A Touch Of Whimsy

Okay, I Confess
There is a perfectly sound and rational reason why I have a couple of W84 thermonuclear warheads at the bottom of - oh, you weren't calling about them?  I do apologise, officer.
     Okay, let me instantly retract that previous statement and instead admit that BOOJUM! is, indeed, whimsical.
     This ought to come as no great surprise if you have been reading regularly - you HAVE been reading regularly, haven't you, because otherwise there will be consequences - as the blog might very well be compared to whimsy in the same way that the Sun can be said to be both big and hot.  So is Conrad.

Conrad

     Er - that reads a little ambiguously.  Let me - you have been a regular reader, haven't you? for only that way will your descendants avoid being merely mobile organ banks - let me rephrase that.  Conrad is big, yes, and hot - because what flows in his veins is lava and piri-piri sauce not blood - rather than being Conventionally Attractive.  Although if any of you ladies out there* ...

The Sun

A Touch Of Wimsey
Lord Peter Wimsey, to be precise.  Whose motto is "As my whimsy takes me".  This aristocratic sleuth is the creation of Dorothy Sayers, and Conrad first came across him in "Murder Must Advertise", where he goes undercover at an advertising agency.  Otherwise the title wouldn't make sense, would it?  The peculiar thing is that he speaks in exactly the same way that Conrad does, which is quite unsettling to come across, if you use long obscure words and a lot of RAF slang in your quotidian conversations.

She Looks Like Butter Wouldn't Melt
I refer, of course, to that scurrying bundle of sagacity, Edna.  We'd better have an illustration.  Art?

 There is a strict limit to the level of invective that your humble hack can deploy against the Wunderhund, as she is Wonder Wifey's surrogate infant.  Being a female dog she can technically be called a "bitch", but 'technically' rather withers and dies in the face of Wonder Wifey's ferocious glaring.
     So.  Saturday afternoon and Conrad is dogsitting, eating a pair of baguettes when he decides that two would be greedy and he'll save the corned-beef one for later.  I wrapped it in paper towels, prefatory to putting it in the fridge, then left it sitting proudly on it's plate on the coffee table.  Had to go check blog traffic, you see.
     Of course, it's never that straightforward, and five minutes later I realised that the ceramic 'clunk' from the lounge did not bode well.

Nearly!

      When I strode into the lounge Edna slunk past me, and she looked the very definition of "hangdog" - tail and ears both down.  Because she'd gotten up onto the coffee table, ripped the paper towel off the baguette, then had a good gnaw at the corned beef sticking out of the bread**.

     It's a good job I didn't expect any retribution, as WW merely thought it hilarious.
     "You were out of the room," she explained.  "Which makes your food fair game."
     Oh well.

Bemused By BMEWS 

"Ballistic Missile Early Warning System" as I'm sure you remember.  Implemented from the late Fifties onwards, the electro-mechanical equipment might be primitive compared to today's anti-matter bombs and relatavistic missiles *** things, yet could be pretty complicated for all that.  Art?

     You can't read the whole thing as it would be the size of a bedsheet, yet I think I get my point across pretty well.

Exciting BECAUSE Dangerous!
You will often see Conrad holding forth on these pages about British weather, and how it is damp, cold and unpleasant.  Nasty enough to chill the spirits.  Our summer <Mister Hand intervenes to prevent a hundred word screed that we've all heard before>
     Well, get this:

The Oro, the oro ...

     This is the Oroville Dam spillway in full sluice, joined by the emergency spillway, too.  That river below is normally a placid blue, so you can tell it's been stirred up.  And this is across the Atlantic, near Sacramento, in South Canada.  Dramatic stuff, eh?  There is a real risk of the spillway collapsing and allowing a miniature tidal wave to sweep downriver, so 180,000 people have been evacuated out of harms way.
     As I said, this is riveting because it's so horribly dangerous.  Whereas here in the Pond -

DANGER!  DANGER!  EXTREME - ah who am I kidding.

Oh, "Quotidian"?  It means "Daily".

*  Who have been reading regularly, right?
**  Don't worry, it still tasted fine for breakfast next day
***  Ignore this bit.  A slight slip of the fingers.  Nothing to see here, NATO.