"Repeat Please"

Whether Wanted Or Not
In that classic war film "Battle Of Britain" there is a scene where a hapless RAF officer is flying alongside a flight of Poles, doing their training.  Up pops the Luftwaffe, full of bratwurst and bad intentions.  The Poles instantly spot the Germans and break out into excitable Polish.
     "Stop that Polish chatter and steer two three zero!" barks the RAF trainer.  

Barry Foster IIRC

     "Repeat please," politely requests the first Pole, completely ignoring his trainer and diving off to attack their Teutonic adversary.
     Cue short rant by RAF trainer.
     "Repeat please."
     "Repeat please."
     "Repeat please."
     "Repeat please."
     And he's alone in the sky.

      Today Conrad felt as if he'd been silently sending out a "Repeat please" request to the heavens, or Fate, or Hermes, because his bus journey today was a mirror image of yesterday's - the 24 stopped to take on all the passengers from the 182 before hitting traffic and more traffic and - do you see a theme developing here? - even more traffic.

Conrad - Braving It So You Don't Have To
Oh my friends - be warned by me. Conrad has been watching the 2012 remake of "Red Dawn" and it really does offend the sensibilities.  I should have left it at having heard the Flophouse podcast review but Oh No!  Not I!  
     What's wrong with the film?  Do you have an hour or so?  Actually I shall be merciful and break up the frothing nitric ire over a few days. 

More like "Red Yawn"

 Firstly, the numbers.  It cost $65 million and only grossed $50 million worldwide, so even ignoring promotion and distribution costs it's already in big trouble.  Then the production company went bust and the film sat on the shelf.  Finally, since the bad guys were Chinese and the Chinese market is Big Business, a suit somewhere decided that the bad guys had to be redone.  So they chose - 
     North Korea.
     This is a nation that still hasn't developed a thermonuclear weapon,  when the South Canadians managed their first one 65 years ago.  Suddenly in RD the Norks  have the capacity to stage an airborne invasion of the Pacific North-West?
     Spokane, specifically, the strategic hub of - well, nowhere, really.  Nor do the Norks bother to air-drop and capture the Air Force Base just outside the city, the one that can be clearly seen on Google Maps.  No, instead they drop into Spokane's suburbs willy-nilly, suburbs chock-full of trees and houses that cause accident and injury to paratroopers. 

Ah, the panty-waist Pacific North West, where nobody has a gun.
If this had been in the South ...

     There will be more on this subject, believe you me.  You're going to learn the real meaning of "Repeat please" by the time I'm done.

More Of Martial Marching
If you don't like the content tonight, go sit in the corner with your eyes shut, fingers firmly fixed in ears and clenching a bamboo skewer between your teeth.
     For the rest of us, I refer you to another classic war film, "In Which We Serve" from 1953, where that effete playboy Noel Coward plays a convincing hard-bitten seadog.  The thing that sticks in Conrad's mind is a scene at the quayside after the destroyer HMS Torrin delivers a load of evacuees from Dunkirk.  The soldiers line up, bedraggled, bloody, limping and halt, looking like human detritus.  Art?

A bunch of scruffs, in fact

     That chap at the front is the Company Sergeant Major, the senior non-commissioned officer in the company.  He barks the command "ATTENTION!" and they do.

Nobody even daring to think "Repeat please" here

     Then they form a column of threes and go marching off with stamping precision, because these are the Guards, and they may be wet, bloodstained and helmetless, but they are the Guards and they don't muck about.

Enough Of War, Let Us Have Cake!
Yes indeed.  Sadly we cannot watch television programmes about baking on a Wednesday evening any longer, since "Bake Off" is now dead.
     YES IT IS DEAD!  DEAD DEAD DEAD!  I will not accept any argument here.
     Pausing only to let my heart-rate to return to normal, I shall merely indicate that Monday was Halloween, where the lovely Anna endeavoured to make the work environment a little more horrid than usual.  Art?

Poison Ivy, before you ask

     Then we had to eat cake for charity.  As I say, a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it.  Art?

     You can just see my Halloween Pumpkin Cake peeking out of the small round tin.  The artisan's from O'Rourke's Windows who fitted our new double-glazing on Tuesday apparently loved it, too.