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I'm Afraid I Must Resort Once Again To Recycling
Blame First Bus, they are the most evil  entity on the planet, even more so than Ultron.  He only wanted to destroy the human race, First Bus want to make us all late for our appointments.
     Anyway, the reason for posting a "recycled" post from 16th May 2014 is because I was due to go out for beers with the birthday gang and Ian Breen Who Will Be Nineteen*.  Unfortunately the poor lad has Exploding Teeth Syndrome and, instead of quaffing a pint or two, had to visit the dentist.
     Thus Conrad, in town, no shopping needing to be done.  O what to do with himself?
     No!  Not enrolment in a yoga class.  "Avengers: Age of Ultron" beckoned.
     Sadly for you, the First Bus 181 was slow, so I missed the 9 o'clock 409.  The one due 20 minutes later didn't arrive, so - here I am at 10:22, shaking my fist at First Bus.
     Plus I've had to get my tea, since there was no time to eat between leaving work and arriving at the Printworks Odeon.
     Don't worry, I have enough material for two whole posts, it's just that I'm not going to spend an hour creating and posting for only 2 people to read tonight.

Let the mock motley - mockley? - begin!

This post was originally entitled "I fought a Morrison's shopping trolley - and won"
I don't suppose I'd have posted the truth if I'd lost, but there you are.

And won!
     Literally.  Your honest scribe ventured to this retailer today, finding that the doddling pensioners within had appropriated nearly all the trolleys.  But ho!  Here's one - that has the framework trapped by latches and catches and would require being lifted from the floor and pushed back by powered plant able to deliver an axial moment of 10 x 40 Newtons -
     Conrad moved to another trolley queue and his Daisy token worked properly.

This is what should happen -

Conrad still shops at Morrisons, but since this post they have removed the coin-operated locks from trolleys, merely one more way in which 2015 is not like 2014.


Egad The Heat!
     It has been one of those days that English folk like to call "hot".  In that the temperature was out of single figures, and Conrad needed to put the car's air-conditioning on, and one could walk the dog without a fleece and mac and wellingtons and balaclava.  
     Of course this kind of incredibly high temperature has repercussions - drought.  
     Drought. 

Drought, UK-style

      In a few short days the warnings will go out - water rationed to a thimbleful per person per household per week, and that ghastly "Twilight Zone" episode will be shown again, where the temperature gets so high that oil-paintings start to melt and run ...
     Oh, sorry, where was I?
     Weather.  Elsewhere, something that happens. In the UK, something that happens  -   Happens frequently.  Thanks to our island status, and the North Atlantic Oscillation and the jet stream ..

Oh the weather.  For the past few days it's been windy, with a cold wind at that, and this evening it was drizzling.  Proof that, once again, you cannot rely on the British weather to be anything except unreliable.  Obviously modelled on First Bus.

Carl The  Weasel
     I dug this out from an old filofax*, and decided to keep it. 
     Not sure where it came from, exactly, except that Dogsitting Daughter did it many years ago:

I really can only say "What On Earth"!

     Of course we are delighted that the Weasel is being held forth as a laudable animal, but BOOJUM! went over this ground last year.   Let us go forward in 2014!

I still have this wonderful little note.  Quite what Darling Daughter was thinking when drawing it is open to question, but one hopes her future career does not allow her access to guns or explosives.
     On a sidenote, Conrad still feels there isn't enough love for the weasel in the world of 2015.  Just one way that it and 2014 are so alike.

Notebooks
     Conrad may not have the eidetic memory beloved of mystery writers and who-dunnits, but his gnarled mental processes do manage to creak their way round to a conclusion, occasionally.
     Today we have a - what's the collective noun for an assembly of notebooks? - we have an "education" of old notebooks that Conrad has dug up out of mouldering heaps of dead book, all the better to see if the old, annotated version of "The Kraken Wakes" is in there.  Because he distinctly remembers doing it.
     Meanwhile, we have a set of notebooks with annotated descriptions of British Army Corps on the Western Front; a conspiracy of millionaires who set up a research site in the Skaggerak, how and why to build and deploy a cybernetic fox, the prospective evolution of matter-transmission technology, and how many 450 BC drachmae are in 1 talent.

One of these will surely make your fortune.  But ... which one?

If you recall my post of last week about the index I am creating, I'm sure you'll agree that Conrad and his scribbling are alive and well in 2015, just as in 2014

2013
     I have mentioned films with a similar theme released during the same year - ehhh, you might care to stretch the dates a little with the pair Conrad has now, especially since both are kick-ass action films that define their own world in a very special way.  No! We are not talking about Toy Story!
     The Raid
     Er, this actually came out in 2011, but since it was made in the Far East, it didn't get a release here in the west until 2012.

Alternating black and white - does it taste of mint?

     What is it?  Well, less a raid and more a campaign, as you, the perspicacious reader will have realised.  A raid would mean the whole film is over in 20 mninutes.  Not to reveal spoilers, this is the upwardly-ascendent progress of Indonesian police in a tower-block infested with homicidal criminals. The higher the progress, the fewer the police.  Don't worry, the hero survives.  Oh! here he is this summer with a sequel.
     Dredd
     Conrad cannot supply detailed information about the criminal milieu in modern-day Djakarta.  He can, however, bore for England, Britain and Planet Earth about Judge Dredd, and, if Mister Hand were not off in the corner with a chainsaw, would do so.
     The world of Dredd is set 20 years into the future, where the judicial system has been telescoped into a form so lean, practical and deadly that even Nick Farage would say "Hang on a minute ..." Judges deliver sentence at site, usually lethally.

Run away!  run away!  We're all guilty - RUN AWAY!

     The film differs from the comic in sense of time - the comic 2000AD sets Dredd 200 years into the future, whereas the film is only 20 years or so ahead of ourselves.
     Anyway! <Mister Hand points out you were just saved from a 6 hour sermon> in this film police veteran Dredd and rookie Anderson have to, firstly, apprehend a villain at the top of a tower-block, and then, secondly, survive the arrest and get out alive.  Naturally this drew comparisons with "The Raid", usually comparisons composed of moonlight and sawdust, and most especially if the world of Dredd was unfamiliar with them.
     Conrad is not giving you an option.  If you haven't seen "Dredd" already, go and see it, or you will be tracked down across the internet and

I actually have a copy of "The Raid 2" but because I spend so much time blogging, I've not had a chance to watch it.  Perhaps tomorrow.  You see?  You see?  You see the sacrifices I make for you?

Finally
     Hot weather has arrived here in the UK, and it must have, as Conrad has shed a layer of blankets.  

    Edna is feeling the heat a bit, since she cannot remove her fur coat, and is sitting in her Dual-Purpose Dog Bed for some hours in the afternoon.

No danger of this affliction today, dear audience.

* A self-important small filing book, long rendered extinct by mobile phones


* I'm lying but "Twenty Seven" doesn't rhyme.