Blood And Sand! Donner Und Blitzen! Ham And Jam!

I Feel The Universe Is Trying To Tell Me Something
 - via the pages of Brewer's.  Today I opened it at Page 658, and there in the left hand column is "Hellfire Club", established in Dublin in 1735, by a certain Tom Connolly.
     What is Conrad's Official Real World surname?  Go on, take a wild guess.
     Yup, "Connolly".
     What are the chances?
     Oh, I realise that "Ham and jam" is a bit odd, but I believe it was one of the verbal recognition signals for the paratroopers seizing the Orne Canal way back in the Second Unpleasantness.  Just so you know.

Sunday Begins
I'm afraid if you're looking for hellfire you've come to the wrong blog.

Tea!  Crumpets!  Books!
This is as wicked as it gets at the Mansion

     A mountain of books, a pint of tea and a plateful of crumpets with peanut butter.  Although I didn't get out of bed until 9:30*.


"Bleeding Edge" By Thomas Pynchon
I feel a bit like having a tiger by the tail here.  That is the accepted metaphor, although I am willing to bet it's entirely allusional with no basis in reality - no interviews with Mr Patel, aged 35, from Dhakar in Bangladesh about how he was dragged for miles by a Bengal tiger - as it is Conrad's firm belief that grasping a tiger's tail is certain to get said tiger's undivided attention, and that it is agile enough to render the tail-grabber into a collection of dog food, yeah verily.

Go on.  I dare you

     Getting back on track, my statement is because of the cast of characters within; leave it for a day or two and you'll lost track of who's whom. There are (let me crank up my frankly corroded memory here) Maxine; Horst; Vyrva; Heidi; Reg; Windust; Eric; Lester; Jason; Cornelia; Esther; Gabriel; Chester, for starters.
     There are also references that Tom makes, which Conrad simply has to check out, since Tom is inventive and fertile enough to convincingly portray the utterly fictional as fact.  Thus, "Script Kiddie".  This is a real thing, an unskilled agent who uses other people's scripts in order to try and big themselves up in the eyes of the computer community.  Technically deficient, they can be unwittingly destructive as they ponce and preen on the internet**.  

A Festival-Goer's Guide To The Sun
The sun is our local star, a yellow dwarf, and our main source of Infra Red and Ultra Violet radiation.  Here is a picture for recognition purposes:

A sun

     As an attendee at a festival you are likely to be outside for considerable lengths of time and will need to take careful precautions should the sun appear.
     First of all, don't worry!  It is highly unlikely that your festival attendance will be interrupted by the sun, so go ahead and enjoy yourself, bearing the following in mind.
     Firstly, it is possible to protect yourself by shielding your skin from the harmful emanations that come from the sun.  We recommend this:

Note:  air supply is optional but recommended if you have hay fever

     Obviously if the sun is out and you are "busting some moves" you are going to get hot, so having a bucket of water emptied over you every ten minutes is essential.
     The other alternative to a physical barrier is a chemical one, and we recommend this:

Well-oiled***.

     Be warned that an oil bath like this makes group hugs impossible.
     One side effect of having the sun spoil your festival is that the ground will instantly begin to dry up, eventually becoming hard and unforgiving.  So if you've been overdoing the beer and fall over, don't expect the lovely soft comfortable landing on this -

     - because you will, in fact, be hitting this:

     Go have a lovely festival!

A Short Photo-essay About Food
I know what you're thinking, "Oh really, Conrad - padding the post out with a lot of pictures because you ran out of ideas"
     Ha!  As if!  <looks worriedly from side to side> they haven't got a camera in here, have they ...
     Okay, picture the first:

Coleslaw

     Three carrots, an onion and half a cabbage and a huge pile of slaw is revealed, glorious in it's nakedness.  It's not been dressed yet, you see***.
     Mooooving swiftly on, we come to ice cream:

Mixing at work

     This is Lychee ice cream, which didn't thicken in the maker at all, or at least very little.  I did test in once it had gone in the freezer and it is gradually hardening up, if rather slowly - probably no need to put that vodka in to ensure it stays soft.
     And the results of a quick trip to the Co-Op:

Onion batons and date-expired sushi

     That's tomorrow's breakfast and lunch sorted.  I dip the bread in a cup of hot Marmite at work for my breakfast, rather than having breakfast at home, although the management are utterly opposed to people eating hot food at their desks as this will bring about the end of sub-atomic bonding in the time-space continuum or something, so I am a little furtive about it.  The sushi means not having to spend time making lunch, meaning I can devote even more time to the blog, you lucky people you^.

A Little Critical Analysis
It's okay, Paul and Art, you don't need to cower today, instead we will look at a little ditty entitled "Michael Finnegan".

"There was a man called Micheal Finnegan"

Yes, very good, introducing the character.

"He grew whiskers on his chinnegan"

Reaching with the rhyme a bit there.  Go on-

"The wind came out and blew them in again -"

No! NO NO NO NO NO! NO!  The wind speed sufficient to cause horripinjection would destroy the surface of the planet!

"Poor old Michael Finnegan, begin again"

How can he, the world has ended.

What a depressing song.  Did Morrisey or Mr E compose it?

*That makes me a rock 'n' roll rebel, doesn't it?
** Why, that almost sounds like BOOJUM!'s Mission Statement
*** Sorry.
^ You are lucky.  Don't argue.