Tart The Revolution Without Me!

I'm Going To Have To Say This Once Again, Aren't I?
NO!  That is not a typo.  I have typed out exactly what I wanted to type.
     Explaining it might take a bit longer, however.  You know how tangential, ephemeral and just plain strained the connections between concepts, titles and meanings in BOOJUM! can be, when they're not interspersed with non sequiteurs.



                                                      Nine secateurs.  Sorry.  Couldn't resist.

     Like yesterday, when your humble scribe pointed out that the Icelandic for Iceland is "Island", which is appropriate, because Iceland is an island.  They also gave the England football team a right shoeing at the 2014 World Cup, which was hilarious.  One day, if we're lucky, Siggur Ros will write a song about it.

Now a three-piece

     Anyway, I wanted to go back and scrutinise that hideous childhood nursery rhyme which has twisted the minds and morals of millions of children (yes, that IS a bad thing!) which we took a swing at yesterday - 

SING A SONG OF SIXPENCE!

     If I had my way, it's be "SICKS-PENCE".  If you know the rhyme, then you know it concerns an act of animal cruelty, baking live blackbirds in a pie - hence the "Tart" of today's title.  Let us begin!

"The king was in his counting house, counting out his money"

     Ah, the vile monarchy, rolling in wealth!  You see, this particular king doesn't even trust his Exchequer to do the counting; O no, he has to get his hot sweaty hands on all the gold coins extorted from the blood of the toiling peasantry -

The king was very happy

"The queen was in the parlour, eating bread and honey"

     O Rly?  There the starving peasantry is, having to do with a pocketful of rye, and here madame is, gorging herself on doubtless the very whitest of bread, washed down with honey.  Go on, rub the toiling masses' noses in it, why don't you!

"The maid was in the garden, hanging out the clothes"

     I notice she's not dining on honey, is she?  Also note how these vile parasites keep their overheads low by having only one maid - pay attention to that article "the", and no tumble-drier either, the swines!  Bet she doesn't get overtime or unsociable hours pay either.

"When down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose."

     And to think they recited this stuff to small children - the horror!  The horror!

"Revenge!  Sweet revenge!"

     As ever, it is the proletariat masses who end up getting the short end of the stick here - the king is safe in his counting house and that greedy cow the queen is still gorging herself in the parlour.
     ENOUGH!  ENOUGH I SAY!
     The uprising begins after closing time.*

This Will All Make Sense Once You've Read Facebook
I believe that the game of golf is popular out there, with people who like that sort of thing.  Can't see the attraction myself, but in order to try and entice the passing ardent fan, here goes - Art?


I Spake Of Cake
I didn't actually, but now I have, so that's alright.  Since I got half a pound of blueberries going cheap, the inevitable corollary is that I have to make Sour Cream and Blueberry Loaf.  Art?

Tah-dah!

     It turned out well again, nicely risen and with good crumb, and as you can see, the blueberries didn't all sink to the bottom.
     The real issue is that, for the first time in an age, I used my Big Food Processor with the plastic beater insert to make the batter.  Art? 

    The small Kenwood, which uses paddles, is very problematic as stiff cake batters climb up the paddles and make the whole process verrrry awkward.  Not so with Ol' Biggie; in fact the mixing process was so fast I had the batter ready well before the oven was at temperature.
    A small anecdote, but mine own. 

Going Swimmingly
Cast your mind (if you have one) back to the heady days of the Fifties, when Atomic Energy Was Our Friend, and when Perfidious Albion was cranking out Uranium and Plutonium as fast as possible to put into bombs and missiles, because By Golly! those foreign devils the Sinisters Were Not Our Friends.  Thus Health and Safety was a tad <ahem> more honoured in the breach than practice.
     Enter Sellafield.  Picturesque Sellafield!  Home to some of the most radioactively contaminated environs on earth (see above paragraph).  

Sellafield from a safe distance

     You see, there are special 'ponds' which house spent fuel rods, as well as miscellaneous bits of radioactive debris, which have been chucked in there over the decades (see first paragraph), and this junk needs to be removed, whilst leaving the water in place.  Here's a pretty pond picture - Art?

No!  <sigh> try again - 

     A storage pond:

Beautiful.  BUT DEADLY!

     The blue comes from Cerenkov radiation, I believe.  The water has to be kept in place to cool the spent fuel containers, so how do you get rid of the bits on the bottom?

That's one way

     However, the ponds are over six yards deep, so you can't fish the smaller pieces out with a net, and cranes are too unwieldy, so the answer is - 

A robot!

     This little chap is guided by remote control to dive down and collect radioactive cruddy bits on the bottom (to use technical language).  So, more "Awe!" than "Awww!" folks.  This is an interesing subject, I'm sure we'll come back to it.**

Finally - 
Thanks to the Great British Summer having come back into force with a vengeance, we ought to give a vote of thanks to the humble gutter, because where else would all that rain go?

Ta very much!

     I've already seen them in action this morning, after rashly banging on about how it wasn't raining ...



*  Yeah, yeah, I nicked that from Half Man Half Biscuit.  So sue me.
**  Threat?  Promise?  Only you can tell!