It Am - Ham

Yes That Is A Deliberate Grammatical Error!
I am shocked - shocked! - that you would ever consider Conrad committing craven confoundings of concatenations - you know, spelling.  "It Is - Ham" really doesn't work, however correct it might be, so I went with the above.
     Well, I expect you were anticipating a diversion to something along the lines of "Ham, son of Zebulon, son of Nahum, who begat Shadrac" in a Biblical reference.
     No, I mean ham as in the meat.  Art?

With teaspoon for scale

     This sizeable slab of preserved ham turned up at the Mansion on Christmas Day, and despite being gone at repeatedly since then, simply does not seem to have decreased in size.  It's so robust you can only eat slivers at a time.  Well, when it comes to food Conrad is never loath to take up a challenge, so we'll see whether it gets finished before it goes rotten or not.  At which point it will probably get a remedial scrape and will continue to get et*.

"Elementary"
Conrad likes this programme for the language that Sherlock uses.  If you've read ten thousand books, why not put the vocabulary acquired to use? as I constantly inform people as they ask "Er - what?" when I use "elide" in a sentence.  Here are some of the ones that I picked out:  "Apprised", "Sanctum Sanctorum", "Incarcerated", Sophistry", "Levity", "Omniscient".

Title montage

     I was also curious about the title sequence, wondering who did it and how.  I believe our South Canadian cousins would call this a "Rube Goldberg" contraption, which we here on the proper side of the Pond would use the term "Heath Robinson" contraption.  Well, you can read the whole story here:

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/elementary/

     I'm not going to describe it here as there's far too much visual reference involved.  Suffice it to say that the main driving force is BRITISH!  Raise the flag and all that.

Heath or Rube?  Only you can tell!

     Actually I see potential in both artists so I'm going to stop right there and return to the subject later on.  Maybe tomorrow, if you're good.

British Somaliland
Ah, hearkening back to the days of Empire! <Cue "God Save The King" and a trumpet fanfare> because you're going to need a little background before we move on.  This part of the East African coast was a protectorate of Britain from 1888, meaning that we kind of occupied it whilst not occupying it completely, guaranteeing it's borders and protection from other hostile powers**.

Clarification

     As you can see it is bordered by Italian Somaliland, which becomes an issue during the Second Unpleasantness, when Italy was not our friend, yet not one during the First Unpleasantness, when the Italians were our friends.

Italian architecture in Somalia, really

     A low-level rebellion had been running in British Somaliland, led by Sayyid Hassan, dubbed "The Mad Mullah" by the British, although it is not clear if this is a reference to his mental state or whether he was fuelled by Frothing Nitric Ire.  Matters had become more serious in the run-up to the First Unpleasantness, which is where we arrive in the person of -

Adrian Carton De Wiart
Here an aside.  Yes, it is a bit early in a post to have an aside, but once again - whose blog is it?  Thank you.  May I proceed?  Thank you again***!
     I recall a comic strip from a "Victor" annual that featured villains who dubbed themselves the "Enemies of Britain", displaying a lack of creativity either in common villainy or the sub-editor.  Conrad suspects these villains had never heard of soldiers like ACDW, Brigadier Jock Campbell or Mad Jack Churchill, or they'd have taken up flower-arranging in lieu of skullduggery.

Jovial Jock Campbell VC

     Anyway, our dashing hero was sent to British Somaliland, to become part of the Somaliland Camel Corps, which sounds very Gilbert and Sullivan.  Whilst there he took part in an assault on a fort at Simbiris, where he was shot twice in the face, losing an eye, which has considerably less appeal than light opera.

Ol' Adrian when he was young Adrian, and with two eyes

     Bear in mind he'd already been wounded twice in the Boer War, so he seems to have been both a bit of human target, and indestructible.  A lesser man might have bowed out of uniform, but we are talking Adrian Carton De Wiart here!
     After recuperation he went right back into action on the Western Front.  Frankly, to stop this chap you'd need all nine Nazgul at once.
     We shall be coming back to Ol' Adrian, oh yes indeed.

I dare not put any silly caption under that steely gaze ...

* Yes, yes, another deliberate mis-spelling.  Live with it, because it's hilarious.
** That is, France.  This counts as history, not politics, as it's ages ago.
*** This is irony.