Refractory Period Resumption

Sorry For Being Technical
Back in my student days - a very long time ago - the "refractory period" was the time taken for a nerve to be able to recover and transmit another impulse along it.
     "Conrad!" I hear you call.  "There's no cooking sherry left, have you been at the medicinal brandy?"
     No!  certainly not!  I drank that last month - do keep up.  I am trying to be clever about posting a second time today.  The refractory - O never mind.
     On with the motley!

Refectory.  Close enough.

K-'s Eyebrows
Conrad fears this may be another tomato-salting or man-moisturising moment, but he plunges on nevertheless.
     Okay, comely colleague K-  excuse me, allow Conrad/Konrad to descend to The Metro's level of journalism  - komely kolleague K-, stated that she was going to have her eyebrows tattooed shortly.
     Conrad pointed out that she had two perfectly functional eyebrows of her own.  K- replied that she wasn't going to get rid of them, merely have a tattoo overlay.
     Colour Conrad confused.  Young people today!  I do recall Bob Geldof shaving his eyebrows off in "The Wall", but that was forty years ago.  K-!  Don't exfoliate!

Eyebrows are boring.  This is the bridge from "The Wild Bunch" exploding.

The Bristol Stool Chart
Work colleague Mike Lunn explicated this.  Mike is an amusingly satirical rascal and one has to take what he says with several kilos of sodium chloride*.  He replied to a question about tea with a response that referred to the above in terms of colour and shade, and since he was sitting next to Conrad, obviously - obviously! - had to explain his response.
     The "stool" in the above chart is the medical one, not the furniture that you rest your posterior upon, although posterior does come into the BSC, oh yes indeed.  If I said "Bristol Poo Chart" then that might illuminate your intellect.

Pooh.  The best kind of.

     Bordering on Too Much Information, there are distinct correlations between the state of one's stools and general health.  Mike claimed that there is also a colour scale for this chart, and that one can request tea of a particular strength based on the BSS.
     There!  You can't unimagine what BOOJUM! has put into your mind, can you?  No, no, don't thank me, just doing my job.

A Valentine Rocket
No!  Not the card that gets sent to people you fancy but who would rather: join the Foreign Legion/shark-wrestle/eat rusty barbed-wire/juggle live hand-grenades  - than acknowledge your existence**.

Wow!  Look at this, a Mk1 Matilda in working condition.  Got to be at Bovvie, during their summer programme.
Er - shall we continue?

     I refer, ladies and gentlemen, to the Valentine tank.  I am sure that this squat little rascal was adapted to travel horizontally via the use of giant vertically-mounted rockets, in order to traverse obstacles such as minefields or anti-tank ditches.  I am sure because I read it in one of my books.
     Which book?  Alas, I cannot remember, and there are 573 to choose from.

Slide Rules
When Conrad moved from primary school to secondary, he was forewarned that he needed to purchase a slide-rule in order to be able to cope with the more advanced mathematics being dealt with.
    We are talking 1972 here, people.  Jon Pertwee was Doctor Who, Star Trek was an obscure and unsuccessful television series, and the internet was a variety of surgical stocking.
     Slide rules were mechanical computers that utilised differential linear components and a cursor to calculate mathematical scales, sums and ratios (unless they were cylindrical):

Both slidey and ruley.  Two kinds of win!

     They worked by wiggling the central stick against the fixed upper or lower rule, and reading off what the cursor aligned to.  

A good cursor could get off five or six swears per minute

     Once the cheap electronic calculator arrived, the slide rule vanished.  Still, it is amusing to read in the works of Robert Heinlein that are supposedly set in the 25th century, about how proficient the narrator is with a - slide rule.

A Goodbye To Chris
As I mentioned earlier this weekend, Chris has left our floor for another organisation altogether.  Still in the same building, mind you, and we will probably still bump into him in the canteen, and his Hot Girlfriend posts on FB yet.  Do you want to see the farewell doggerel that Conrad cobbled together for him? O you do!  Thank you for that considerate confirmation.  Here we go:

A sombre bunch are we indeed

Here for Chris's departing screed

I have to say that, in leaving, Chris, 

You really, truly take the - O! what's this?

I must have erred and skipped ahead.

Let's recap about Chris instead.

An alumni of Altrincham Grammar

With a trademark jaunty, magpie swagger

Partnered with a lady made of wood -

Claire B*******r, late of this neighbourhood.

A fan of that team at Old Trafford,

So keen you'd almost think it mattered.

And when I say Chris knows his clubs,

I speak of golf and not of pubs.

He managed to do the "Tough Mudder"

An outdoor challenge to make one shudder.

He also claims to know Cherry Ghost

(Though I doubt this pseudo-muso boast)

He suffers from Kristen's ceaseless chat -

There's no doubt he'll not miss that.

To sum up, Chris, in going to Pharmacy

You leave a distraught Service Delivery,

In your caterpillar to butterfly metamorphosis

You move on to leave us Chris-less

Not to hammer the point home, much. 

* Salt.
** Conrad.  Not bitter at all.  Nope.  Not at all.