When You Don't Give A Tuck

Here We Need To Explain English Slang
For Lo!  there are those unfortunates out yonder who do not dwell within the boundaries of this scep - excuse me, This Sceptred Isle.*
     "Tuck" is our local argot for "Food", usually of the snack or convenience variety, and a "Tuck Shop" is a commercial entity, frequently informal in nature, that vends said edible commodities.
     Let us now relocate to the Dark Tower, that forbidding vertical edifice wherein I ply my trade -
     - I say, do you think I've been overdoing it with the Dickens novels?  I seem to be coming out all formal and shizzle.  Art?

Watch it loom: the Tower of DOOM!**

     The employer I work for, whom shall remain nameless, except it doesn't rhyme with one of the gods of Persian legend,*** has an official Tuck Shop on the 16th Floor.  They publicise what they sell on e-mails to 4 floors of their fellow employees.
     This sounds fairly straightforward, right?
     How wrong you are.
     CJ and Frances, my fellow-workers on the 17th Floor, decided to follow in the footsteps of the late lamented Gary (Our Mighty Leader) and set up a Tuck Shop of their own, with the difference that they would retail a far larger selection of goods than Gary ever dreamed of.
     And they did.  Their wares now cover the tops of two cabinets, with Post-it notes detailing prices for items, and a stern advisory of "No I.O.U.'s" as this is something the Official Tuck Shop suffers from.

Like this but much, much bigger.

     There were e-mails sent around that informed staff of where they could find this array of (probably very unhealthy yet delicious) food, the profits of which would be going to charity.  Inevitably the Official Tuck Shop management came to spy and assess, which is fair enough because that's what CJ and Frances had done themselves to the Official Tuck Shop.  Know your enemy, as they said.  Market intelligence, I believe it's called.
     Enter Annette, yet another colleague taking part in this hideously politicised retail drama.  She was after plain salted crisps, and there weren't any, as the Unofficial Tuck Shop had run out.

Starch fried in fat and coated in salt - what's not to like!

     Although they hadn't: there were crisps such as the above available, but they were locked away and a communication breakdown^ meant that CJ, whom had communicated this stock deficit to Annette, didn't know this.
     Annette, not a lady to be trifled with at the best of times, waxed wrathful.  It's a good job there were no colleagues within reach of sharp things sitting alongside her, or they'd have been sliced and diced.  No, steam wasn't coming out of her ears: flames were.
     The upshot is that Annette has now established her own Splinter Unofficial Tuck Shop, which principally retails ready salted crisps, so that she is never denied this most basic of staple foodstuffs.
     CJ and Frances, meanwhile, look upon your modest artisan's provision of free cake with a great deal of suspicion and dislike, as it is competing with their entrepreneurial activities.  I have to keep an eye open when going downstairs, ensure I don't leave drinks unattended, and only eat food I've prepa - no, hang on, that was from "The Thing", wasn't it?  Sorry, do carry on.

"A net was fished-in"

     Now, do you understand my hollow laughter when that word "straighforward" came up?
     Okay, time to put the motley on a tricycle and tow it across the assault course behind a Challenger tank!

"Thanks for the shout-out, Conrad - what the - BEHIND YOU!"

Dimity
<ahem> word that popped into my head this morning, even as I surfaced from sleep.  At first I wondered if it referred to a variety of sweet, before I realised that the sweet was "Divinity" - I think, it's been a while since I went perusing sweet recipes THANK YOU SO MUCH DIABETES - so what on earth could "Dimity" be?
     Since my trusty Collins Concise was to hand, I found out that it's a type of fabric. 
                                                                          Thus                                                                                       
    By default it is white, has a corded structure, and is nowadays made of cotton; it tends to be used for linen or curtains.  Now, since your humble scribe has absolutely no interest in either fashion or fabrics, the question stands as to - why oh why did it pop up in my brain?
     Answers on a postcard please.

I Was Right (As Always)
Although the cynics amongst you will be conjecturing that, since I type all this scrivel, I would only ever post items when I am incontrovertibly right, correct and have the answer.  True enough.  Once again, whose blog is it?
     <there will now be a short break as I get some toast and coffee ready>
     Behold Divinity!

No theological jokes, please

     Made from egg white, syrup and sugar.  I may have a recipe for it somewhere; I could <risk my life and well-being by defying CJ and Frances and> make some for my work colleagues.  Imagine if Conrad was successful and got requests for a repeat performance - I would indeed then be a Master of Divinity!

"Torino"
Ah me.  More bleating about the Cryptic Crosswords and the clue for this one had something about an Italian city, which, given crossword clues, might very well not be an Italian city.  Tampa, perhaps?  All I had was the letter "T".  I can't be more specific as I've already binned the paper.  But the pain lingers on.
     So, Torino the answer.  Pardon me for not being a walking atlas on the metropolii of the Italian peninsula.
     Bah!

Tampa.  NO!   - sorry, Torino.  Torino.

  Finally -
Because we need a short filler article, say hello to my whacking enormous friend, HMS "Dreadnought".  Art?

Thus

Sic

     This beauty rolled down the slipway in 1906, and was the first all-big-gun battleship propelled by steam turbines, which made her a rather fast lady, with a knockout punch to boot.  She was so advanced, in fact, that she instantly made all other battleships obsolete overnight, meaning that anyone who was anyone in the Great Powers had to start building their battlefleets from scratch in an hideously expensive process (Wilhemine Germany, we are looking piercingly at you).

And with that, we are done.




 *  Conrad sheds a tear for you.
**  Actually more shopping than Doom.
*** Ahura-Mazda
^  Led Zeppelin reference for you there.