Desperation For Inspiration

Okay, Muse - Right Here On My Head!
Conrad is sitting in his easy chair, surrounded by dismantled models of nuclear warheads and empty jam-jars - keep that a secret, I'm not supposed to be eating sugar - after waiting for Terpsichore (one of the Muses) to help me out here.  She seems to be preoccupied with her tax returns, as here Conrad sits, uninspired.

Also uninspired

     The problem with that is that, uninspired, I tend to fall asleep, as used to happen at the weekly staff meeting when I worked at Connexions.  Without fail, after 30 minutes I'd be dozing off, since my attention had not been grabbed.  This led to my seat being carefully sited out of the manager's eyeline -
     But none of this has anything to do with LITHIUM WAFER BATTERY DESIGN!  Nor should it, since we're not going to be saying the least thing about said topic.

Behold the Dark Tower

     One of the reasons your modest artisan is feeling a touch tender tonight is the structure above, wherein I work (or attempt to simulate the appearance of same) on the 17th floor.  That's two down from the top there.  Each floor has a double flight of stairs, meaning that when the fire drill evacuation came into force, I had to hobble down 34 flights of stairs.  
      Ouch.
     Since it had quite taken it out of me, your modest artisan sat down on a convenient cable ducting box -

Similar

      - which caused a mild panic amongst the assembled throng.  
     "Where is Rob?*" they worried.  "Where!"
     Forsooth, am I not six feet plus in height, with a distinctive thatch of snowy hair, and thus hard to miss on level ground?  Well, yes, except that sitting on the above cable duct had lowered me beneath common comprehension.  Still, flattering that people missed me.**
    Thankfully, since I am typing these lines the morning after, and a dull drear morning it is, with a significant proportion of the Atlantic falling from the skies of Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell, yesterday was cold and bright, and I had my bag full of crosswords and codewords to keep me happy.

The Rainy City***

     Okay, time to wrap the motley in tin-foil and sent it out into the thunderstorm!  Even if there's no lightning it may still get hypothermia!
     Right, there will now be a short pause as I go to load up on Darjeeling and toast.

Conrad Is ANGRY!
Not that it takes much, does it?  My inner container of Frothing Nitric Ire is ever ready to spill o'er at the slightest mental nudge, or even none at all.  For example, this morning on the way to work, the wretched First Bus velocipede ahead of my bus broke down.

First Bus stated "There was a slight technical problem"

     This meant an influx of extra passengers onto an already crowded bus, and an extra delay, causing Conrad to sit and seethe silently.  O how I seethed!
     Then, to add salt and insult to the festering injury, the driver decided that he would nobly stop and cram more passengers onto the bus, which bulged at the rivets.
     "Why are you getting on a bus only two stops from the City Centre?!" I seethed.  "Walk!  The exercise will do you good!  You're making me late!  Stop having a long philosophical discourse with the driver about the human condition!"
     In fact we were only 5 minutes later than normal.  Still, I do like to exercise my temper every so often.       Anyway, that has little to nothing to do with what caught eye over on the BBC's website.  Art?

An FV432

     This, gentle reader, and as the Beeb recognises, is an FV432 armoured personnel carrier.  Locals in Didbury refer to it as "The tank", presumably because it has tracks and is armoured.

IT IS NOT A TANK!

 

     It is not even derived from a tank.  Essentially it is a big metal box on tracks, which thereby allowed it to keep up with the real tanks it was intended to accompany, and the armour protected the delicate squashy Hom. Sap. within.  A "Battle Taxi" as some have dubbed it.  And, once again, what is it not?

 

IT IS NOT A TANK!

 

     Conrad: educating the world one factoid at a time.

Proper TANK!

   
Unfair To Eric Arthur Blair
Better known to many of you as "George Orwell", celebrated author of "The Decline of the English Murder" and "Burmese Days".^  The Beeb, that font of all that's fit to be writ, has an article about Ol' Eric's 1945 essay on British Food being acknowledged as very good - but not sufficiently pandering to Continental tastes.
     EXCUSE ME!  (I say, I do seem to be shouting rather a lot today, don't I?)  We, Perfidious Albion, had just helped free Europe from beneath the Teuton jackboot.  I think we could have been granted a little leeway in the matter of taste.

Gorge Orwell

     To think, the author of "Keep The Aspidistra Frying" , "Fromage to Catalonia" and "Down and Trout in Paris and London", should be arrogantly dismissed for his thoughts on marmalade and pickles.  Oh, and cauliflowers.
     The British Council, who rejected the original essay - the dirty curs! - have now relented and published it in full.  It includes a recipe for making Seville marmalade that contains so much sugar I felt a diabetic coma coming on.  Art?

 
                                Orange                                                     Seville - no, hang on -
    
 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47155257

     That above is a link to the article itself, since I don't want to be accused of just padding my word count by adding various extracts.  Even if we are nearly at the ton (my inventive term for 1,000 words).

     In fact we are so close that this ought to push us over the ton, if not the edge, as we were pretty close to it in the first place ...

Hmmmm ...

*  My Sunday best name, not - NOT! - to be mentioned beyond these environs.
**  Almost certainly down to a fondness for cake on their parts.
***  Not exactly a badge of honour, yet extremely accurate.
^  And there was something about animals and a particular year, I recall