Conrad Is ANGRIER!

I Can Guess What You're Thinking -
Just by being clever, no need to 'long-term borrow*' that Telepathy Helmet prototype as invented by DARPA:  "Conrad's default state is angry - what has irked the old snowy-plumed bird so, this time?"
     How long do you have?
     Okay, I am currently watching "Agatha Christie's Poirot", because watching and reading murder mysteries is de rigeur when you become middle aged (something in the genes, I think).  

" - and this, ladies and gentlemen, is how to correctly strangle someone."

     I think I've seen the end of this one, although quite a while ago, so it's a bit hazy. 
     Here an aside.  These television programs were supposedly set in the Twenties and Thirties, and were filmed and shot looooong before CGI, so they have to get the settings just right - no television aerials, for one thing, and you'd have to re-record the soundtrack if it picked up an aircraft overhead.  Thus we only get brief establishing shots of a steam locomotive in a station, because to do the scene justice in depth would take lots of £££.  On the other hand, the age-appropriate interiors they can dwell on - a lot easier to find and cheaper to film.  Art?

Interior

     And what happens when there is a commercial break?  Why, they trot out an advert to do with "Care-Co", who seem to provide various bits of kit for the middle-age and doddery, like chairs that recline to allow aged bones to experience gravity less harshly.  Or, if not Care-Co, "Mobility Furniture", which again - yadder-yadder, middle-aged, white-haired, furniture.  This seems to be an aspect of the advertising agencies PRESUMING that all middle-aged murder-mystery fiends are but one tottering step from the cold yawning grave -  THERE THEY GO AGAIN!

Get on your bad motor scooter and ride, mayhap

     Nor is that all.  There are  far too many adverts with a Christmas theme being broadcast already, and IT IS STILL NOVEMBER!!  I think you can understand my Frothing Nitric Ire, and if you can't then we can no longer be friends.  No Christmas adverts before December First, thank - what?  "Stannah Stair Lifts"?  GET OUT OF HERE!
     There they go with CareCo again!  Dog Buns, if I am reduced to feebleness in my more advanced years, they are definitely not getting my custom.

Conrad nursing his Frothing Nitric Ire

Back To Being Arty 
Hmmm.  I notice that in "Poirot" they never reveal Mrs. De Rustbriger's face, do they?   You only ever see her from a top-down perspective at height. That's a clue.
     Anyway - back to the BBCs "Bestest 100 books evah".

Class & Society

A House for Mr Biswas – V. S. Naipaul

Cannery Row – John Steinbeck

Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee

Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens

Poor Cow – Nell Dunn

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne – Brian Moore

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark

The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys

     Nope, not read any of 'em, and not likely to, apart from the Dickens, as I've enjoyed his stuff before  And the rest sound like an unpleasant trawl along the ocean floor of humanity, so - nope.  High literary be Dog Bunned.
     - and there's another ********-**** **** ********** Christmas advert**.
     Motley, fetch me my cricket bat and a wheelbarrow full of empty glass bottles, for I need to work off my temper.

Brutalist Architecture Revisited
Conrad was banging on about the Orland gun battery earlier this week - do you see what I did - O you do - and this was actually a separate item within the umbrella term "Atlantic Wall", itself a feature within the series "Nazi Megastructures".
     Here an aside - you always get a bigger audience if you add "Nazi" to the title of whatever, except if it also begins "Nazi".
     Anyway -  Art?

An Atlantic Examplar

     Amongst all the background chat, they mentioned that, by order of Herr Schickelgruber, 40 million tons of concrete were poured to create the Atlantic Wall.  This sounds like a lot - and it is, really - but it has to be spread across 5,000 miles from the veriest north of Norway to the Spanish border.  As Sun Tzu said, he who tries to be strong everywhere, is weak everywhere.
     Field Marshall Runstedt, a canny old Teuton commander, had succinctly pointed out that a defence line like this is useless once it is pierced, which is what happens in Normandy.  So, how much of that 40 million tons was a complete waste?  Most of it, actually.

An examplar

     Another example of what Your Humble Scribe called "Ozymandias Syndrome" <pauses for grateful applause, hears none, sulks> as these things have mostly succumbed to wind, water and general erosion, not to mention some high explosive back in the day.

Finally -
No, only kidding

Still With The Building Megastructures Theme -
As you may already know, Conrad recently stumbled across the world of bespoke Lego construction, which usually involves building enormous structures with thousands if not tens of thousands of pieces, taking weeks or even months to complete.  There appears to be a bespoke build for every possible subject, and yes, there are some for D-Day and the assault on the Atlantic Wall.  Art?

Another examplar

     This is actually a pretty good depiction of how the Teutons hoped to use massive concrete fortifications to maximise their manpower's survivability, and also how some people have entirely too much time on their hands.  Unfortunately I don't have any metrics on how long this took to build, nor how many bricks are present, as it's only been picked up from Pinterest; you can bet 1) Ages and 2) Thousands will be in the answer somewhere.

Finally -
Yes really this time.  Conrad is about to try something that Sarah does regularly for breakfast at work - a cheese toastie made with the toaster and microwave.  If she brought in an actual toasting device it would need all sorts of electrical testing and clearance and seeing if high winds over Norway affected it's performance, etcetera.
     So - impromptu toastie ahoy!


*  Unkindly known to some as "stealing"
**  How grateful I am for the opportunity to take my Frothing Nitric Ire for a walk.