The Urge To MURDER! Has Subsided

Somewhat
Not totally, so don't get in the way of Conrad as he reaches for a mince pie, or his pot of tea, or his Index Notes for the 51st Highland Division.
     Okay, as you surely know by now, Conrad skips merrily through life with a song on his lips and a jaunty glint in his eye*, irrepressibly happy chappy that he is.
     Of course all it takes is two words to harpoon his helium-hulled high-lift balloon of hilarity: "First Bus".
     As with this morning.  The 24 didn't turn up, so your modest artisan had to bus it into Royton on the 409, along with 20 other people who got it due to non-24 appearance**.  We then had to pick up everyone else who'd been disappointed by the 24, which made a tidy throng and of course I was late into work.
     That's not all.  Here's some evidence of my anger (I wiped the slavers of spit off the page):

Note that caption:" Thus the day began.  What date is it?  The 13th"

     I had to tempt Hermes, Greek god of transport, didn't I.  Because this evening I stood for half an hour at the bus stop before the 24 turned up, fifteen minutes late, and felt lucky, as this was the first bus to appear in 20 minutes.  Normally there's one along every 3 or 4 minutes.
     The reason, I understand from eavesdropping on the First inspectors daringly hanging out at the bus stop, is that the wrong kind of water molecules had been falling on Broadway - that is, deuterium and tritium, those isotopes of hydrogen that are essential for nuclear fission - and the bus drivers were scared of being turned into thermonuclear explosions.  Plus it was dark and they were scared.
    I have now filled up with grilled cheese and am getting the old temper under control, although I still advise you not to make loud noises or - Tom I'm looking at you - debate what would happen if we went to DefCon One and Launch On Warning.

Ingredients
That below is evidence, if you like.  Conrad admits, with a twinge of guilt, that he ate the whole packet solo, and, what's even worse, it was no bother at all.
     Anyway, as you should surely know by now, your humble scribe is an incorrigible reader of the ingredients.  Soft drinks, face balm, biscuits, all will be inspected.

Behold the Skladniki!

     A packet of Polish wafer biscuits.  What's of interest here is not the actual ingredients themselves but rather the languages they come in.  Lithuanian and Latvian one can understand - Lithuania has a land border with Poland and Latvia is next door to Lithuania - but Conrad is puzzled by the inclusion of - Uzbek?  Central Asia and Polish wafer biscuits, eh?
     BOOJUM! - tutoring you in geography and language.

The Birds Are Breezy Today
I don't care to relive the unpleasantness of fruitlessly waiting for a bus that doesn't arrive, whilst the cold soaks into the soles of your feet, yet it did seem that the local pre-dawn chorus were being extra-specially chirpy this morning.  What the heck tickles them so much?

BLACKBIRD:  Good MORNING!
THRUSH:  GOOD Morning!
BB: Sadly, no snow today.
T:   A good thing, too.
BB: Oh - how so?
T:  Camouflage.
BB:  I beg your pardon - camouflage?
T:  Yes, with his white hair and white moustache Fatty would blend right in with the snowfall.
BB:  Oh, I see!  So he could sneak up on his prey undetected.
T: I don't think you need stalking skills if your prey are Twinkies and mince pies.
BB: Oh, that's good.  Twinkies ...
T: Talking of stalking, did you know that the polar bear camouflages itself whilst hunting by covering it's nose?
BB:  Ha!  You can't call Fatty "bare" - oh, sorry - yes, I see.  Mind you, Fatty would need both arms and a pile of snow three feet high to camouflage his nose.
STARLING:  Gadzooks, him again!  Talking of bare, I was looking in through the bathroom window and -
     - then the bus came.

Conrad Is Worried
Fretful, even.  Look at the fuss made about David Bowie having died - and Conrad liked him and his music.  What if the jet carrying the Rolling Stones crashes and destroys them all***?  We'd have simply weeks of those were-walnuts Jagger and - er - Richards and - and - the other ones.

Proof.  Proof, I tell you!
Dammit the world just ain't listening.

The Metro, Defeated
I haven't done a crossword for probably years, so it was a cautious Conrad who picked up The Metro and had a go at the Cryptic Crossword.  After all, if it stumped me, I could never hold my head up in clever company again.

Vindicated!

     Not to worry, I did most of it in 20 minutes at lunch and finished the rest off in between phone calls.  Old dog still got the grey matter!

Actually the birds were right.  The carcass of one of Conrad's victims

* Mister Hand would like to point out this is a colossal lie.
** I should be making a Jack Bauer joke at this point, eh?
*** "Destroys" because saying "Kills" implies that they are still alive.