Greek Bale Out

Oh My Yes, You Eton Mess!
Here I would like to - excuse me?  What's an Eton Mess?  A type of ice cream dessert.  Oh go on.  Art Department?  Art, you coal-eating sloven, put down that nutty slack and provide an illustration -

A Mess about to get Eaten*.

     That's BOOJUM! going off at a tangent to a tangent.  Let us get back on course.
     I would like to mention here the Battle of Salamis, which doubtless every schoolchild in the Hellenic Republic gets dinned into them at an early age.  This was a naval battle fought between the forces of the Greek alliance and the Persian empire, in the Gulf of Salamis.  Although outnumbered, the Greeks were triumphant as they knew the local sea conditions intimately, rather putting a crimp into the plans of Xerxes.
     Anyway, not all the Greeks fared well - 

"We're sinking!  Jump for it!"

     Which leads to the title of the blog tonight.
     What?  What?  Did you think it meant something else?

Spiced Date Loaf
I whipped this up last night as it's a reasonably quick and simple recipe, although it took an age to cut up the whole dates into chopped ones.  I also added some sultanas, and raisins, and mixed peel.

Seconds later, it was gone

     Actually it wasn't, there's still three slices left.  One for Anna, to show her that fruit cake is actually quite edible, one for Becca, whose birthday it was today, and - well, if K-Mo is in on Monday, she'll get dibs on it.  She likes her fruit cake, does Mo.

Conrad: Untrustworthy Colleague
Ahem!  <but you already knew that>
     At work, someone with a distinct cast of miserable about them was commenting on a particular subject and mentioned "Carrier pigeons", dating them back to the Middle Ages.
     Conrad immediately leapt in to comment, making it up from whole cloth, claiming that the Han Chinese had started using them about 2000 BC, rather predating the Middle Ages.  This impressive statement convinced several people that I knew what I was talking about.
     Doing a bit of background checking, I'm rather surprised that the timeframe is correct, but that it was the ancient Persians who invented the system.  From them it seems to have passed to the Mughals of India, and it's no stretch of the imagination to posit that the carrier pigeon then travelled to India's near neighbour - China.


Alan Dedicoat
Who? you ask.  And well you might!
     This chap apparently does the voiceover for the National Lottery, a programme Conrad watched once when it first started and it had that Scottish comedian on, who was also in Red Dwarf as a killer robot -

That's him!

     Anyway.  I had been on the phone at work, talking to a customer, when we got cut off just before the call finished.  Of course diligent Conrad continued taking other phone calls, yet in a lull the caller rang back.  I'd introduced myself but he'd not taken note of this, so he announced that "he sounded like Alan Dedicoat, you know, the chap who does the Lottery."
     Cue huge amusement all around, to Conrad's puzzled scowl.  It turns out to be somewhat complimentary, and here is a link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIEhQ_G_tfI

     You learn something new every day.  And the Mister Dedicoat comparison is better than the one sounding like "an upper-class Dalek"**.

Superheroes With Their Pants Down
NO! I've told you before, Stan, it's a strictly metaphorical title.  All the more so as we are talking about that blond hottie Sue Storm*** here, the last member of the Fantastic Four to come under our spotlight.

Look, I don't do the artwork!

     Sue's ability is to project kinetic force fields, invisible and impentrable barriers of - er - force, I suppose.  In the comics she has the benefit of the Dotted Line Convention that clues-in you, the reader, about where the force field is - er - forcing.  How does Sue know exactly where the boundaries are?  Inspired guesswork?  Don't tell me "extensive training" as the fields are still invisible whether you're training or in the field.
     So, what does Sue have to watch out for?
     1)  No points or sharp edges - there is a substantial risk of Innocent Bystander Injury as the hapless proles panic, running hither and yon, and SMACK! they run into one corner of a cuboid force field.  
     2)  Distance judgement.  If the force field is too close then the enclosure misses; or it might knock Sue on her (shapely!) ass.  Too far and it might wallop more Innocent Bystanders.  If not-quite-right it might intersect within the target person/villain/victim and CUT THEM IN HALF!
     3) Distractions.  As the force fields are non-permeable, no air can cross their boundaries, so if Sue sets one up and then remembers that the cake needs turning in the oven, then has to tent it with silver foil, and puts the dirty dishes in the sink to soak, her force field victim has by then ASPHYXIATED!
     This would also apply, tellingly, to anyone Sue is transporting in a force field bubble.  Imagine the scene - she's lifting a dozen orphans and kittens and puppies out of the burning building on the twentieth storey - and some idiot treads on her foot.
     Twenty storeys is a long way to fall as Sue hops around with a broken big toe ...^^

Sue, about to inflict a right royal bottom-kicking

* Do you see what - o you do.
** I nicked this from Sir John Peel OBE
*** It must run in the family, her brother is Johnny Storm the Human Torch^!
^ Sorry
^^ Don't worry, Reed turned himself into an emergency net and saved them all.  Johnny and Ben tracked the person who broke Sue's toe.  They put him in hospital.