Public Service BROADCASTING! (They're A Band)

Yes, Conrad The Aging Hipster Strikes Again
Although, for once, he was possibly not the oldest person in the venue. What was the venue?  Why I thought you'd never ask - The Ritz in Manchester, last visited by your humble scribe about thirty years ago.

The stage, from stage level

      And here is an island with the mixing equipment.  I took this because it has relevance for a character I've created - except if I told you about him, I'd - well, I'd probably bore you*.

Just look at it!  What do all those buttons and dials do?

     Now, seeing space on the balcony stage right, I was up there before it filled up, and I was careful to be early (7:30 p.m.)

Very cluttered indeed!
That's because all the support act gear is there on top of PBS's

"Smoke Fairies", the support, are defined on Wikipedia as a couple of women playing "dream pop".  Not last night!  You can just see their drummer's kit, and the keyboard player's keyboard, and they had a bass player too.  Consequently they were very loud rock music.

Smoke Fairies

     They were hampered by that curse of most support acts, in that I'd not heard anything of theirs.  However, on last night's performance they get my Worthy Of Future Attention rating.
     By the time they finished playing the venue was crammed -

And they were three-deep on the balcony, too

Public Service Broadcasting
First, let me cue you in on this quirky band.  Technically they are two people - Wrigglesworth (splendid name!) who plays drums, and J. Willgoose Esq., who plays everything else.  Tonight JW Esq. introduced "a new friend", J. F. Abraham, who played bass, guitar, drums, keyboard and trumpet to back the others up.  And there is also their visual designer when playing live, Mr. B.  He's a lot more important than someone who flashes lights and plays videos, because PSB don't sing anything and have to sync the words of public service broadcasts to the videos on display.
     Another quirk is that JW Esq. has a bank of presets ready, so instead of speaking he presses a button and we heard "Hello we're glad to be here in -" and a faked pause whilst he consults the rest of the band "Manchester".  Likewise at the end of a song we got "That was an old one, this is a new one" or "that was a new one, this is an older one."
     Inevitably we got a shouty audience member calling out "Say something spontaneous!" to which the preset response was "I'll get back to you on that"

Setting up for PSB.  Note the mass of electronic kit for JW Esq - all on a big trolley

Before they began playing, the band had a hilarious - well - public service broadcast, about being considerate and not overdoing the pictures -

All about Tim and Geoffrey

     Tim was considerate and only took a couple of photos.  Geoffrey took endless videos.  These were of such terrible quality that he lost his friends, his parents, his dog - and then he died.
     So, I have only one further photograph:

Sputnik!

     This was a life-size replica of Sputnik, where the legs contained LED's which flashed in sync with the music.  The hemispherical head was actually an LED screen that also displayed images during songs.  Clever stuff.
     The band actually began with "Sputnik", which came over a lot better than the album version, I have to say.  Then we had the electric "Signal 30", a firm favourite.  Then "PSB", "EVA"**, Night Mail", "ROYGBIV", "Valentina" which featured the Smoke Fairies ladies singing, a commissioned track to a film of Dutch skating on frozen canals, "If War Should Come", "Spitfire" - another one the audience loved.  Then came "The Other Side", about Apollo 8 orbiting the far side of the Moon, when they were out of radio contact; at this point all the stage lighting went off, a simple but very effective motion, until AOS - Acquisition Of Signal "Houston we read you loud and clear, how do you read us?".  Finally we had "Go!", the landing of Apollo 11, and one that the shouty people had been yelling for.

GO!

     Cheating a bit, but here's a couple of screenshots from their website for "Go!"



* Although he's an interesting chap.  Army Logistics Corps, music haulage, record production, and ghost-busting.
** Extra-Vehicular Activity", not the cosmonaut's wife, 

The Day Before May Day - Hooray!

Why The Sheer Unwanted Exuberance?
Well because today Wonder Wifey returns from her beano abroad, and thus responsibility for Edna Wunderhund also defers from me to WW.  Thus no more double walks per day, and apparently when she demands to play Tuggy-Bone for half an hour or longer, one ignores her, and you ignore when she sits next to you and whimpers, and she's perfectly happy getting out of the Crate to lie on the bed and going to sleep again - I suppose she's been a bit spoilt.
     Farewell freewheeling hound!

Is there a Latin word meaning "love of mud"?   Because Edna ...

