Despicable Deceiver Of Dogs

That's Me!
Although I have passed on the torch, I can still shamelessly exploit Edna in the cynical pursuit of higher blog traffic.  Since your humble scribe needed to be in early at work as of Tuesday morning, he needed an early night on Monday, which meant ditto for Edna.  However, Wonder Wifey et al weren't due to arrive back home from holiday until the region of 2 a.m.  Conrad not willing to wait up until then and only get 4 hours sleep.  As you who have seen his photos, Conrad needs all the beauty sleep he can get and then some.  So, it was "Edna - in the Crate!" to a verrrry reluctant doggeh.  Then I left the door open so I could sneak out to the Upstairs Lair 20 minutes later when Edders had fallen asleep.  Success!  Silent surreptitious sneaking salubriously shennanigans scored.  Dog remained silent until the holiday party arrived, whereupon the whole of Royton was awoken by barking.

No, I haven't grown huge.  This is Edna as a pup.

Presents!
Your humble scribe has been banging on at length about dogsitting Edna for the past week, not entirely in an altruistic manner, as The Holiday Party returned bearing gifts - Caramel Vodka, which sounds (and smells!) very nice.  Also Honey Rum, which sounds almost like a Sixties female detective series from South Canada - anyway, rum or not, Conrad cannot have any until Saturday evening despite Wonder Wifey's near-demands about tasting it.  A strange inversion of normality.
     More concrete was the Wolf, Howling, tee-shirt, with a smidgeon of glitter.  Looks prices.  Better not knacker the collar with pen-excess.

     Also!  The Man Pinneh.  This is not a girly apron but a MAN PINNEH! (spelled "pinny") with - gasp! - Conrad's Sunday-best name upon it, or at least a variant thereof.

"Chef" meaning "Chief" "Boss" "The Man" "Top Dog" "Top Cat" - er -

Bitten By The Coincidence Hydra AGAIN
Yesterday I was working on a short article about what the formal call "Explosive Ordnance Disposal" and the informal call "The Bomb Squad".  Give me a minute and I can prove this with a link -

http://comsatangel2002.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/can-i-have-word-cross-word.html

 - there you are, at the end of the post.
     Now, if you read that you'll note the punning titles for the British Army's bomb disposal folk, "Felix" and of course "Top CAT", after - I think - Chief Ammunition Technical Officer" as the rank used to be.
     I pop on over to Twitter and what has Al Murray just posted there?

I dunno.  The Universe is trying to tell me summat.

     Normally Al is in solo combat with an army of witless planks who lack humour, common sense or self-awareness, so it's rare for him to post a link like this MOST ESPECIALLY WHEN IT RELATES TO MY BLOG!
     I have now positioned the mirror to look backwards over my shoulder so nobody can sneak up on me WHAT'S THAT TAPPING AT THE WIND

The Case Of The Killer Sherbet Lemons
Not literally.  Mostly not literally.  A bit metaphorical.  A teensy bit metaphorical.  Almost real, except not quite.
     "Get on with it, Conrad!" I hear you say.  "We need to catch the news to see which celebrity has croaked today."
     Me too!  I have a list here - <ahem> that's going off at a tangent.  Let us get back on track.
     Whilst not consuming alcohol, Conrad compensates by guzzling sweets by the fistful, especially those made of boiled sugar - the sherbet lemons in question.  Allow me to illustrate for any benighted foreigners unable to purchase these confectionery wonders -

Literally bitter-sweet

     The fun part of eating these is, of course, CRUNCHING THEM, which can produce jagged shards of sharp-edged sweet posing a tongue-threat.  Obviously Conrad then wonders - well, you would, wouldn't you? - could you make solid sucrose shapes, knives and stabbing weapons, out of boiled sugar*?  If made as a blunt object one could literally lick it into shape (i.e. pointed).  To get an edge you might have to lick a lot.
     The advantage of a sugar knife, of course, is that to dispose of it without trace you'd just carry on licking until it was gone.
     I'll get back to you on this one ...

Badverts
I used to have a page in our Nineties fanzine "Truly Madly Deeply" mocking adverts and the source material hasn't gotten any less fruitful or inspiring.  
     For instance, take "Sanex".  This is a kind of hygeine product - I wasn't paying a lot of attention, focussing more on polishing my brass hand - that Conrad wonders about the pronunciation of (yes, yes, I had the telly on "mute").  Is it  "San-ex" as in "Sanitary", OR, according to Conrad's (admittedly rather skewed) viewpoint, "Sane-x" because - er - because - it's mental?

Industrial flamethrower!
It's so sanitary.

     Then we have Travelodge.  Never mind the grammatical sin of compacting two splendidly separate words into a seedy portmanteau, what's with the creepy little puppets?   Conrad, of course, would go the whole hog and use this one - 

"Dead tired?  Stop clowning around  and try Travelodge!"

*  Kudos if you spotted the "Terminator 2" steal here.