More Of Mars

In The Sense Of War

Rather than astronomy.  And once again, nothing to do with chocolate.

     Here a seasonal aside.  Three of my compatriots at work, an Italian, a Pole and a Latvian, all describe the British Easter-time obsession with chocolate eggs as bizarre and (of course!) foreign.  Conrad is not big on chocolate and can thus ignore the average Easter egg quite easily, although he does miss the incredibly cloyingly wonderfully sickly sweet sugary goodness of a Creme egg <pauses to wipe drool from chin>.*

I hope you appreciate this image, because it's TORMENTING me.*

     Where was I?  Oh yes, "The Battle of Britain" film.  The featurette about the making of the film is jolly interesting, and so is the one about going for accuracy in the skies - we may come back to that latter.  Okay, cast yer glazzies across this image.  Art?

     A scene of utter devastation as the Luftwaffe rains down bombs upon London - or so you are supposed to think.  In fact this was part of London's East End slum housing, which the Greater London Council were going to demolish to make way for squeaky-clean housing blocks and deck-access housing.  Getting wind of this, TBOB's production team obtained permission to get in there first and do some artistic demolition of their own.  Art?

Real fires

     This reflects filming done in 'The Bridge At Remagen', where a Czech town was about to be demolished to make way for an open-cast mine; the Czech authorities were quite happy for Hollywood to blow up or burn down swathes of the place - saved them a job later!

Shoreditch: blitzed by bulldozers not bombs

     And I'm still missing those Creme Eggs, thanks for asking.

     Okay, enough blather about urban regeneration, time to move on and hurl the motley headlong into a cement mixer!**

Herein A Pun

Perhaps.  Conrad - and hopefully yourselves - is resigned to the fact that his mind does not work the same way as humans Hom. Sap. you lot out there. Whether this is a good thing or not is a matter of perspective.

     So!  I've been staring at this one for many months now.  It may just be me, but the juxtaposition struck me as interesting and possibly amusing.  Art?

     At this range the colour contrast is greater than at normal viewing distance, from where it reads, because we normally read from left to right, "IRON CAPTAIN" and "MAN <watermelonwatermelon>AMERICA".  That latter might well be "MAN OF AMERICA" mightn't it?  Yes, it might.  Don't argue, it's my blog.

MINE!

     Not sure if they'd have much mileage as superheroes.  "Iron Captain" sounds more like a villain, to be honest, one who could be overcome by rust, too.  Don't come back with "Ooh, ooh, he could oil himself to combat oxidation!" because then he'd be "WELL-OILED IRON CAPTAIN" - I did a theme several years ago why it is a SPECTACULARLY bad idea for anyone with superpowers to get drunk.

Oh dear.  Please, nobody provoke him.

     Whereas "Man of America" sounds dull.  I mean, what makes him different from 150 million other South Canadians?

The Apricot That Was Not Hot

Although it was.  Sorry if this is confusing, because if you want common sense and logic and a linear train of thought, then you are most definitely in the wrong place.

     Here an aside.  I remember seeing a poster for a couple of bands playing The Hunting Lodge in Manchester several decades ago, which read "Stockholm Beach" and "Monsters Red".  Well, I went to see them play.  It turned out that they were getting extremely fed up about the audience asking when Stockholm Beach were playing, because the two bands were Stockholm Monsters and Beach Red.

Oh well.

     Back to the apricots.  I selected a recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook, that being "Apricot Crunchies".  Things were not going well from the off.  I soaked the apricots, dates and sultanas, as I usually do, only to find that the recipe requires one to soak them in orange juice, which I did as well.  The ingredients did not 'rub in' properly and result in a crumby mixture; they ended up in a single great big lump.  When the whole thing came out of the oven I let it cool in the tin overnight, meaning the end result was far too soggy.  Art?

     Now you know why they weren't hot.  So, I put them back in the oven, upside down, for another half an hour.  They are a lot firmer and drier now, although looking rather frazzled around the edges - Gas Mark 5 which is why they were hot - but simply not good enough to take into work.  I can't eat them all myself,* so Degsy is going to have to step forward.

     Eating cake.  A dirty job, but someone's got to do it.

Don't forget - sharks are our friends!  Because you can rely on them to eat all the KILLER EELS!

Friendly shark say 'hello!'

*  Thank you, diabetes.  THANK YOU SO MUCH!

**  Absent cement.