Fuller Stuff

Ha ha!  I Slay Myself!
I refer, of course, to the practice of "Fulling", which was a process involved in cleaning and stretching wool, and people who did the job were known as "Fullers".
     Fascinating stuff, eh?  Hence we get the surname Fuller, as of one who was involved in the wool trade.
     Nor is that all - after being cleaned, the wool was stretched by being pulled over an arrangement of hooks - tenterhooks.  Hence the expression "being on tenterhooks".
     Wait!  There is yet more.  The Welsh for a Fulling Mill is "Pandy", as in Tonypandy.

Close enough

Stucco
No, not Dog Latin for "glue".  Stucco is an application made of water, aggregate and a binding agent and is applied to walls for a decorative finish.  Conrad has heard the word a thousand times but never bothered to look it up before.  Why look it up today?  Because it appears in "Cladius the God", the sequel to "I, Claudius" by Robert Graves.  As do fullers.

Stuck to the stucco

Pickled Ginger
There won't be time tonight thanks to Pub Quiz, but I did find out how to make pickled ginger the sushi way.  First one takes a bit of ginger root and cuts off all the skin.  Then one uses a mandoline to peel off wafer-thin strips.  Next, warm up 500 ml of rice wine with 150 grams of sugar and 2 tablespoons of salt until the liquid is clear.  Then bung the ginger and liquid into jars and leave for an hour.  Hay Pesto, pickled ginger the sushi way!

After a few drinks he'd be ...

A Small Confectionery Aside -

     Well, I mean, he's the God of them, so this must be correct, right?

Doctor Who Calendar
With the mischievous glee of a small boy throwing hand grenades boiling voles eating coals being mischievous, Conrad opened Door Number Eleven to find - an Ice Warrior!

Ignore the Dalek, ignore the Dalek -

     They've only cropped up once in the newer Doctor's incarnations, but they had two long serials back in the Sixties, one of which was one of the first Doctor Who videos to be released.  Art Department!

Yes, the "Elizabethan hose-and-doublet" look has dated badly ...

     They also cropped up twice in the Seventies, where you could admire their emerald green hides.
     Conrad has trouble remembering what the second Patrick Troughton serial was called.  "The Seeds of Doom"?  "The Seed of Death"?  Something similarly grim.  One wonders why there were never titles that were jolly and fun, like "Doctor Who and the Comfy Armchair", or "Doctor Who Has Fun At The Seaside"*.
     The Ice Warriors were big, armoured lizard-like folk, very strong indeed but with a major weakness - they couldn't tolerate heat.  Anything over 18 Degrees and they went potty and melted.  Conrad can sympathise SO much with this ...
     Notice how nobody ever calls the Ice Warriors "Martians".  That's where they appear to live, but since they are never associated as having originated there, are they the sort of people that Nigel Farage would disapprove of?  You know, immigrants?

Kheili Ba Hali!
This was the Persian phrase I swotted up on this morning for conversation with Roxy.
     What does it mean?
     "You are cool"
     In fact this is what many staff complained of today, about being cold.  Cold?  The temperature got as high as 10 or even 11 Degrees!  Cold!  When there's ice on the inside of the windows, then it's cold.  Cold!  It would have been uncomfortably hot for an Ice Warrior, but do you hear them complaining?

What folks imagined the office felt like**.

     Anna should have been okay.  She's just been "larging it up", as I believe the young folk say, at the "Winter Wonderland" in London.


* Because, explains Mister Hand, they would have been BORING!
** Conrad sighs wistfully and wishes it were so.