Vladimir Putin - Allergic To Gluten?

It Might Be True -
 - and it would explain a lot of things.
     I know this is skirting dangerously close to both politics and current affairs, so I shall be brief and speculative*.
     If old Dimya is actually suffering from an intolerance of gluten without realising it, then this may explain his behaviour - he wants to make everyone else feel as miserable as he does; his belief that the high-stress job is dickering with his digestion reinforces his belief in actually having a high-stress job, when he could really just be kicking back, sipping cocktails and nibbling on caviar.  Plus ruling the nation, that, too.  Because drinking beer would cause a certain discomfort, I bet Dimya goes for the vodka instead.  Now, there is a lot to be said for Russian Presidents knocking back the old potato-peel-potion - Boris I mean you - but there is a risk that Dimya's inner monologue might begin to run along those line's of Peter Finch's: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take any more!"
     Which is a bit ambiguous - intransigent intestines, Machiavellian Western plotting or vodka?

"Thank you for your concern, Conrad.  Na Zdravye!
And don't forget to keep looking behind you, ha ha!"

Fountain Pen
I post this because any young people reading this will probably be more familiar with the hideous biro, that is when they can raise their eyes and fingers from their mobile phones**.

 Clockwise from top left: a bottle of ink; broken ink reservoir; barrel of pen; nib unit with new reservoir fitted, cap.
     The old reservoir had developed a leak and wouldn't pick up more than a drop of ink, hence the new one, which works fine, thank for asking.

Saturday Starts
You caught a glimpse of how in the background to the pen, so here's a wider picture of this morning at the Mansion:

Books, of course; reading them and writing in them

Cornettoes for brekker.  ICBM
(I'm Cornetto Breakfast Man)

     I read whilst scoffing the ice creams - which were both delicious and reduced, so a double win there - and once that was done moved on to my indexing work.
     I now realise why some authors pay to have other people compile an index; it's very slow work!  I've got 17 pages of notes so far, with at least another 8 to come.  Then it all has to be typed out; once that's done it can easily be alphabetically arranged.

Edna
I also moved from kitchen to lounge, there to reside on the settee, as otherwise Edna gets fretful and whingey.  She does not appreciate that I have to work, presuming that I am in fact there to entrain her.

She whines - and then lies far away

     She has three positions: windowledge, soaking up rays; settee arm, acting as a kind of dog-boa; in the leg nest:

Yes, I have my uses

     What you might describe as Conrad the Comfortably Contoured Canine Cushion.

Multi-tasking
Well, barely - doing the index, being a dog-bed and watching Star Trek.  Today it was Shore Leave" and "The Gallileo Seven", a combination of one silly episode and one excellent one.  I notice Theodore Sturgeon wrote the former.
     One other thing I also noticed was how bustling the corridors of the Enterprise are - there's crowds of people wending their way back and forth at all times.  Don't these people have jobs to do?  They make the place look untidy going around like that!  Or is it all part of the "Star Fleet Sedentary Staff Selective Stroll" initiative, whereby all the deskbound geeks have to exercise?

See?

     This is also the remastered series, which frankly is cheating, viz this shot:

The original never looked like this!

     They've CGI's the planet's surface and added in a new vapour trail for the Gallileo, which, as I said above, is cheating.

Why Sepp Blatter Has To Go
No, nothing to do with bribery, corruption, nepotism, bringing the name of the game into disrepute, leaving the toilet lid up, using up the last of the strawberry jam or double-parking.
     No, he has to go because he's been far too fruitful a source of TERRIBLE PUNS!
     I realise this sounds terribly hypocritical.  Sue me.  I don't care***.

'S a Platter.  Close enough.

* And once again, whose blog is it?
** Truly and unarguably an instrument of Satan
*** Also it's competition.
^ O alright: From The Kites Of San Quentin