Conrad Is Up For "Sounds From The Other City"
What is it?  A music festival in Salford - Salford being the Other City that's not Manchester* - that takes place over the Spring Bank Holiday weekend.  The Third of May in this case, which was rather earlier than he expected, and can offer proof of:

  

As vacant as his mind

     As you can see, Sunday May 3rd is blank, which means no event exists for Conrad on that day.  Fortunately The Kites** mentioned SFTOC on Facebook, and after a bit of wrestling with the internet, this is the result:

E-tickets.  Wave of the future.

     Given that the whole thing lasts for at least 6 hours over loads of venues, with bands and DJs and video presentations, this might well generate a bit too much info for the blog to post that same day - as you know, Conrad is rarely short of things to shout about - but what the heck, attending an all day music festival on my own doorstep that begins at a decent time - I can put up with that.

Edna!
Don't expect to see a lot of photos of Edna until more dogsitting duties come up, so make the most of these ones of her as an unwilling passenger in the car:

Not feeling or looking happy

A study in "Pensive"

Awww!  That cute little face!

     This is on the way to drop off Darling Daughter, who had dogsat for me whilst I went off on my jolly to The Ritz.  Edna was a very bad passenger, nervous and whiney all the way to halls and on the way back.
     On the other hand, whilst en route to collect Wonder Wifey, Edna was the very model of good behaviour.  No photos as Conrad is a responsible driver and won't handle a mobile phone whilst in charge of a motor vehicle.

"Agents of SHIELD"
Up to Episode 8 of this series from 2013 and I like it.  It balances the Glamorous Young Things that TV studios have to have in the mix, with a couple of oldies, and it manages a fair bit of humour against the drama, and the ingenue against the veteran.  Nor does it restrict itself to America - we've had operations based in Peru, Malta and Norway.
     There's a nice cameo by a very, very angry Nick Fury, railing against extensive and expensive damage to "The Bus", the giant aircraft that the SHIELD team operate from - "Six days!  SIX DAYS!  That's all it took you since you took charge of this aircraft to get it totalled!"

Read the middle sentence

     I have to wonder at whoever thought it necessary to add in "The characters and incidents portrayed are entirely fictitious". Really?

     WELL OF COURSE THEY ARE!  NEW YORK HAS NOT BEEN TRASHED BY AN ALIEN INVASION FORCE***!

     Sheesh.  For what it's worth, I reckon that the Arc for this first series is the search for "Centipede".  Not the insect but a group of positively eeeeevil people.

The Material Rewards Of Being A Man Of Your Word
Looking after Edna was, naturally, it's own reward, but a little practical appreciation is also welcome, and here we have it:

Stand-alone tea strainer, Ninja strainer cup and Lapsang Souchong

     The stand-alone strainer works very well, so efficiently that I didn't realise it at first:

Presto!
I realise this is in fact both sad and dull, but - well, that's my life

     Oh and here we have an insulated container from the ship:

Insulated!  Container-y!

     Keeps cold things cold and hot things hot.  Probably tepid things tepid, but I don't intend to test it, not even for you, dear readers.  Reader.


* Nor is it Vladivostok, Ulan Bator or Truth Or Consequences.  Just so we're clear
** From The Kites of San Quentin, to quote their full name.
*** It might look like it, but that's just the day after New Year's Eve.

UA-61206227-1

Dog The Flock - It's Michael Moorcock!

You Ought To Know Who He Is -
Although I think his only contribution to the world of cinema* is "The Final Programme", also known as "The Last Days Of Man On Earth", which is rated as "A Bit Meh".  It does provide us with the Coincidence de jour - who plays Major Lindbergh?  Why none other than Sterling Hayden! who featured here earlier this week.
     Anyway, Mike's been around for decades, as author and editor, and was prominent in creating the British New Wave of science fiction.  He also collaborated extensively with Hawkwind, so that gets him a pass.

Time!  How very careless of you!

Okay, I think that's enough pre-amble to distract the attention of the Hamsterminators who ceaselessly monitor the internet.

"Lillyhammer"
After recently watching "Rare Exports", "Dead Snow 2" and "Fortitude", I am now starting on "Lillyhammer", a comedy drama set in the Norwegian town of Lillehammer.
     I see a trend emerging here.
     Anyway, the series stars Steve Van Zandt, who you would recognise from "The Sopranos".  Art Department?

He ain't no lilly.  But he can hammer

     He plays a gangster who's been relocated to this provincial Norwegian town, most definitely a fish out of water.  And he can't seem to stay on the straight and narrow.  Conflict being the wellspring of drama.

Hoorah
The neighbours are alive!  I think I heard one of them speaking, that being the lady wife, although this could be a double bluff and the husband is under the flags in the back yard already and she's just pretending to sustain a conversation, although conversely this might have been a recorded conversation to make their neighbours think she's still alive ...
     Did somebody accuse me of having a morbid imagination?

