Tea He

 - As Bugs Bunny Would Say
Except his would be spelled "Tee Hee".  Fine upstanding role model, Bugs: Conrad has a lot of time for him.
     Which has nothing at all to do with what comes next.
     "Gosh!  How unlike you to skip without logic from one topic to the next," I hear you pronounce, with an unhealthy dose of sarcasm.
     "We had our fingers crossed and didn't mean any of it!" I hear you hastily retract.
     Okay.  Let us now consider the subject of tea.  Conrad drinks this by the pint when on leave, or at the weekend and today is no exception.  In fact here is his third pot of the day:

Fairtrade Jasmine Loose Leaf

      - and, in order to complete the "He" part of "Tea He", here is me (sensitive souls and pregnant women look away now)  -

That hair is "tousled" not "messy"

     The thing is, I only recently put that packet of tea from foil into a jar, and am pretty sure the Best Before End was dated a couple of years ago.
     What the heck.  It's tea.  It's also me.  I'll be fine.

The end results

     And do you know what, it tastes fine, like jasmine, which is as it should be.  Win win all round.

"Essex Guitar Workshop"
Sounds intriguing, doesn't it?  Why should Conrad, a man* who hardly knows which end of a guitar the noise comes out of, be interested in this?
     Well, once again I have to apologise for Oscar, and his worrisome yet productive ability to throw up random nonsense, and cross my fingers that none of you out there are any great shakes at psychoanalysis, since Essex Guitar Workshop doesn't really exist**, it's another phrase I scribbled down on my bedside notepad.

An appropriately coloured guitar.

     It did follow on from a related dream theme, that of your humble scribe at a Pink Floyd gig circa 1977, yet playing new stuff.  O! if only you could record this stuff.  Roger Waters needed a haircut, mind.

"The Crying Of Lot 49" And It's "Companion"
Ah, that jasmine tea's nice!  There is NO possibility of your gifted author re-reading this with the Companion to hand before Monday and then lending both to Laura.
     "But why is this?" I hear you ask.  "Lot 49 is quite short for Thomas Pynchon, you've read it already, and you read quickly.  Where can the problem possibly lie?"

Psychedelic
More mentions of "Doomsday Machines"

    The Companion is detailed beyond belief.  "Mrs. Oedipa Maas" is the lead character introduced in the first sentence of the first paragraph of the first page; just three words, right?
     This triggers over three pages of notes on this name alone, invoking Freud, Sir Isaac Newton and Sophocles, not three names you often see together.  This level of detail means the Companion is longer than the novel itself (154 pages vs. 126), which is nicely ironic and possible cause for Mr. Pynchon to be mildly amused.

Marmite
If you have never tried this British savoury spread, DON'T try it at home. Or anywhere else for that matter, it is most definitely an acquired taste that people either love or hate.  There is no middle ground.  

What is that pot?

     Don't bother arguing about this, it's as true as binary code: Yes/No, Off/On, Up/Down, Marmite Lovely/Marmite War crime.
     I raise the issue because one of the pub quiz*** questions last night concerned that crock on the label above. "What is it?"
     "A pan," declared Phil.  "A pot," declared the quizmaster.  

A Marmite

A Rage About Neige
Aha!  Got you there.  "Neige" is French for "Snow".  Predictably, social media across the north west of the Pond of Eden are awash with pictures of snow; these range from the briefest of flurries thawing whilst the photograph was being taken, to what resembles Life In Antarctica.
     To those who live abroad in countries that experience severe weather, like Canada, or Russia, this peculiar febrile activity probably invokes amused incomprehension.
     "Those wacky Brits!" they will say.  "A few inches of snow for a couple of days!  What a sense of - Oh.  They're serious."
     If I may explain.  The view from our kitchen across the street has been like this for several years now:

     There are days when it's less wet, but this could be any day of the year, for several years past.
     When heavy snow arrives, it finds us utterly unprepared, mentally and physically, and our natural phlegmatic British reaction is to run screaming in panicked circles slaughter the livestock and salt the meat post endlessly on social media.  Back in the days before the internet we just had to put up with not inflicting our weather on other people, but now if we have to suffer Then!  so do you.
     Still, at least one resident at the Mansion is enjoying the snows -

Sledna^

* Barely
** Believe me, I Googled it
*** Which we WON!  WON WON WON!
^  See?  See what I did there with "Edna"?