Like a phoenix, arising from the ashes. Only slightly off-topic, have you seen the Buzzfeed links on Facebook? "What kind of fairy animal are YOU?" I've seen folks who were fairies, or dragons, or <what is the plural of "phoenix?> phoenices. Conrad got Toad With Scrofula*.
| A toad, with skin so bad you don't know if it's got scrofula or not |
So - Where Was Conrad Last Night?
Off drinking, eating and shouting in the trendy boutiques of the Northern Quarter. Yes, this is a shockingly louche display that deprived you of your daily blog and all it's visual vitamins. So I shall work extra hard to divert and entertain today.
Trof
One of the trendy boutiques mentioned. Conrad hadn't been before so tried to Google for it, except he was looking for "Trough", which brought up nought but Shudehill Bus Station, and trams. Not only that, there were two "Dan"'s present, Young Dan and Dan Chan, which confused people at several points.
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| The exterior |
No, not Dan Chan, whom I alarmed for a few seconds - Young Dan. How we got
onto the subject I know not, but Dan was explicating on the difference between
dogs and cats.. "If you dropped dead, your dog would pine for you," he said, "but
your cat - your cat would eat you. In fact it might not wait until you're properly
dead ..."
Dog Buns! swore Conrad. He remembered reading a novel for juvenile's back when
he was a juvenile, where our intrepid heroes find the skeleton of a shipwreck
victim, and the skeleton of his dog next to him* - and the rest of the island over-run
by hundreds of cats.
WHAT WAS THE NOVEL!? No title came to mind, but - R A Ballantyne. Could that be
the author? Conrad wrote it down**.
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| Front interior, which we hogged |
Another trendy boutique, except with higher prices and decibels. At this point enough
alcohol had been consumed that Becca and I were doing a tag-team Basil Exposition
with Katie, who, bless her, wanted clarification on everything political, national,
martial and technological since 1914. Hence Conrad's sore throat this morning, which
required a couple of pints of English Breakfast with honey to sort out.
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| Astronaut. Close enough |
10:54 a.m. In The Office (Friday 18th July)
Darling Daughter's cake was not going to get et at home, so Conrad took it into work, where it went down well, as visible in the photo below:
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| Sally's cake on right; Conrad and Sophie's effort on the left |
As The Crane Flies
The Great Big Enormous Crane is back, this time with very little room for either manouevre or being put together. I didn't see it done but it must take a great big amount of skill to manage it's erection. No sniggering at the back!
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| Those enormous white steel spans are what it will be lifting |
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| Big! Impressive! Erec - hmm, maybe not. You lot have dirty minds. |
As in "my interest in nuclear isotopes was piqued by wanting to build atom bombs". A strange word of dual intent - it can express an interest, or a feeling of injury, coming from Medieval French "to prick". It also underlies "piquant", said of something with an interesting hot taste, like Asda's Chilli Cheese Dip, which has got noticeably more piquant of late, which piqued my interest in it, but which would probably pique Darling Daughter as she can't handle too much spice.
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| Pique is boring. Here's the Ride of the Valkyries instead. Which is a little bit spicy, actually .... |
The "Suggested Posts" that turn up on Facebook are normally utter drivel about cars or other stuff so far under my radar that they vanish from my mind the instant I scroll past, but every once in a while an interesting one comes up. Like this one:
"Secrets Of Organ Playing"
Conrad cannot play a note of music, but - honestly - how many secrets can there be about playing the organ? Rememer to press the pedals with your feet, hit the keys with your fingers, and always play fully-clothed.
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| Well, two out of three's not bad .... |
Written by the splendidly named "Vidas Pinkevicius", who must be Latvian or Lithuanian with a surname like that. I had never come across the concept of myths about
sight-reading organ music myself, as I have never come across shear-stress tables for angle-iron trusses before, either, yet logic says they must exist.
There is a great line in there "a difficult organ composition written in imitative counterpoint, such as a fugue". Definitely one to throw into conversations about music to sound as one knows far more than one really does ...
Bands From Wales
Lowri, who laughs a lot, mentioned bands from Wales. She is from Wales herself, so there is a logical connection, rather than a lady who mentions geographical locations at random and associates them with music -
Anyway, Conrad wondered how many Welsh bands he knew of.
Er - Super Furry Animals? Lowri helped with The Lost Prophets. Stereophonics. And Sir John Peel used to play records by a band whose name is Welsh for "The Red Noses".
So, there you go, four bands come from Wales. That was easy!
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| Whalesong. Close enough |
* Another great name for a band
** The novel is "The Coral Island" by R, M. Ballantyne, written about 1850, read by Conrad about 1973. What a memory! Thank you Oscar
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