The Index
Still working on this and am over a third of the way through the whole volume.  However, I have realised that the Divisional artillery is never described by brigade. At this point in the war each British infantry division had two brigades of artillery as a component, but the History only ever mentions "the Divisional Artillery", so I shall have to go back and check for mentions of this.

Yes an old photo.
Whose blog is it?

     Yes, this would be seen by some people as a chore up there with ironing and dishwashing.  Not me!

"The Lights Of Zetar"
One of the old Trek episodes being played on CBS Action this afternoon.  It starts off with Scotty falling for the female guest star - never a good sign, Scotty's crushes usually have a short lifespan - who gets zapped by the eponymous lights in a quite groovy psychedelic show.  Then the credits came up and it was written by So-and-So and Shari Lewis.
     Shari Lewis the ventriloquist who used to be on childrens TV back in the Seventies?  That Shari Lewis? You know, with Lamb Chop?
     Yup.  "So-and-So" was Jeremy Tarcher, her husband.
     Ain't it a small world?

Not sure how you'd ventriloquize these

And Now Of Dogs
Since I won't get a chance to post later on, the dog-heavy photo section is right here.

Edna, being a bit mopey

     She couldn't climb on my lap as I was having breakfast, which resulted in a bit of a sulk.   Nor did the chances for a stroll look good, as the weather was terrible - gale-force winds, hail and then rain:

Wet the Theme

     Twenty minutes later the weather suddenly brightened up and we seized the chance to go for the quick morning walk.  Not exactly dancing through the raindrops, more like between the cloudbursts:

No further for her - it gets muddy up there after rain

     A similar story happened in the afternoon, we took a chance on the weather remaining good for thirty minutes, which it did, but since I forgot my mobile, no photos. We did see a rabbit race into hiding, however.
     Back indoors the fun game of "Tuggy-bone" continued, for longer than Conrad could manage - Edna being most insistent that the game be played regardless of her human's plans and work.

     And finally her ongoing battle with the Evil Blue Cushion continues:

* There might be something about rubber dinosaurs and Doug McLure but I'm going to ignore it.

Vanderlyle Crybaby G-No! Dogs.Sorry, I Meant Dogs

Actually "Dog" Singular
Because coping with merely one small canine is enough of a full-time occupation.  What I'd do if faced with two dogs and two cats* is anyone's guess.
     So! Today's Keeping In Touch post begins with Edna lying at my feet as I peruse the blog traffic of a morning.

"Computeh boring!  Play Tuggy-Bone insted!"

      She is not, to put it mildly, impressed with Conrad and his dedication to creating works of wordy wonder, and whimpers pathetically, which the headphones screen out.
     Then we have an episode of the "Zoomies", where she races through the house at high speed for several minutes.  It's difficult to get pictures of this, so this will have to do:

      Then I tried to get her to fetch ball.

"Edna!  Ball! Fetch!"

     Not with any great success, it has to be said.  Nor were we any more effective in the back yard, as Edna vigorously chased the ball - and then ignored it.
     Knowing that Edders likes to be able to lie on a person, Conrad graciously relocated to the lounge and resided upon the settee, where Edna partook herself of this opportunity to be a Dog Boa:

Who has the better moustache?

     This strenuous sleeping exercise lasted for as long as it took me to get to Page 128 of the History of the 51st Highland Division, at which point a longing for lunch took over.

Edna, playing dead in a blatant attempt at sympathy

      Why was she trying it on?  Obviously because she loves me but I also had food:

Look at that face!

     She didn't get any and yet that face remained when I relocated to the Upstair Lair:

"Awwww please!"

     Then it was down to the park whilst today's wildly changeable weather remained consistent for half an hour:

Edna at rest.  Not a common occurence

     She got let off the lead, to her wild delight, and went bounding over the grasses and daffodils for ten minutes.  This is very difficult to photograph - I'd love to get a shot of her bounding with all four legs off the ground but doubt it will happen except by accident.  Anyway, here you go:

      Then back home, and another session in the Upstair Lair, where she patently sulked  at not being able to lie on Conrad:

Just like a POUTY LITTLE CHILD!

     Her struggle with the detested blue cushion continued:

      I also had to play tug with this cushion, which got disgustingly slobbery after a few minutes.
    Finally, Conrad-as-cushion comes into play as Edders catches some zeds after a strenuous day:

 * And a parrot.  Plus a sister.  

I Say, Miss - It's Algis Budrys!

