abbreviate it?
     Dunno.
     Why did I pick on a song that doesn't get a lot of airplay thanks to the title and mention made of "heroin" in the lyrics?
     Dunno that either.
     I don't have anything by the Dandy Warhols, so why -
     oh I give up.

A bottle of champagne.

     See that bottle of champagne?  Explain Conrad's thought processes to his satisfaction and he'll buy you that bottle.

"Trouble With Lichen"
     Briefly mentioned above, let me warn you

SPOILERS AHEAD!

     Just so you're aware that the plot might get given away -

NO, REALLY, SPOILERS!

     - even though the book is over 50 years old -

DOG BUNS!  I'M WARNING YOU - SPOILERS!

     The novel concerns the accidental discovery of the drug "lichenin", which can retard the aging process by a factor of up to five times, so your average human could live for two or three hundred years.  Problem is, the drug is derived from a rare lichen that grows very slowly, in Manchuria.  The impact of people able to live three times longer than normal has echoes throughout staid 1959 England, and John points out various aspects of life affected that the reader simply didn't imagine would be affected.

Not the edition I have, but this illustration sums it up very well ...

     Anyway, the reading volume that normally throws up unusual words is "Against The Day" but TWL is today's vocabulary-vexer:

     "Uxorious?" - to be very, very fond of one's wife.  Is there a male equivalent, Conrad wonders?

     "Glissade?": a method of descending mountain slopes by sliding in a controlled manner.

     "Nugatory?": Useless.

     "Furphy?": A rumour.  Derived from the Furphy-manufactured water-cart, around which Australian soldiers would gather and gossip, and probably gamble, too, being Australian*.

A Bit Of A Non-Story
     Conrad did not go to the Manchester Comic Con.
     Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing.  I avoided queuing in the torrential rain for hours, did not have to pay £120 to get in**, and did not have to pay over-the-odds for merchandise that I could have got much cheaper from Travelling Man or Forbidden Planet.  Also, I did not have to see this:

No, I don't know what it is, but I know I don't like it.

     The downside is that I did not get to see the less creepy and more impressive costumes, as in this case:

Don't scoff, these people are your last, best hope for peace -
- oh, no, wait a minute, that was "Babylon Five", wasn't it?

*  Australian soldiers were tremendous in action in both World Wars; out of action, however, they were rapscallions to a man ...
**  This may be a slight exaggeration.