BOOJUM!: A Recidivist In The Mist

It Was A Cold Damp December Morning
And there wasn't any mist, sorry for lying. I was going for poetic effect, and a rhyme. So, not so much "All alone at the end of the evening" (thank you The Eagles) as much as "All alone at the start of the morning" (thank you Lift Rock For Idiots).
No light glimmered in the sky to warn of dawn's approach, and the cold is a damp kind of cold, too, rendering your gifted author most saturnine. The only sound is that of the dawn chorus, a whole lot of birds chirping away. Tandle Hill at this point on it's ascent has many trees, and the birds announce themselves all around - here they chirp, there they twitter, over there they tweet.
What have they got to be so cheerful about? Do they know something that Conrad doesn't?
Birds. Nature's born optimists. Also good roasted, with potatoes.

You'd probably need half a dozen of these, they're rather small.

"At War With The Irish 16th Division" By J.H.M. Staniforth
A most interesting autobiography of an officer in the First Unpleasantness; well-written, and by a public school old boy too, yet not at all precious or pretentious. He hailed from Whitby on the North Yorkshire coast, where the family has just been visiting. He gets around military censorship of his letters home by using local village and place-names, which makes it rather odd reading about "Staithes" when you've only just driven through it.
Since he did his initial training in Ireland, it was instructive to see the Commanding Officer's order of the day for Saint Patrick's day - every pub within 30 miles of the barracks was closed!
I've just read a bit where he describes "Grandmother". Not a lady you'd ever get on the wrong side of, as she was a 15" howitzer, the biggest non-railway gun the British Army has ever had.

Our darling Grannie

Her shells came over "sounding like the chariot-wheels of God." This was the end result of the Germans opposite Staniforth strafing the British front line with rifle-grenades. The British responded with light field guns, the Germans ditto. The British escalate with heavier howitzers, the Germans ditto. Then Grandmother, which abruptly puts an end to the exchange, and probably leaving Otto and Hans looking daggers at the officer responsible for ordering the strafe in the first place.

At the business end.
You'd better not let the CO catch you doing that!

Rocket Lands Vertically!
This was all over the BBC website and Facebook yesterday, and even tomorrow's papier mache The Metro, joined in.

Proof that some of the staff do other than watch reality TV

I think I might even have a screenshot from the Beeb website. Art?

I see

You know Conrad. I cannot let a challenge like this go undone. Thus -

Can't see what all the fuss is about myself.

"Recidivist"
I beg your pardon, I'm guilty of what I hate amongst other authors - failure to translate. Recidivist is - obviously! - derived from Latin, and means "A criminal who repeatedly reoffends". Derived from the Latin "Re" for "back" and "Cadere" meaning "to fall", it transposed to "Recidere" and then via French to "Recidiviste" and then the word already mentioned.
Why bring it up in the title? Because it is a peculiarly apt noun to apply to your gifted author, who on a regular basis slanders and libels First Bus and The Metro*. If this blog ever became really popular that particular kind of mud-slinging would have to stop. So - tell some of your friends.

Cat Igloo
An early Christmas present for Jenny.

Snug, which she likes - see endless prior photographs of her sitting in boxes - and fluffy - which she also likes, as she will happily sit on a pile of freshly-laundered towels in preference to all else in this world thus getting your humble scribe into trouble - and, most of all, quite out of reach of Edna. Who simply lacks the height and agility to trouble our cat.

A Sinister Christmas Tradition
Because "sinister" is cooler than "cheesy". Not very green of me, I admit, continuing an old tradition of handing out cheap and cheesy Christmas cards at work**. Art! Put down the coal scuttle and your spoon and do some work!