It Is No Coincidence -

That The Victorian Era Took Off After The Tea Cosy Was Invented
Let me explain to our American visitors - for we have had one or two - that their wretched spell-checker is confusing the issue - across the Atlantic it may well be known as a "tea cozy" but BOOJUM! is written in English English, thank you very much.
     Where was I?

Nope.  Not drinking anything that comes out of that.

     Ah yes.  Imagine the scene in China, 4,500 years ago shortly after tea had been discovered.  There's the local bigwigs all having a chat around the table, fuelled by a giant pot of tea.
     "O Dear!" exclaims Chairman Li Biang.  "The tea's gone cold!"
     End of meeting.
     This tragic tale is mirrored across the following 4,400 years as civilisations rise and fall, either because they imbibed coffee (e.g. the Mayans) or because their tea got cold and the meetings ended early (e.g. the Moghuls).
     Trust Perfidious Albion to come up with the answer: the tea cosy.
     No longer do tea-fuelled meetings end after five minutes; no, they last long enough that the British can plot (mostly successfully) TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!

"HOW"
This recollection was inspired by Conrad's soulful wail last night of "How? How Is It 20:40?"
We will not go into his, frankly, boring explanation of how it was 20:40; instead we will recollect the television program "How".
     The format was amazingly simple: a presenter, later joined by others, would look at the camera, raise a palm and intone "How", this being well-known as fluent Native American for - something.  And also an introduction to "How do you work out the sum of the square of the side of a triangle if the ditch is five by two and the rate of flow is sixty gallons a minute".
    Here's Fred Dinenage, who invented the program:

How! does he do it?

     It must have been successful - it ran for 15 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS1-aoUNBbE

     There's a link to Jack Hargreaves putting a ship in a bottle.*

"Office Temp"
This is in my notebook but it's not about the temporary staff here in the office, fresh from the recruitment agency.
     No, it's about the incredible temperature incline across our desks.  Conrad sits a metre-and-a-half from Manisha, and a metre from Anna.  There's Manisha, with her scarf and cardigan on, sitting with a hot-water bottle.  There's Anna, complaining that she's lost all feeling in her hands and feet because it's so cold.
     Then there's Conrad, sitting in the stifling sub-tropical heat, necking his third pint of iced water, in a short-sleeved shirt, panting.
     Some days it's hard to be an alien wearing a human suit as camouflage.

I Googled "Hot alien" and you wouldn't believe what came up.
This is about the only picture I can post.
Does she look uncomfortably warm?

Gerry Anderson Ergonomics: Zero-X
You may not be overly familiar with the Zero-X spaceship, as it was not featured often on "Thunderbirds", but it had a fantastic strip in "Century 21" comic; firstly drawn by the splendidly accurate draughtsman Mike Noble in a exciting style, then in the much "muddier" style of James Watson, which could be terrifying to a 5 year old.

Fully assembled, Zero X takes the 2 mile-long runway at Glenn Field

Zero X, Mike Noble style

Zero X James Watson version

Conrad has no criticism of Zero X at all, as whoever created it sat down and worked out what it needed to do and how it ought to be designed.  Firstly, they use a HTOL** design, rather than the VTOHL designs we are familiar with.
     The "Wings" are actually Lifting Bodies that disengage once the craft reaches altitude, and are then guided down by radio control to land independently***.  The aerodynamic nosecone is jettisoned once orbit is reached - see the lower cartoon for the look with no nosecone.
     Once in orbit around the target planet (Mars in the first instance) the cockpit section disengages to descend and land, whereupon it deploys tracks and becomes a self-propelled vehicle.  

Zero X junior

The whole process is reversed to achieve orbit and dock with the main hull.
     Things are rather thrown out by both the Mysterons and the sinister Martian Rock Snake - which is another story.
     Emergency provision is also made for - in case of potential disaster the crew are automatically removed, still in their seats, into an emergency descent capsule that blasts free of the craft to achieve a soft landing.

Martian Rock Snake.  CAUTION!  Not a good household pet

More Rejected Doctor Who Serial Titles
And the jokes just keep on coming.  They might not show up here on BOOJUM! however, unless you regard the following as hilarious.  I do.  And it's my blog.

"Clink"

"It's, Like, Kinda ..."

"The Thorns of Nimon"

"Horror of Fang Frock"

"The Sea Imps"

"The Happiness Petrol"

"The Mythbakers"

"Invasion of the Cyber-Hen"

  - what's that?  Trouble with hens?  Only one thing can save us now!

CLARISSA THE CANNIBAL COMBAT CHICKEN!

* Conrad could do this.  All it takes is a humungous bottle, right?
** Horizontal Take Off and Landing
*** Re-usable, see?  Did the Space Shuttle designers watch these programs?