Conrad: Prescient But Modest With It

It Means Knowing Shizzle In Advance
I'm not going to apologise for talking "street" because, you see, it's entirely relevant.
     This is the view from the bus stop yesterday:

Grim and grey - rather like Conrad himself, actually

     And here is the sky from this morning:

Barely distinguishable

     Both shots taken from the street.  You see how this all links in?
     In my recapitulation post this morning I used the line:"What treachery can the weather perpetrate today?" and went out in stout shoes and sturdy waterproof coat, only for this to happen:

Egad!  And also Gadzooks!  with maybe a little Zounds! too

     Consequently I broiled in my own sweat like a hairy white turkey on the bus as the blazing sunshine cooked the interior into easily the high Twenties.
     British weather!

Coconut Water
Saw an especially stupid bus poster this morning for Vita Coconut Water.  Of course this means I can't find a copy of it anywhere, so here's the line:

Where do we get our coconut water from?

The coconuts.

     With all the air of profound wit and wisdom.
     Coconuts.  Really.   

A 1972 Ford Cortina sump

     How unexpected!  I would have imagined your coconut water came from draining the sumps of 1970's vintage Ford Cortinas, or from squeezing the life out of Syrian Sentient Milkshakes*, or possibly scraped from the skin of exotic day-glo blue Brazilian tree-frogs.  Instead it comes from - get this! - Coconuts.

Insidious 3
These posters have gotten to the point of irritating Conrad, a bad place for them to be in.  The blurb, which I can't be bothered to retell accurately, claims that for this the most terrifying hair-raising scarey ho-hum experience, they went back to the beginning.
     What you mean is that you've got no plot to go forward from the second one, possibly because the film makers killed the franchise stone dead.  But the suits want another money-spinner, so!  It's back to front.

No, this is nothing to do with Insidious.
It's a Bristol Beaufighter in the torpedo-bomber role, and it was not insidious, it was IN YER FACE!

"Operation Sea Lion" By Peter Fleming
This is proving an entertaining read, dated though it is.  Mr Fleming has a certain sly wit although he does commit that error which marks out those with a classical education - failing to translate French, Latin or Greek for the less-skilled reader.
     For example: "Roman a these" - or a novel that exists to put across the authors thesis.
     "Roman a clef" - a novel that is actually thinly-veiled real life
     "Non Possumus" - Latin for "We cannot"
     There are other small treasures within.  He lists items of possible use to the war effort, as defined by a small country village, including a "fish kettle".
     Conrad had never heard of such an item.  What was it?

A fishy on a great big dishy

     An especially long tin to poach your whole fish in.
     "Fish" is also the term used for pounds sterling, £7 billion worth of it in gold, all transferred overseas to Cananda.
     Mention is made of MI14.  Who? I wondered.  A branch of Military Intelligence who dealt with all things German, hived off from MI13.  At which Conrad thought of the confusion of those trying to find their way around the corridors of MIII.

Superheroes With Their Pants Down
Today I return to the theme promised yesterday, Black Widow.  The theme today is not so much what she can't do as to what YOU can't do in her company, her being basically a killing machine with good looks and figure.

Look, boys, but most emphaticlaly do NOT touch!

     Let the list begin -
     YOU MUST NOT: 1)  Approach her from behind
2)  Make any sudden moves, sneezing included
3) Approach whilst asleep
4) Attempt to kiss under mistletoe
5)  Procure and present any unusual or exotic-tasting foods (possibility of poison, you know)
6) Slap, pat, shake or stroke any portion of her anatomy.
7) Drop anything on a solid surface that is likely to make a loud noise.

- as being killed dead sucks quite a bit

Roxy, The Princess Of Pester
As I may have already mentioned, Roxy leaves us for the Third Floor on Friday the Nineteenth.  This means she expects, as her royal prerogative**, a Pome by Conrad especially for her, with lots of true facts woven into it.
     'Have you done my poem yet?' she asked yesterday.
     'Er - no,' I replied, a bit crestfallen.  No, I hadn't, but I did do two short verses about the horrendous weather, viz:

Voila

     The hilarious irony here is that Conrad DETESTS poetry.  Except for perhaps "Ozymandias" by Shelley, because that's awesome.

Police Interceptors
Before "NCIS" arrived as one of Conrad's guilty pleasures, I have to confess being addicted to the Police Camera programme, which invoke a combination of excitement at the andrenaline-fuelled excess, and explosive rage at the wallies responsible for generating that excess.
     Anyway, I was watching "Police Interceptors", which dealt with the autumn, including Halloween.  One patrol car was called to a house where the residents said they'd heard people moving about in the back garden, so our noble boys in blue moved in to investigate.
     One of them promptly fell into a pond, invisible in the dark and shrubbery.  Then he fell in again.

That's him mid-left, no doubt feeling unloved and wet.

     Did his mates extend any sympathy?
     Not one bit!  They hooted and jeered and mocked, and there were a lot of expletive-deleting bleeps on the soundtrack.
     'It's Halloween, there are young people mucking around,' said one patrol officer to the residents, 'And this is probably the only time you'll get to see a police officer fall into a pond twice.'
     'Is he okay?'
     'It could have been worse, it could have been on television ...'
     PC's with no PC -



* I nicked this from early 2000AD.
** She's not actually royalty, just imagines she is