What's In A Name, Again

No, No, I'm Recycling Not Repeating
Although Conrad does like to work on a theme, as this requires less expenditure of intellect than the creation of wordsmithing excellence from scratch.
     "What-" and if you pretend ignorance of what I implied there I shall surely be found on your doorstep wearing hob-nail boots and a cross face*.
     "What does this recycling refer to?" I hear you ask, followed by a guilty-sounding gulp.
     Well, both beer, which has led us into the Intro for the past couple of days, and what connections people make with a name.
     You see, last night I shared information on social media about a certain brand of beer going half-price at the Co-Op in Royton: Pedigree

Nice stuff, actually

     Very low-key, the SEL** had small print that informed this line was being discontinued and that was it.  Conrad remembered those happy days in autumn last year when Cornetto's were being discontinued and retailed for 50p each, and imagined that the same process applies here - half-price until the stock has all gone.
     Except that I didn't explicitly state that it was Pedigree beer that was going cheap, nor include a photo, which led to a little confusion amongst some of the audience -

Easily confused.
Maybe.

     - who wondered why your modest artisan was banging on about tinned dog food.
     Well.  You try to do people a good turn ...

Yugoslavia, Hoarding And Guns
If your memory serves you at all, then you will recollect Conrad going on about the Czech Republic, and Czechslovakia before that, and even the Hapsburg Empire before that.
     "What dark and twisted connection can either of these nations have with that title, Conrad?" I hear you ask.  And in a nice polite tone of voice, too.
     Yugoslavia or "Land of the Southern Slavs" happened to be carved out of part of the Hapsburg Empire, as a matter of fact.  The Yugoslav Army was well known for it's trait of never throwing anything military away.  Anecdotaly, during the Civil War one side's Tiger Tank took on the other side's Sherman Tank, both of these items being decades out of service.
     Now let me introduce you to the Schwarzlose Machine Gun:

An ugly brute

     This was the standard machine gun of the Austro-Hungarian*** army of the First Unpleasantness, and was obsolete by the time the Second Unpleasantness broke out.  It still got used by second-line units, and the Hungarians, but it's day had well and truly gone by 1945.
     However, Conrad remembers seeing one, painted in the same green scheme as the one above, in an arsenal of weapons being collected for destruction back in the mid-90's.

NO!  Simply NO!
This has been festering within me for a couple of days now, and I can't hold back any longer.  Whilst scrolling through the television guide, I happened to notice the "CBS Drama" channel, and it had the temerity to list "Terry and June" in there.

Conrad, looking cross.
Probably wearing hobnail boots, too. 

     For those of you who have managed to avoid this audiovisual excrement, how lucky you are!  The blandest, corniest, unfunniest of all imaginable sit-coms, until or unless the Beeb commissions one about the Gulag camps under Stalin.  IT IS NOT DRAMA!
     While I'm on my ranting tanting soapbox, let me also point out that "Are You Being Served?" is NOT a classic.  It is merely old.  That does not permit it to be viewed through rose-tinted binoculars, rather than (as is surely more appropriate) a gunsight.

Too much text!  More pictures!

Edna Wunderhund
One of the good things about your humble  scribe being on leave is - at least in Edna's opinion - the fact that he is there to play with her, when she wants it.

     And if he gets tired, there's always Wonder Wifey -

     As always, whenever Edna wants.  We humans^ get no say.

You What?
Conrad does admit that those idiots the Foobs do provide material for the blog, which is about the only reason he allows them to continue existing.  Take this as an example:

I feel ill just looking at it

     This features the RNLI in action, in a short yet terrifying video clip of a crippled ship, a storm at sea and huge waves.  The swell is so large at times that the lifeboat looks down on the deck of this freighter.
     Now, the RNLI is a respected and honourable body of mostly volunteers and Conrad will be glad to make a donation to them, but on the evidence of this clip there is NO WAY he will ever be volunteering for them.  Ever!




*  Yes, yes, I know - "How can you tell the difference?"
** Shelf Edge Labelling.  I'm so technical.
*** Same thing as the Hapsburg Empire
^  Sorry, that should read "You humans"