A Return To Normality

 Perhaps "Routine" Is A Better Word
 - as the blog's connection to "normal" is pretty distant and rather thin at the best of times.  So, what does your gifted author mean?
     Merely this:

Ice cream!

     This is Conrad's breakfast of choice, rather than the bacon, scrambled egg, sausages, hash browns, mushrooms and black pudding that he had for breakfast on Saturday.  This was the breakfast included with overnight stay at the hotel he collapsed in on Friday night, and since it was free - well, what's a greedy hungry man to do?
     No!  "Abstain" is not the right word!
     I intend to crack on with this posting, as I've yet to make a trip down to the Co-Op in Royton, which I like to do late of a Sunday afternoon to catch anything going cheap.

The Haul
As one thing begets another, here is the haul, taken on the hotel bed:

     I realise that "haul" is slightly inappropriate for a single magazine, yet wait!
     It comes with a poster, two-sided as well:

     Also visible on the first poster post is a "Dalek Blaster" toy game.  No instructions or guide on what to do, so your humble scribe had to guess what it did.  "Blaster" is way, way overstating it.  "Feeble Propellor Barely Able To Indent A Blancmange" would be more apt.

Now This Looks Interesting -
If the title of your live-action film is "Batman Versus Superman" then you're onto a winner, and you'd have to try pretty damn hard to produce something cinematically bad.  I'm not saying futzing the franchise can't be done - Joel Schumaker and "Batman and Robin" being a case in point - just that it would take an anti-Snyder to manage it.
     

When "The greatest gladiator match in the history of the world" is not hyperbole.

     The trailer is worth watching, especially for the Surprise Cameo at the end.
     And Ben Affleck, eh?  People have to take him seriously after his directing triumphs.

World Of Water
Yes, a title I nicked from New Musik.  If you are not aware of how wet it's been since, ooh, I dare say August, then you obviously don't live in the UK.  Several major towns have now been flooded out and if I didn't know for certain that John Wyndham's "The Kraken Wakes*" is a work of fiction, I'd be worried.
     Anyway, here's proof of how wet it's been:

     That water streaming across the pavement is coming down off the hills behind that concrete fence to the right.  My point is that I've never seen this happen before, which implies that the hills are so saturated with water already that this is the run-off.
     This, by the way, is proof that I took Edna for a walk in the wonderfully windy wet weather of yesterday, and surely earns me a small mound of brownie points?

You What?
Usually the Foobs and the Twits succeed in suggesting subject matter that is utterly inappropriate - Musical Notation Software?  Portable Lumber Mills? - and only score on one attempt in fifty.  Then there's the below:

"Give the gift of Bacon"
Kevin agrees

Conrad, as an unreconstructed carnivore, enjoys bacon just as much as the next man, yet he doesn't quite see eye-to-eye on the matter of it being a Christmas present.  Part of the weekly shop, yes, no argument there; as a seasonal gift, no, as it wouldn't fit in a stocking.

Doctor Who Videos
I did mention that I was going to educate you in why these were released on so niggardly a scale back in the Eighties and Nineties.  Reason One so few from pre-1970 survive is because the Beeb destroyed them.  Let us now move onwards, with ineluctable** Socratic logic, to - Reason Three!
     No, only kidding, Reason Two.  At the time when Doctor Who was being made in the Sixties and Seventies, the home video market not only did not exist, there was no comprehension that it ever might exist.  So, according to the contracts drawn up and signed by the actors appearing in the show, to repeat a showing meant getting the approval of everyone involved.
     Everyone!  Imagine if some thespian with a high opinion of themselves - Jeremy Irons for example - decided that, no, it wouldn't do for them to be seen wearing tin-foil armour and with a prehensile green snout.  I'm not saying that anyone deliberately blocked a video release, though the rumour goes that the Beeb spent months and months trying to get permission from an actor who was dead.
     So there you have it.  Reason Three!  Two***!

He was about this age.
The actual costume was a lot less flattering, however.

     IIRC, Jes appeared in "The Chase" and if the video came out then he must have been sporting enough not to object.  Thank you Irons Man.




* Alien invaders melt the icecaps and raise sea levels globally, with disastrous effects.
** Don't know what it means but it sounds great.
*** Dammit I'm confusing myself now.