It's A Matter Of Time

Wow, That Noodle Soup Was Spicy

Your humble scribe is glad he didn't use the full soup sachet; feeling has only just returned to my lips.

     I realise this is coming perilously close to pictures of "What I Had For Lunch", but I just thought you'd appreciate a little personal detail.  Also, you never got a second prompt about BOOJUM! last night because I was off at a party, which I am allowed to do under exceptional circumstances.  No, there aren't any photos.  Yes, I have an honest face.

Oozing with honesty.  Or bile.  Perhaps both?

     Also, No!  This post is nothing to do with 'Doctor Who', which makes a brief return to television tonight.  One wonders, excitedly, that the reconstruction will be about tonight.

     No, what I wanted to look at today is the Mordor Tourist Board's promotion of "The Battlefield Tour Experience" - and yes, Conrad does like to take on difficult challenges.

     Now, I know what you're thinking - "Blimey!  It's one thing for hardy outside-loving types like hardened LARPers to go waltzing over the wastelands of Sauron's realm; how are you going to persuade pear-shaped middle-aged men to do the same?"

     You are possibly confusing the wasteland then with the wasteland now.  J R R Tolkein's imagining of Mordor, and that realm's latterly conquered borderlands of Ithilien not to mention Dagorlad, the Battle Plain, was inspired by his service in the First Unpleasantness and especially the Somme battlefields.  Art?

Thiepval: then

     There was a sincere worry at the time that the blasted landscape would never recover from the enormous tonnage of high explosive, not to mention various gasses, that had afflicted it.  However - Art?

Thiepval: now

     Very bucolic.  Thus, given time, even the ashy vistas beyond the Ered Lithui and the Ephel Duath might be environmentally rehabilitated.  As for actual battle sites, it would be wise to overlay the whole of Dagorlad with transparent inch-thick resin, as otherwise you might lose a tourist or two, you know, due to the - ah - evil supernatural forces in play there.

     Enough wibble!  What say we explore the mysteries of LITHIUM WAF - of the Finnish psyche?

     (I've already chained the motley on a treadmill with randomly-programmed changes of speed).

None of these are the motley.  They're human, for a start.

The Finns

Cue jokes about sharks.  I'm glad you can joke about sharks, because They Are Our Friends!

     Back to the land of Suomi.  The Finns, it is fair to say, have a reputation for being, if not quite truculent, then at least terse.

Aki Kaurismaki: Finnish film wunderkind

     Like Aki above.  When asked about his camera style, rather than go on about famous influences or effects he tried to create, or the limitations of the technology, instead he said "It's hard to push the camera around when you have a hangover."

     Oh, did I mention the Finns are extremely droll?  A joke of their's goes like this: Two hunters set out one morning to go hunting.  On their way into the forest they pass another hunter coming out of the forest, having finished his overnight hunt.  "Good morning," says one of the pair.  At the end of the day, it having been spent completely in silence, our duo return to civilisation, wherein the other hunter says - "I'm not going hunting with you again.  You talk too much."

     Enter Kimi Raikkonnen.  Art?

A.K.A. "Icemand" and "The Flying Finn"

     Kimi is a Formula 1 racing driver, and truly a son of his country.  He famously does not like being interviewed, and when he is, his replies tend to be short, pithy and frequently quite rude.  He gets away with this because he is an outstanding racing driver, whose favourite thing is - you may be ahead of me here - racing in cars.  The politics, celebrity, money and glamour of Formula 1 appear to interest him not one jot.

     He is not popular with the Singapore airport security staff, oddly enough.  This is because, one day, whilst at the airport, he decide to put himself through the luggage scanner ...

     Nor is he quite as icy-hearted as he pretends.  At the Spanish Grand Prix Raikkonnen suffered a crash after the first lap that put him out of the race.  A young fan of his was seen to be crying over this on television -

!

     Next thing he knows, he's standing next to Kimi, getting a Ferrari cap from the man.

     Those Finns, eh?

"But I Only Want To Help"

One of Conrad's habits on a day off is to sit at the kitchen table, getting through a couple of pints of tea, munching a few rounds of toast, reading his latest book or completing a cryptic crossword/codeword.

     Normally my constant companion is Edna the Wunderhund, who will sit patiently for twenty minutes if there is the prospect of getting a bit of crust.  Jenny the Cyborg Sentry cat is usually only present whilst there is food, which she tries to edge subtly closer to, only being dissuaded by a relocation to Outdoors.  Art?

Jenny in attendance

     I'm not sure what she was up to here: note the absence of buttered toast, and my tea is made the way it ought to be, absent milk or sugar, so it can't be that.  Your modest artisan reckons that she detected the least popular place for her to be would be on top of my books and was merely waiting until my back was turned.

     So I moved.

     Yes, I realise this is not exactly news, per se; it does, though, give you a more rounded picture of Conrad.*

Finally -

I think it's conventional at the beginning of a New Year to do a long, maudlin look at 2018, so we here at BOOJUM! are going to completely ignore the past and look to the future, that is, what Conrad is looking forward to in 2019.

     "The Expanse" Season 4.  That's what I'm looking forward to.  They'd better already be filming it or My Goodness! there will be trouble.

Trouble spelt "T-rubble"

*  Which is a rather ambiguous thing to have.