BOOJUM! Hits 500 Posts

No! Not In The Sense Of Punching 500 Concrete Pillars*
I mean, obviously - obviously! - that I've posted on the blog 500 times.
Now, to those who have leisure time enough to manage that many in a week, the Exit Door is OVER THERE!  Don't let it hit your bottom on the way out.  I have to get up at <thinks creatively> 4:30 in the morning and work until 7 p.m. then walk twelve miles home before making lunch for the next day and swilling a dry crust down with a cup of water.  Tepid water.  So I think I can say, without exaggeration, that Conrad is managing pretty well.

An RAF Victor, looking like it came out of "Thunderbirds".
And yes, that is a good thing.

The Mammoth Book Of True World War One Stories
Yep, still reading this one.  It throws up the odd interesting word, being written waaaay back in the Thirties.  Oh, look, here's one such:
"Battue"; said of a quite horrid scene a doctor witnesses, a giant marquee filled with dead bodies on stretchers.  Apparently it derives from the Old French "batre", meaning to beat grass and bushes to flush game-birds, which are then killed - the noun being extended to human beings in this case.

Baton.  Close enough

"Rooti": Bert, a thirsty, hungry soldier complains about not having any food.  Conrad, knowing how much mutilated Hindi the British army picked up in India, suspected it to be Indian in origin, and it is - a type of flat, unleavened bread, obviously taken as shorthand to mean food in general.

Rooty.  Close enough

Whalley Range Hospital:  many decades ago Conrad lived in a student hovel that made the degraded abode of "The Young Ones" look like an Ideal Homes showcase.  This was in, yes, Whalley Range.  It may be slightly more gentrified than in my day, but oh! it was rough.  Nor did I recall a hospital.  Ladies not wearing a lot on street corners, yes the name for them does begin "ho-" but there the resemblance ends.
     A dash of Google-ful reveals that the character referring to "Whalley Range Hospital" actually meant St. Joseph's Hospital on Carlton Road.

And here it is

     BOOJUM! - bringing you up to speed.

Tomorrow's Cake - 
 - will be Pumpkin Cheesecake, a recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook.  Why so?  Well this is the only time of year when it's easy to get pumpkins, and also because A Certain Someone** requested it.  Apparently I made it last year and it was enjoyed.  I will take their word for it, it's impossible to remember exactly what I made when, and I have said I will make It if people ask for It.

Gutting a pumpkin.  Hmmm.  Doesn't look too edible, does it?

Boiling the hapless pumpkin's flesh into a pulp.  Bwah-hah-hah!

Roasting the pumpkin alive.  Boy, I really have it in for pumpkins, eh?

More Of Food
This is Tegellio or Tellegio Tallegio Cheese, something along those lines.  Italian and going cheap - Conrad is unsure if it's supposed to be covered in green mould but trusts that this is intentional and since he's bought it, it will get eaten!

A Fruitful Metaphor
Actually no fruit involved -

- except I had to add this one

<short pause as I go to check on the cheesecake>

Needs a lot longer, I think.  Anyway, I was considering an analogy that might explain why some of the more - shall we say arcane*** - ideas and words pop up in my head.
     Premium Bond.  
     No!  Nothing to do with the better 007 films and stories.  More usual in the plural, these are bonds issued by HM Government.  You, the punter, buy them and every so often some are chosen at random and win win win!
     The selection is by ERNIE.  Who may be wise but he isn't Wise, if you see what I mean.  It's an acronym derived from "Electronic Random Number Indicator".  Conrad will let the extra, UNEARNED "e" slip as he likes the acronym.  And it seemed like an analogue of my mind - each day certain random facts or ideas or words or horrid little rants will pop into my consciousness like a Premium Bond number.

ERNIE in his youth; note the hilariously pretentious "futuristic" lettering

"Fandom Of The Operator"
With a determined reading regimen today, I finished this book off at lunchtime, snubbing both Manisha and Hazel to do so.  Manisha obviously didn't mind one bit as her enormous laugh could be heard across the cafe; she must have a special amplifier built into her voicebox as she is very wee.
     Anyway, FOTO.  About halfway through - oh, excuse me 

SPOILER ALERT

     the narrative suddenly takes a very dark turn.

     Gary, our narrator and slightly useless hero, is really a psychopathic mass-murdering serial killer who also caused the death of his wife and then brings her back as a zombie.  And after starting in the nineteen fifties, it ends in 3012 AD with a battle between Gary, who is now dead, and an author who created aliens that beamed messages into people's heads.  I think that's how it ends.

Cranes and Trains

Okay, I stretch a point to make a rhyme.  "Cranes and Trams" doesn't rhyme, and "Crams and Trams" doesn't make sense, except to me, but you need to understand what's going on as there will be a quiz at the end.

"Crames"?

      Here you can see that only one major strut remains to be placed, and that plastic sheeting is going over the blue plastic cladding.
     If I can be bothered, and not tonight as it's Pub Quiz in thirty minutes, I may put together a montage of the pictures taken of Victoria Station.

*  I could do it, but destroying 500 pillars - too much like mindless vandalism, hmm?
**  Ah, why be coy - Anna.
***  "Shall we say bizarre and worrying?" opines Mister Hand