Fore Seasons

I Can Tell What You're Thinking -
 - and you're WRONG!
     No, Conrad has not mis-spelled "Four", for after all is he not the internet's biggest Spelling Nazi?
     Don't answer that question.
     I meant, of course, "fore" in the sense of being at the vanguard, in front and heading right for you, because truly that's what the weather for yesterday and today has been - in your face.
     Let us have photographic evidence of yesterday's crazy-quilt lunchtime lunacy:

There you go, a splendid view of the back of Pete's head

     Bright sunshine in the foreground, rain visibly descending in the middle distance.  Last night brought snow, and plenty of it.  Fortunately it did not lie, as the ground was already wet.  I say "fortunately" under advisement, as Wonder Wifey's preferred mode of entertainment in heavy snow is to sit in the bay window that fronts Rochdale Road, scoffing a bag of popcorn and sniggering at the cars failing to make the summit.
     A faint icing-sugar remnant was present this morning.  Art?

Bus stop vista

     And, keeping with the theme of "ice", may I present to you the world's smallest Cornetto:

Notepad for scale

     Actually - you guessed this already, didn't you? - it's nothing of the sort.  I wanted a Cornetto for breakfast, which means putting one in my insulated tub, which meant sawing the end off in order for the whole thing to fit in.  A delicious start to the day.
     And, keeping with the theme of "sweet", here is the collation of about seven packets of sweets that I had no choice but to buy.  NO CHOICE!  and you can thank Pete for that - the chap whose head you can see in our first photo - because it was he who informed that the Co-Op was selling two packs of sweets for £1.50.

     Right, now the Intro is over, let the motley begin!

The Metro Is Back
Since I was off last week and thus didn't catch any buses, our local fly-swatter might have been absent all last week, too.  Not that I ever read the wretched rag, certainly not for enjoyment, only ever as a sternly-administered chore to keep track of it's degenerate scribblings.  Which are not at all the same as Conrad's, since his scrivel is fresh from the fervid, fermenting depths of his imagination.  And not padded-out with HUGE FONTS and GIANT PHOTOGR - with HUGE FONTS, anyway.
     I say this without actually reading it for over a week, so I shall sit down in the Electric Goldfish Bowl at lunchtime and peruse it, and then we shall see what's what.
     Plus I got stuck on a Cryptic clue, thanks to not paying attention.  "Playing a gig & working together" (2,7) and all I did was count the squares as (9).  "In Concert" the obvious answer, if you read the clue and not invent one in your own mind.

Marvellously Multi-tasking Man
I would like to preen a little here, as the fairer sex* seem to take all the credit for this ability.  Referring to Palazzo's "Seeking Victory On The Western Front", I now have 26 sides of handwritten notes made whilst watching "Person of Interest", drinking tea and eating sweets.
     That counts as multi-tasking, doesn't it?

Excuse me - just popping down to the kitchen for a refill of tea -

"The Annals Of Urquelomplangia" By Me
This is the novel that I barely got started in November last year, thus missing the 2015 entry for National Novel Writing Month.  I managed 1,000 words last night, on top of the blog, which is not bad going.  Markus, the weakest wizard remaining in our cod seventeenth century Mittel European kingdom, is having trouble with the demoness in his bedroom.  And for once, no, that's not a metaphor ...

It was quite hard finding a demoness keen on keeping her scraps of chiffon on -

And Back To Television
I think we've had enough of the fruits (or vegetables**) of Conrad's imagination, and can now resort to television as source material.  The plus side of being confined to the house last week is that I can now go on Mastermind with my specialist subject being either NCIS or Police Interceptors.
     Well now, you'd expect a rather bland television vox pabulum*** like "Countryfile" would have little to do with <hack spit> Shakespeare, wouldn't you?
     Not a bit of it.  I switched channels yesterday (really a week ago but I want it to seem fresh in your mind's eye) when they began rabbitting on about "Plants in Shakespeare", amid Conrad fondly imagining planting one on him ...
     What I meant to focus on was the work of Rowena Cade, a lady of <ahem> advanced years, who built an open-air auditorium for the performance of Shakespeare, and most specifically "The Tempest".  Perched on cliff-top heights with the sea as a backdrop, it's certainly a striking setting.  Then there was the Weather Historian, of whom more anon.
     Anon.  Don't lie, neither of us knew that such things as "Weather Historians" existed.

Yes, Ambrose, they can.  They can indeed.

     He explained that in 1609 a convoy of settlers left England for Novo Britannia, better known today as South Canada.  These unfortunates ran into a hurricane in the West Indies, a weather phenomenon unknown in England - our weather can be digsusting but it's not destructive^ - and there was disastrous shipwreck.  The survivors eventually made their way back to England and their harrowing tale may well have inspired the Barf of Avon, because after all what is a hurricane but - a Tempest?
     And that was how "Forbidden Planet" came to exist.

Rowena's theatre in the round.
And the raw, given the wind coming off that sea!

The Metro - Reprise
Well, I read the rag at lunchtime and can't remember a single thing from it, which is either an indictment of my memory, or The Metro is crap^^.


*  Women.  Sorry, been reading too many hundred-year old books
** Possibly even weeds.
*** I made this up myself!  It might even be a real thing.
^  So far that day we'd had rain, hail, snow, wind and sun.  All that was left were showers of frogs and a plague of locusts.
^^ The Metro is crap.  There, made your mind up for you.