Who?*

You may well ask the question!  Judging from my recent trend of coercing the names of science-fiction authors to shamelessly promote the blog, you are indeed correct in surmising that he was a sci-fi novelist.  Al was an American of Lithuanian descent who wasn't prolific, but who wrote well-regarded novels and short stories.  The only thing you might be familiar with, especially if you like Elliot Gould, is "Who?", the film adapted from the novel of the same title.  

Which?  Close enough

I Know It's An Internet Cliche -

But this happens to rarely that Conrad simply has to share it with you.  Behold!

FEB at the FOB

     Allow me to translate:"Full English Breakfast at Forward Operating Base" and as I say this is a rare occurence; the last FEB I had was at 7:32 Saturday 28th of March in the hotel restaurant, bolting it in order to catch the bus home to drive over to Dungworth.

     Today was considerably less frantic, and also with a pair of eager helpers just waiting for me to drop something ...

Fortitude - They Stop It Now?

Egad!  After seven deaths, an insect infestation from hell, more fun with flamethrowers than "The Thing" and the explanation as to what really happened to Bill Pettigrew - and it suddenly stops.  What happened to the tusks?  How is Yuri going to get out of the ice cave?  Who killed Ronnie Morgan?

     And a plot point -

SPOILER!

 - if Doctor Allardyce was being eaten away from within by thousands of parasitic wasps surely an indicator would have tripped?  Or perhaps a nurse would have noticed the insects crawling their way out of her carcass?

CBS Action

A television channel, in case you were wondering.  Another unusual occurrence, Conrad spending time watching television, as I'm sure you're thinking.  Actually it's for the benefit of Edna, who likes to be able to loll on top or around a human being.  I was lying there, working on my index of the 51st Highland Division, so she could drape herself over me and the settee for a long hard doze.

     What I did notice were the adverts interspersed in between that classic Classic Trek story "That Which Survives"

What's her favourite metal band?
Black Sabbath!  No, hang on -

 - you know the one, with Losira, whom Sulu boggles over as being "beautiful", although perhaps a bit too much purple for Conrad.

     Anyway, the adverts.  This is the Action channel, right?  Full of manly men, correct? Then why were all the adverts for perfume, mascara, foundation and bodywash? Women having a bodywash, mind you.

     I'll let you know.

Why Edna Hates The Stool

As mentioned, Edna deems it her right - a right literally cast in stone, etched out with lasers and acid and witnessed by the Supreme Court in The Hague - to sit on a person's lap.  This is unfortunate when Conrad is being creative**as he sits and taps away on his computer keyboard, frequently managing to double-task by watching films or tv programs on his laptop at the same time (this may explains the occasional surreal nature of the blog***).  Conrad uses an ergonomic stool:

Thus

     Which pitches his lap downwards at an acute angle, meaning any dog trying to sit there would instantly slide off.  Thus Edna is not happy at lappy loss, and is even now sulking in her bed after whimpering at me.

     Sorry, Edna, an audience of as many as three or four has to be entertained!

Ah, The Rock And Roll Rebel Lifestyle

Living the dream.  Or at least drinking it.

     Here I am, swilling down English Breakfast Tea - and it's past twelve o'clock!

     Smashing the system from the inside.  Well, giving it a stern talking-to and a warning wag of the finger, anyway.

Another Unusual Event

As you surely know by now, Conrad liketh not that thing called "exercise", as it cuts down on his reading, writing and watching time.  So you do not often gets shots like this one posted on the blog - usually it's some grim grey granite cityscape.

Royton in the far distance

     This is taken from Thornham Old Road, looking south.  What you don't get here is the tranquility; there is a distant susurrus^ from the motorway and birdsong and that's it. The weather today has been far more changeable - sun, wind, rain, hail and now it's completely overcast, photos of Edna in the park later tonight.

Public Service Broadcasting

I doubt there will be two blog posts tomorrow as your humble scribe is off to see J. Willgoose, Esq. and Wrigglesworth, who are the powerhouse behind PSB.  Doors open at 7 p.m. and since Edna would otherwise be on her own, Darling Daughter has agreed to dogsit her^^.

Our heroes in action

I doubt it'll finish much before 10 p.m. and Conrad has then to get home and wrap himself around some food, probably also driving Darling Daughter back to her halls.

Yes, TWO pictures of them.
Whose blog is it?

* Ha ha.  I'm so funny.  I even amuse me.

** This doesn't happen all the time.  Just so you know

*** Or maybe it's just me.

^ YEAH BABY!  How long have I waited to use that word!!!

^^ For a fee.  She is a student, after all.