Send My Giro To Cairo -

On Second Thoughts, Perhaps Not
Since there is more than one such named establishment on the face of the planet.  We shall come back to that.
     Perhaps an explanation of that title is necessary.  It's the chorus from a song by The Golinski Brothers, a post-punk band from Brighton, waaaaaaaaay back in 1978.  I still remember Sir John Peel playing it, and I had toast for breakfast yesterday, so Yah Boo Sucks! to those who say my memory is going.
     (mind you, I have toast for breakfast every day, so perhaps that's not the salutary example it might have been).

The dread UB40 form
(First one to mention the band will be EXTERMINATED)

     Okay, if you were unemployed back in the day, you took the form above to the Job Centre, signed to say that you'd been looking for work, hadn't done any and Hey Pesto! a giro cheque for not enough would arrive in the post.  Though I doubt the Department for Work and Pensions would send one abroad for you.
     There you go, a thumbnail sketch of life in the Ice-rink of Eden a generation ago.
     Art!

Charles takes his - er - beard - yeah, his beard, right? - and hair for a walk.

     This is Charles Dickens, of course.  People, Charles:  Charles, people.  Charmed, I'm sure.  As already mentioned in these pages, your humble scribe is currently reading that b****y great brick of a book "Martin Chuzzlewit".  I did pass remark at the office that it was entertaining and amusing, but O my!  was it slow.  It took quite 400 pages for us to discover that Martin has fallen out with his uncle, that Mister Pecksniff is an hideous hypocrite, and Montague Tigg is a rascal who will come to a bad end.
     Now, however, Martin and his compatriot Mark are deep in the depths of the South Canadian South and things are moving along entertainingly.  Art?

What on Earth?  "Martin Chuzzlewit BBC" brings this up?

     <sighs, absent-mindedly Tazers Art and carries on>

"The City of Eden"

     Less a city and more a despoiled swampy morass, rife with hideous maladies, floods, dead people and rotting cabins.  
     Conrad was fascinated that this leprous cancer upon the land was based on a real place:  Cairo, Illinois.


     So you see, you might be perched atop a pyramid, expecting the pauper's ransom of your giro to arrive and keep you in bottled water and tabbouleh, when in fact it's sitting unclaimed in that town above.
     There is more to this story, which I might tell you tomorrow.**
     Okay, motley, you sit tied into the passenger seat and we'll get this truck with square manhole covers for wheels up to 60!**

Conrad:  Officially A Terrible Person
Give me some credit for being candid, can't you?  
     Conrad generally avoids computer games, since, alongside procrastination, they are the biggest waste of time going.  However, that mention of 'special' cars above did trigger a memory of playing one of Darling Daughter's games when she was young.  Something about The Simpsons, I recall, involving driving.  Art?

Thus

     What tickled your modest artisan's sense of humour was that you could deliberately crash Homer's car.  He survived unscathed - he is incredibly dense, after all - but his car was utterly ruined.  Art?

CAUTION!  This vehicle is unlikely to pass it's MOT

     You could still drive it, though, which may have been a glitch or intentional; very slowly indeed, barely controllably and with a ghastly metallic screeching as it wobbled along on it's bare rims.  There.  I am laughing even now at the recollection.
     Conrad:  always crashing in the same car.***

Your Humble Scribe Is - Apprehensive
As you should surely know by now, BOOJUM! avoid Politics, Religion and Current Affairs, as there is nothing more likely to alienate your audience than a heated harangue.  Of course, if we think we can get away with a few cheap gibes - we will (I refer you to the title of the previous item).

                                            Gyves.  Close enough
     Thus I now dip my long, deformed yet impressively-taloned toes in the waters of both Current Affairs and Politics, for Conrad is referring to the recent ordure-stirring statements made about Venezuela by the South Canadian's National Security Advisor, John Bolton. 
     Because guess who he greatly resembles? 
     Me. 
     Please note, he looks like me, not the other way around.  Art?

                                            John Bolton                            Conrad
     What concerns me is that some Social Justice Warrior on the bus will haul off and deliver an uppercut to the jaw, along with the lines of "Take that, you warmongering cur!".  That the South Canadian NSA chap would be travelling on the public transport into Oldham might not give them pause for thought.

"Tattoo"
I looked up the answer to yesterday's Cryptic Crossword clue, that is "Prickly subject that regularly gets beaten (6)" and you have to tip the cap to the compiling chap, that's a pretty good answer.  For those of you not familiar, a tattoo is a permanently inked design laid upon the human skin, which Conrad is never going to get, as he is a massive coward when it comes to pain and suffering, all the more so when it concerns himself.

You do realise you're going to have that for the rest of your life?

     The other sense is akin to that of the Edinburgh Tattoo, wherein military teams from across the Commonwealth perform drills of consummate skill, and there are oodles of bagpipes.  Art?

ONE MILLION BAGPIPES!

     The derivation is from the phrase "Tap to", meaning that innkeepers and tavern owners had to turn off their taps and stop serving their thirsty military customers.  To emphasise this and broadcast to the largest possible audience, and so they couldn't claim lack of hearing as an excuse for continuing to guzzle beer, a drummer would parade the streets, rattling out a tarradiddle or two.  It has rather snowballed, hasn't it?


We have once again gone over the ton, at which point your humble scribe is going to abandon desk and head for the canteen for some of that food you we humans so badly need.

*  When I say "might" I mean "They will have to destroy the Internet, amputate my arms and sink Britain to stop me."
**  'Mythbusters' tried this and - surprise surprise, it actually ran.  Not well, but it ran.
***  David Bowie reference for you there.