I Say! A Statistical Start To The Day

 Hopefully, In An Entertaining Way
After all, there is little drier - oh hang on I feel a "Most Boring Film" title coming on here - there is little drier than a bunch of percentages being recited at one.  Allow me:

800 posts

Since the blog has been going for 728 days, that equates to 1.1 posts per day, on average.  Normally during the week there's only one, but the higher scrivel* activity at the weekend and on holidays makes up for this.
     At the start of today we were 33 hits off 15,000 hits - sorry for posting "23" by mistake, so if you, dear audience, click on the site like billy-o, we might get past the 15K today.
     Of course you realise this then means Conrad banging on about getting to 16K ...

It's Like Looking After Kids! - Kids In Fur Coats (Part 2)
I refer, of course, to Edna Wunderhund and Jenny the Cat.  Let me illustrate the point:

My kit plus cat.  Hmmm.  Cat Kit.  Cat Kit.
Nah, it'll never catch on

     This is Jenny getting her place ready so she can i) Lie on my books, as these have a fatal fascination for felines, and ii) "Get a little bit close to the bacon", as Darling Daughter used to describe her inching-forward tactic.

"Yes, puny human?  Also, where is your ice cream?"

     Here she is preventing me from making notes; instead she tried to fight with my pen when I did manage to get the notebook from under her.

Back in bed, sulking

     Sulking because she didn't get any of this:

Although later this bowl was suspiciously clean on the worktop

     I was briefly acceptable as a dogsitter to Edna, as witness the dog-boa I have in this picture:

Slightly too small to make a decent pillow

     But the appeal rapidly faded and she went off to keep a vigil on the kitchen table.

What's This?
I hear you asking.  "That's surely not Commercially Made ice cream in your breakfast bowl, Conrad?  You sell-out!"

Not, technically, ice cream

     Ben & Jerry's Frozen Yoghurt, actually.  The carton was fearfully battered and had leaked, so it was half price.  I'd no idea what it tasted like, but it was half price**.
     And it wasn't bad at all.  When the carton is empty I shall check out the ingredients and how it's made.

It's Bad When Your Food Talks Back
Oh yes.  Conrad bought a couple of date-expired chicken kievs on Friday, and yesterday had them baked on a bun, viz:

Ignore the Pollock

     The chicken kiev has a bit of an air gap inside the pocket where the butter is stashed, meaning that when you bite into it, it retaliates with a cross between a gasp and a groan.  This was off-putting the first time so yesterday I gave both a good stabbing.  Result: silent buns.

I Say, Coincidence, Fancy Meeting You Here
You recall, I hope - because there will be tests with fatal consequences later - Conrad banging on about clepsydrae recently.  Well, look at this:

     I've blown those up extra-large so you can see the hole at the base.
     No, it's actually a flowerpot, not a clepsydra.  But if my watch battery dies or there's a powercut, well it might stand duty ...

What?  Are You Still Here, Coincidence!
I have been indexing mention of weapons used by the 51st Highland division in the divisional history, an example being this page I took at random, one of 12:

Add caption

     Mention is made of the "Stokes Gun" or "Stokes trench mortar", an important bit of lightweight kit whose descendants are in service today.
     Whilst watching "Police Interceptors", an officer was looking for an illegal treasure hunter's metal detector, when he came across this:

Guess what kind of bomb it is, children!

     Conrad is pretty sure it's a - you were ahead of me here, weren't you? - Stokes Mortar Bomb, identifiable because it's not streamlined at all.
     Now, what are the chances of that hap - KNOCK ON THE DOOR BEFORE YOU COME IN! MY HEART CAN'T TAKE TOO MUCH OF THIS!

Marvel's Agents Of Shield
Not to be confused with any other series about agents who happen to work for SHIELD.  
     I'm up to Episode 14 of the second series and I have to say I like Cal, the doctor, father of Skye.  He's exceedingly strong, very clever and also incidentally completely off his rocker.  He is a far more likeable villain that the antiseptic Whitehall.  A sense of humour, even if positively psychopathic, goes a long way to endearing a character to Conrad.

"The hands of a strangler.  A stranger!  I meant a stranger!"

     PLOT HOLE:  also, a few spoilers.  Cal had been on a quest to track down and butcher Whitehall, and I mean literally butcher in the sense of pulling him apart bare-handedly.  Hey, a man's gotta have a dream!  Actually this was in revenge for Whitehall's butchery of Cal's wife, twenty five years previously.
     Sadly for Cal, Phil***shoots Whitehall dead in less than a second, which, when you think about it, is probably sad from Whitehall's point of view as well.  Cal, thwarted, decides he's going to take on Phil and SHIELD for being spoilsports.
     Wrong!  Wrongwrongwrong.  Whitehall did not operate alone, literally and metaphorically^ and since Cal is a doctor he ought to know this.  There's a whole lot of Operating Theatre staff he can track down and pull apart to extract revenge.

"We're not all doctors of medicine, Conrad.  As you ought to know."

     And whilst we're on about plot holes, what about all the villains and dangerous technology that got stolen from SHIELD by Garret and Co?  They mentioned one villain in one episode - and that was that.

Blimey!  We've hit 1000 words and I've got more to say.  Maybe later on.

Chin chin!


* Portmanteau version of "scribbled drivel", although since you only see it typed, not strictly true.
** That counts for a lot, right?
*** Coulson.  We're on first name terms.
^ I hope you Russian squaddies are taking notes, this is quality stuff.