Conrad: Your Tasty Host

At Least I Presume I Am
For why else would the Coincidence Hydra take such great delight in sinking it's fangs into my tender nethers again - and again?
     I refer to Friday, when Your Humble Scribe was sojourning at a supermarket, the name of which shall remain unspoken, in case anyone from the Head Office happens to ever read this.  There I was, standing with a clipboard near the entrance, talking to Andy (one of the managers), no doubt looking all official and stuff thanks to said clipboard and name badge -

Not the real thing
(For that would give too much away)

     Here an aside.  I did request a name badge when I started with my EAE*, but they only have one's first name upon them, so there may be another "Robert" out there whose life is incomplete thanks to a lack of name-badge.  Tough, chum: I got there first. 
     Anyway, there I was, chatting sociably about the technical issues that come with pen pushing and keyboard tapping, when another gentleman came up and enquired if he knew me, and was I <Your Humble Scribe's Real Name In Full>?
     Indeed I was, and he turned out to be my old manager, Peter, hailing from Better Choices/Connexions/North Manchester Careers Office, whom I had not seen for a decade at least.

My very old haunts

     We nattered for a minute or two, and Peter turns out to be involved with steam trains in the North West -

GO AWAY!  MENTIONING A STEAM TRAIN DOES NOT ENTITLE YOU!

     Damn 4-6-2 locomotives!  Think they can butt in at any time.
     But wait!  For a few hours later, where was I but attending the Oldham Beer Festival, which Art can illustrate for us -

     Who do I bump into but the event's Glasses Manager, Viv - another old colleague first encountered at North Manchester Careers Office, unseen this past decade or so, and who is also interested in steam trains.  She, like Peter, is now retired and thus, of course, busier than she ever was when working.
     Twice in one day.  The universe is obviously trying to tell me something.  Wonder what it is?
     Time to sit the motley down and give it a nice cream tea lunch (keeping it uncertain).

Motley mind-games

Shall We Have More Of Barca?
Yes we shall, it was very much a rhetorical question.  If you're fed up with pictures of that fair city, then you are tired of life, and a murrain upon thee.**     

      This is a picture of somewhere that I took for some reason and now cannot remember what it is, nor why.  But it looks impressive enough, hmmm?
     

      This one I do remember - it's an old bull-ring, now repurposed into a great big shopping mall, after they stopped bull-fighting in Catalonia.  Most impressive is that they raised the whole thing twelve feet from it's original foundations.  You're not impressed?  Well, I was, which is what counts.

Darling Daughter doing cooking

     You may have seen this one on Facebook already: Sal at work cooking up part of what we'd acquired at the supermarket.  Not part of Catalonian culture, perhaps, but an insight into a moment of domestic tranquility, nicht war?

      

      This the start of Las Ramblas, which is extremely touristy.  Positively hotching with tourists, indeed, with a rather curious rolling pavement.  It was the only place we could find that sold Churros, or Xurros - that might be the Catalan version - and here's another one you might have seen on Facebook.

     Sal clutching her much-prized churros.  I had one.  They are fried pastries coated with sugar, so I was pushing the boat dangerously far out even having a single one.  I am still here, however.***  

     What next?  

      

     Back to the bus tour!  That's a landmark designed by Roy Lichtenstein.  Which you can't see very clearly, though if I were showing it to you on the Devil's Digital Diversion I could enlarge it for you.  Hang on -

Well, there you are.

     At the entrance to Port Vell, and ghastly it is, too.  Why did they import this monstrosity when they had perfectly capable Catalonian artists (Miro and Picasso I'm looking at you) who could have created a native monstrosity.

     Right, I am going to pause here as I need to take a constitutional into Royton, because we're low on bread, the stuff that's the staff of life, necessary if I'm going to finish off that mushroom pate.

See you later!


*  Enormous Anonymous Employer
**  Shakespearean insult, don't you know.
***  Good news?  Bad news?  Only you ca- no, of course it's good news.