Life's Plus And Minus

Waxing Philosophical -
Conrad feels that daily life is a round of small trials or tests of endurance, tempered by equally small but welcome pleasant surprises.  In case this is too vague and ethereal for you, the hard-bitten reader, allow me to exemplify*: the lift I took at work didn't go down to Floor 0; no, apparently deciding that it was time to throw wild variation into it's user's lives, it went up to Floor 8 and stayed there, until Conrad got out and pressed the Floor 0 button again.  

Don't laugh - one day it may happen to you ...

     This delay meant I missed the 24 bus.  However, it also meant I got a seat on the nice empty 181.
     The 181 requires me to debus and wait for the next 409.  :(
     However, I popped into the Co-Op in Royton and got lots of remaindered food.  :)
     Unable to share lunch with Anna, who was called to a meeting.  :(
     Shared lunch with the hilarious Carol and Hazel, comedy gold.  :)
     Stuck on phones all day long.  :(
     Thus didn't fall asleep mid-afternoon. :)

A Bunch Of Freebies
Yes, my Enormous Yet Sensibly Anonymous employer is ever having other retailers in to give away free things by the small articulated lorryload**. Normally these are edible food products <well of course edible, if they weren't edible they wouldn't be food> as the photo below demonstrates, But!  in one of those small surprises, there was a high-quality note-book in the bag as well, which is very timely as my own Medium-sized Notebook is nearly full.

Note the book

I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist despoiling a virgin page.

Liquorice
The word "Liquorice" comes from the original Greek "Glycyrrhiza", meaning "sweet root".  However, this post isn't an attempt to better educate you, gentle hard-bitten reader, but a lament that all my birthday liquorice sweets are all gone.  Gone!  As with Nineveh and Tyre, or some such poetic glop.
     The last bit certainly lived up to it's description on the box " 1 x Hard Stick", if it had been slightly longer you could have played cricket with it, or used it to hammer nails in.

Liquor.  Ice.  Close enough

Revelations
Yes, got a bit more of the zombie novel done last night, more filling in with detail as Dee arrives at the port of Southampton, ready to take a ferry across the Channel to link up with the British Army Forces in France.  He and Iq are the liaison pair nominated to spearhead their battalion's arrival on the foreign shore.  

"Contact!  Revs*** right flank, fifty metres - ENGAGE!"

Next chapter will be the last one, tying up loose ends, showcasing the arrival of American-Japanese "Hunter Seeker Technologies" at the port of Cherbourg, revealing who created and released the Omega micro-organism and why, so if not a happy ending (1/3 of the world's population gone, you know) at least it's a tidy one.
     Then I have to go back and revise it.  First draft, after all!

A Pome
Regular readers will recall that Conrad does not like poetry bar the odd classic, which is howlingly ironic as he gets asked to compose a bit of rhyme when colleagues finish at work - by no stretch of even the most uncritical admirer of all things Conrad could these be dubbed "poetry".  

But you can call it "Toetry"!  

I can't post the one I composed for Simona's leaving tomorrow as the last line involves conflating her surname with a piece of feminine undergarment, which would probably embarrass the gel terribly if she knew, and Conrad is fairly sure that posting other people's names without permission is a good way to catch flak.  The first two lines, however, don't mention anyone:

"You may not know or even care

Who looks good in underwear"

     I promise it's all frightfully clever.

I'm not sure  quite what this is, but - hey! - at least it's not boring

The Metro
Conrad had an insight this morning, whilst using the Metro to soak up spilt pop (which it is excellently suited for).  "Free", it claims.  Well, no, Conrad disagrees.  My wage comes in at £9.27 per hour and it would take me probably twenty minutes to look with scathing criticism at what this paper pretends is news, so by my calculation that's £3.09 it owes me.
     Then look at it's blatant mis-representation of it's contents.

     "4 pages of gossip and showbiz"  Except the equivalent of one whole page is taken up with adverts.  There are 16 small paragraphs dotted over the remaining 3 pages, and "dotted" is appropriate as they would take up a lot less space if in an orderly formation.  Further, photographs with only scant relation to the text take up half of those 3 pages.
     Al Murray, you have defined a niche market with your "Not News" classification as the page of guff about Cheryl Whoosit-Whatsit amounts to her being a bit late for a party.




* Mister Hand is a bit curious at this high-flown language and will watch out for pretentiousness - the next symptom of poseurism.
** Actually not articulated, the next one down from them - like that one -
*** One is not permitted to call them "zombies".  Officially they are "revenants".