Another Milestone!

Yes, Today BOOJUM! Passed The 11,000 Hits Mark
Although I shouldn't boast as this might just have been 11 visitors coming to the blog 1,000 times each, or perhaps a single dedicated super-fan visiting 11,000 times.
     Actually I don't know if Conrad has any fans - there are only 6 Comments, a ratio of one Comment per 1,834 posts.  That's pretty thin.
     But my natural sunny nature persuades me otherwise.  After all, who could fail to love an alien spy wearing human camouflage waiting for his invasion fleet to arrive?

Conrad.  Expressing his inner sun o so very well.

Comic Relief Bake-Off
This is a small innovation inspired by that greatest of bakery programs, The Great British Bake-Off, featuring four celebrities competing against each other in three programs.  The winner of each of these will square off against each other in a final program.
     Now, you may be thinking back to the GBBO contestants, who practice baking EVERY SINGLE DAY, and who are on occasion scarily good.
     Not so the celebs.  Oh no.

And it is

     In this week's show we had Jennifer Saunders, Joanna Lumley, Lulu and Dame Edna Everage (out of retirement especially).  Plainly the girly swot Lumley had baked when she was a schoolgirl, and Saunders seemed to have dabbled a bit.  Lulu not so much, and Dame Edna's approach to baking is to attack it with clenched fists and a will to win.
    Task One: Bake a giant biscuit*.
     Lulu did very well with her dog biscuit. A dog-shaped biscuit.  Joanna managed a quite competent double-layered coo - biscuit, and Jenn did a really good toast-shaped and named biscuit.  Dame Edna's attempt was frightening to behold and had to be cut out of the tin, in the same way people are cut out of cars.
     Task Two: Make 12 mini fruit tarts.
     This is  quite easy, and the bakers had loads of time yet only Jenn did well.  We shall say no more of Dame Edna than that she garnished the tarts nicely.  I say "tarts"- biscuits would be closer to the mark.
     Task Four: Showstopping Chocolate Cake.
     Oh dearie me.
     Lulu lost one half of her cake when it - er - fell in a hole.  Joanna's cake was burnt on the outside (should have tented it, love) and raw on the inside, Dame Edna's attempt was unspeakably awful and tortured the eye to look upon it.
     Jenn's cake, however, was a triumph of design and taste - a four layer cake, with vodka buttercream, depicting the morning hangover.
     She won, deservedly.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b052sjf9/the-great-comic-relief-bake-off-series-2-episode-1

     Although Dame Edna was, hands down, the comedy winner.
     "It's a red-finned shark ..."

I've Seen That Face Before ...
Conrad has just been watching a grim, realistic war film called "The Long Day's Dying", which he saw half of at least thirty years ago.
     This time, I kept thinking: I know you.  I've seen you before, matey.  I refer to Tony Beckley:

     He plays the part of Cliff, a coarse, foulmouthed killer.  Eventually the penny dropped, and I recalled Doctor Who and "The Seeds of Doom".  Regard:

Harrison Chase; not quite getting how one arm-wrestles

     In this he plays a well-spoken aristocratic killer, so no stereotyping there then.

A Sense Of Time
As I may have already bored you with the details, I bought an original edition of "The History of the Seventeenth Division" a couple of weeks ago, noting that the original owner had written their name in pen on the fly leaf, and pencilled in a few notes.
     Today I came across another pencil notation:

"Joined the division on this day"

     Quite an eerie feeling!  It's very difficult to make out this chap's name, given the exaggerated handwriting he uses.  The inscription on the inner cover makes sense now: "7th East Yorks, 50th Brigade, 17th Division".  Obviously that was his battalion, the brigade it was in and - obviously! - the Seventeenth Division.
     You don't get that with the Naval & Military Press reprints

The Naval & Military Press Reprints
One of my guilty pleasures is going through the quarterly catalogue that N&M send me, out of the simple goodness of their hearts and not because I am a customer of ten year's standing, marking off the books I already own and delineating the ones I want to order come payday.  Today I counted nine in the catalogue that I already had, and at least two were second hand and tons cheaper than N&M**.

"The Major smiled.  Nobody, absolutely nobody, realised he was wearing lacy French knickers."

     The ordering, of course, has to wait until payday next week.

The cat has just decided to settle down in the dog's bed again.

Well, I need to be off.  No, not for the pub quiz, but to bake cakes for tomorrow.  We're having a Valentine-themed day tomorrow, and Conrad has done an hilarious quiz - which I can't put up here since some work colleagues might get an unfair advantage DAN SMITH LOOKING AT YOU - but I also said I'd bake cakes.




* They called it a "cookie" but we'll have none of that Americanism here!
** Tee hee!