All Good Things -

 - And Quite A Few Bad Ones, Too -

  - must come to an end.  
     NO!  I don't mean that the blog is in any danger of coming to a crashing halt thanks to a prosecution for slander, or that it's servers have been run down to nil charge thanks to a strike by the hamsters, or that my human camouflage skin is off at the cleaners for a good dosing with uranium hexaflouride*.  Nor is there any prospect of my imagination hitting a barren spell**.
     No, I refer to my most recent notebook, commenced on the 6th of August and now at the physical limit:

The End.

     I can't chuck it away just yet, there's about another four blog's worth of material yet to be written up between those covers, as well as a series of those terrible puns I use on Facebook: "I like a nice baton," said the conductor.  Hopefully slightly funnier and more obvious than that.

This type of baton.
<sigh> oh you uncultured lot

It's A Wonderful Thing, Consistency
Yes indeed.  You can rely on First Bus: they'll always let you down***.  It pains me to have to continue being negative about this - ah, who am I kidding, I love ladling the invective, opprobium and capsicum extract over them.  In keeping with yesterday, the 24 was late this morning.  It was late this evening - but let us not jump the gun.  Once we reached Oldham Road this morning, there were armadas of passengers waiting at every bus stop, so many that not one but several other First buses must have failed to turn up.  Unusually, as the driver completely ignores what people do once they board the bus, some of them went upstairs or to other spare seats downstairs.  Thus they didn't get crushed when Conrad - who I remind you is large and unyielding - squoze past them with his equally large and unyielding ruckbag.

Conrad, really rocking the Large bit.
(a bit too well-padded to be properly Unyielding)

     The bus was late again this evening.  I know I've said this already, yet it bears repetition, as otherwise First might get complacent and slack.  Slacker.  Actually they're so slack already they're completely unbelted.

"The Martian"
Went to see this at the Odeon in Manchester last night, and well worth it, too.  Definitely a film to see on the big screen, because it will lose a whole lot of the visual impact on your fiddly little television screen.
     Shot in Jordan, it looked exactly like you'd imagine Mars to be - red sands, stark rock outcrops, NO LIFE!  No Mysteron city or Rock Snakes (Bah!).  
     I don't propose to review the whole thing, as your patience is limited.  Nice, as a plot point, to see that Marc Watney is no polymathematical superman - he relies on the smartest brains at NASA to help him survive.  It's also an interesting contrast between the Hermes spaceship and the precision and predictability of orbital mechanics, and the shifting fog of Earth-based politics.
     Also - Michael Pena!  That chap gets around.

Michael Pena.  Middleweight Sit-Down Boxing expert

     You might be a little confused as to how Mark gets "left behind", wondering if it's a "Home Alone - ON MARS!" scenario.  Not at all.  In the teeth of a ferocious storm that threatens to topple the MAV^ spaceship, Mark is physically knocked into the middle distance by a broken-off satellite dish.  The impact destroys his bio-monitor so the rest of the crew assume him dead.
     When he comes to, he has to face the prospect of surviving for as long as 4 years before the next Ares mission makes it to Mars.

My Favourite Martian.
(Come on, you KNEW that was coming!)

     Bummer.  Yet he retains a sense of humour, as evidenced in his self-recordings and broadcasts.  Humour is a powerful sustainer, and shows the mindset of a man who's not going to give up.  He is, in fact, going to "science the sh1t out of it" in order to survive.
     I shan't spoil the ending, except to say that the tension is maintained all the way.  Given that I took notes whilst watching, I'll probably come back and bore you with more details later in the week.


Confusing English:  Behave, Beehive and Behove
Why elide these words?  Because I can!  Once again, whose blog is it?
     Of course, if you wish to remain uneducated, merely skip this bit, but I will be able to tell, and there will be a quiz later in the week.  Failure means Consequences.
     "Behave": "To act in a manner", derived from Old English "Be", meaning "Thoroughly", and "Have", again Old English, meaning "To bear oneself".

     "Beehive"; yes, yes, this is how some Cockney's pronounce "behave".  It is an apiary for the production of honeycomb, don't you know, made by bees.  Well-behaved bees.

"Oooh, behave!"
(said in a Kenneth Williams voice)

     "Behove": ah yes, I thought this one might throw you.  Old fashioned, not used a lot any more, which makes it just right for Conrad to baffle colleagues with.  It means "Obligated, or duty bound".  It derives from the Old English "Behof", which became "Behofian" and thus to "behove".  Pronouced "Bee-hoove".  Well-behaved bees and cattle.

Behoven to behave in the beehive

That's an awful lot of text.  I feel a bit of picture is due.  Art?

You What?
I don't know.  Really, I don't.  Perhaps some of the younger amongst you may be able to make sense of this drivel, because it's beyond me:

"IG"?

     "Seize the moment"?  Would that be "Carpe Secundus" in Latin?  What does one do with the moment once it's been seized?  Dress it up?  Invite it for a weekend in the country?  Fight a duel?  Hoover and iron it?
     Really, the Twits are outdoing themselves with this gibberish.  If I were to write arcane canards like that, you'd collectively boo me and throw stones.

What's our word-count?  984  1,060 words?  Good lord aloft, I've gone and written a lot again!  I do apologise, please have a picture of <thinks> a zombie aardvark -

Hmmm.  Maybe not the best ending ever!

* Kills all known germs, all the unknown ones too, and any incautious human who comes into contact with it.
** You wish!
*** I pinched this.  David Niven said it of Errol Flynn.
^ "Mars Ascent Vehicle"