Let's Get A Move On

I've Got A Lot To Witter About -
 - and its already late.  "Why?" I can hear your plaintive voices raised in querulous lamenta - Ow!* - "Why?"  Because I did a late shift tonight, then did the shopping and put it away (doing this solo is not necessarily a bad thing as it means nobody else knows what I bought, heh heh!).  And there was quite a bit of shopping.
     So!

Today's Cake Is - 
     Banoffee Cupcakes.  A Hummingbird Bakery recipe, which means more fiddly than your average recipe, but a nicer end product.  These were fiddly little rascals (or rapscallions, if you prefer).  Because they needed to be in on Friday and I went to the pub on Thursday, the sponges got made on Wednesday. They were thus cool for Thursday, but I didn't put custard on them for fear it would make them soggy.

Covered caramel creme custard cooling

      Horrors!  After the custard cooled it was lumpy, so Conrad had to put it through a sieve.  He also over-whipped the double cream to fold into the custard, so the entire mix had to be sieved again.  Then I was up early this morning to put the topping on, and because it's soft and runny, there could only be one layer in the tin, which had to be held carefully level.
     People at work expressed polite enthusiasm in them, so much so that -

Chocolate-covered caramel cupcake

Whoops!  Almost NSFW
I have today finished reading "I, Claudius" although don't sigh with relief as there is still "Claudius The God" to read yet.  Anyway, I came across Claudius mentioning a "scented pathic" and obviously - obviously! - Conrad wondered what that was. From the context it appeared to be a medicine or medicinal artefact, so of course come lunchtime** I did a quick Google, and, do you know, it's not a medicine at all.  No, the words "Homoerotic", "Homosexual" and "Catamite" all came up in the search results, along with some classical statuary and paintings.  So it's all in the best possible taste, although Conrad suspects he might have to bookmark that page in the novel in order to prove exactly why he was looking for that word.
     There's a thought - Matt, the Classics graduate works in my team.  Perhaps I should approach him for advice ...

Catamite, Mighty Cat, often confused ..

Irksome Thing, Begone!
As I have posted before, some of the high-gloss that every day has in Conrad's world does get tarnished by those irritating, irksome little things that nibble away at your sense of sang-froid.  So, behold the awesome elegance of a Squeezy Honey Bottle:

"The bees - they've always been our friends!***"

     This is an irk-perk item, since Conrad found that runny honey always, but always, inevitably, always always ALWAYS dripped across the lip of the jar and ran down the side to leave a sticky, finger-licking line of lint-defined sugar behind.  No such problems with a squeezy honey bottle!
     It's not earth-shaking news, although it does mean not having to trot off to the kitchen to wash hands every time a jar gets handled.  Ergonomic efficiency, you see, Team Leaders!

Confusing English: "Out, vile jelly!"
No, nothing to do with Rowntrees or Robinsons, nor gelatin or trifle, or Jelly Babies^, in fact not anything you'd normally associate with eating.
     In fact, if Conrad's memory serves properly, it is a line in Shakespeare (Macbeth?  King Lear?  Romeo & Juliet? Hansel & Gretel?) and is all about POKING A MAN'S EYE OUT WITH A DAGGER.
     There.  Bet that made you considerably less hungry, eh?  Well, don't go away.  On a programme about enduring or surviving an Army endurance course, one of the instructors explained that one source of liquid with a high water content was - eyeballs!  After killing a chicken he proceeded to suck the aqueous humour out of it's eyeballs.
     Now, that really is vile jelly.

Lemon Jelly.  Close enough.

The First World War, JRR Tolkein and The Lord Of The Rings
But first!  A little-known cult author called Stephen King, who is a good story-teller and doesn't wax precious about the art of writing.  His quote, if I may borrow it, was that "Tolkein swore in and down that Sauron was not Hitler in fancy dress", which does rather confirm the view people have taken of LOTR, seen in the perspective of the aftermath of WW2^^.  Conrad, however, just to be perverse, invites you, dear audience, to consider LOTR in light of World War One.

A slide rule.  The pocket-calculator of JRR Tokein's day.
(I know, I know, it's a thin excuse but hey!  it's a slide rule!)

     Why?  Well, principally because it was an experience that JRRT went through himself.  He was present for most of the Battle of the Somme, one of the most unparalleled and awful bloodlettings in human history, including time spent at the "Schwaben Redoubt", a spectacularly horrible place.  Recall, if you will, his writing of the plain north-west of Mordor, "Dagorlad", a swampy wilderness full of bodies left after an apocalyptic earlier battle.  Then, too, one can read Mordor as a metaphor for Wilhemine Germany: militarised, expansionist, brutal and very dangerous.  Sauron?  Obviously an analogy of the Kaiser, the chief Warlord whose physical deformity (a withered arm) echoes the Dark Lord's mutilations.  You can go further - the Corsairs of Umbar?  An analogue of the German High Seas Fleet.  The satrapies of the south and east that pay homage to Sauron and supply armies for him?  References to Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey.  The tower of Orthanc, residence of the turncoat Saruman, might be interpreted as Vienna, home of the Hapsburg monarchy and a "little Satan", if you like, as compared to the "great Satan" of Germany itself.
     Wow, there seems to be mileage in this one!  I feel that we may return to this topic in future.

JRR Tolkein: The Serious Years

* Mister Hand removes the Anti-Pseud bamboo skewer from Conrad's ribs
**  Diligent and conscientious as Conrad is, he never misuses the internet at work. Honestly.
*** I nicked this from a line of dialogue Michael Caine has in "The Swarm"
^ Which, with gleeful maliciousness, Conrad likes to dub "Jellied Baby"
^^ World War 2.  The 20th Century's other major unpleasantness.