Horrors - I Think I Forgot The Baking Powder

The Perils Of Being A Forgetful Old* Man
I know I got it out of the cupboard, and I know I put it back in the cupboard, but did I actually put a teaspoonful into the sieved dry ingredients of the cake I'm baking?  I've just been and checked the teaspoon I'd used for the coffee and it does have a dusting of powder, so perhaps all is not lost.

     I must apologise in advance to Russell, who requested a "Coffee and Almond Loaf", except I didn't have a recipe for this to hand, the internet was running slower than a senile snail on sedatives and I didn't have enough chocolate.  Next week, Russell, next week!

"Gravity's Rainbow" By Thomas Pynchon
Yes, you are quite right, I am on a year-long binge of reading old TP, this will be the seventh novel.  I first read it 30 years ago, and it took an effort as I was simply rocked back on my heels by Tom's style.  I'm more used to it now and it bears the marks of his other novels - daft puns, silly surnames, imagined songs, going off on a tangent.  I have realised that the beginning of the novel involves an evacuation by railway, not a flock of evacuees on foot.

He didn't invent this, I'm sure

     Causality I Spit At Thee: once again coincidence comes crowding in.  I swear there is an unholy connection between Tom and the space-time continuum as it applied to Conrad.  Looking for a book to pack in my bag I picked up "S.O.E.", a history of the British wartime spying and sabotage organisation "Special Operations Executive", by MRD Foot, but didn't take it, as it's rather hefty.   Four pages into "GR", what gets mentioned but - the Special Operations Executive.  Bear in mind this is a British organisation some forty years gone by the time Tom wrote GR, and - well, you begin to wonder.
     But wait!  There's more!  Last night's post involved reference to the Sanjak of Novi Pazar, a tiny (and now extinct) principality in what used to be Yugoslavia.  Very obscure, long-forgotten and Conrad is one of the few people who's ever heard of it.
     Except Tom.  There on page 14 and for several pages after, we hear of the Sanjak of Novi Pazar.
     Lexicographically Expanding: as ever, Tom throws in words that Conrad has to check up, as the possibility that he's slipping a fictional one past is very real.  So:  "Musaceous" - refers to a banana.  Well.  Never knew that before.  "Ruminous" - ha!  That seems to be made up.  "TDY" - Army contraction of "Temporary Duty".
     And Definitely An Anglophile: "Mason and Dixon" was all about two Englishmen, "V" has big chunks set in the British Empire, "The Crying of Lot 49" features Gallipoli, and this refers effortlessly to British and English culture.  I am very impressed with Tom's mention of Preston North End and Blackpool, two football clubs in the North West who have a tradition of deadly rivalry.  Today this is probably all over the internet; back in the days when Tom was writing I doubt one American in ten thousand had ever heard of PNE.

We'll not bother with Blackpool.
(Conrad grew up in Preston)

How The SAS Should Operate
If they take Conrad's advice, they'd hide in plain sight.  This isn't Current Affairs, it goes back to when they deployed in Albania**, and the BBC journalists present were instantly suspicious and alert when they spotted English soldiers who weren't wearing regimental badges, or indeed any kind of identifying marks at all.

The originals, and shockingly scruffy they were too

     The SAS! instantly assumed the press.  You can imagine how it goes:

Journalist:  Hey, who are you guys?***
Anonymous Soldier: Can't possibly say, sir.
Journalist: No badges?  Special Forces.  HEY YOU MUST BE THE SAS!
Anon. Soldier: Can you keep it down?
Journo: HEY EVERYONE COME AND MEET THE SAS!
Anon. Soldier (facepalms): With friends like these ...

What our noble lads of the winged dagger ought to do is adopt the badges of old, amalgamated regiments, as this would instantly throw journalists of the trail, especially the South Canadian ones unfamiliar with the long and peculiar history of British army regiments.  KOYLI, anyone?  KRRC?  RIDG?  DOCLI?^

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Unusually, Conrad has done a little research on this film.  Surprise!  This cost £10 million.  Whilst this might seem a lot for a car, it is pretty cheap by Hollywood standards for a film, and Surprise!  It cost no more than the first film.  No mean feat considering inflation, and one suspects slackly-drawn up contracts with insufficiently robust terms for the cast over a bigger salary for sequels.

Conrad threw Art in the septic sump after this

     Total gross for both films is £85 million - and there are more income streams for the sequel, so £90 million is a real possibility.  Sadly, given this, so is another sequel.  Still, these have proved to be very nice earners.  Where, wonders Conrad, did they find such an audience?

I wonder.  Also, I'll get back to you on that.

A Short Photo-essay On Getting To Work
We need to go picture heavy on this, it's been very wordy.

Ha!

     To re-interate:  HA!  Suntan lotion.  Today.

"Amuse me, puny human!"

     Since I was a little early, I sat on the kitchen chair and was promptly assaulted by Jenny in full Effusive Feline Intervention mode.  Purring madly, slinking all over me, fighting with plastic clothes-pegs, trying to chew the pens in my pocket - I got up and ran for it!

One of these things is not like the other ...

     On the right, we see the effects of a bus pass sitting in Conrad's back pocket for six days - given the high-quality of First Bus products - no, sorry, I mean the appallingly shoddy cut-price Brummagen ware of First Bus products - the chirpily disbelieving first driver let me on, with a caution that other drivers might not.
     So, I weakened and the result is the nice legible pass on the left.  Which pass is not going to be next to my ass.


* You can leap in and challenge these base assertions, anytime.  Anytime at all.
** Which is not far from - Novi Pazar!
*** You may assume that this particular journalist is, indeed, a South Canadian
^ I shall explain: The King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry; The King's Royal Rifle Corps; the Royal Iniskilling Dragoon Guards; the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry.