Conrad's Canine Conundrum

SIT BACK DOWN!
This is interesting.  The petty pace of life and all that.  Not everything can be about Taking Over The World, or fighting off hordes of ravening zombies, or how I managed to simultaneously dodge MI5 and UNIT.
     You will also have to use your imagination, as I didn't bother to take my phone and thus there are no pictures, and I'm not going to apologise for either.
     So!  You ought to recall that Your Humble Scribe is doing the dog-sitting duty, which he takes seriously: two walks per day for Edna, with a shorter one in the morning and a longer in the afternoon.  Art?

The scamp in question
(from a while back)

     For this afternoon's walk we went all the way up to the Rotary memorial in Tandle Hill Park (hereafter THP).  This is a big stone and gravel article with great views of the trees, as it's surrounded by them.  Art?

Thus

     Excuse me, I've got to go put the egg-fried rice on.  Back in a trice!

     You must also understand that this is 15:30 on a wet, cold, windy, rainy afternoon, as dusk is about to fall and when one can reasonably expect THP to be ENTIRELY FREE OF DOG-WALKERS.  For I dare not let Edna off her leash if there are other dogs around, since she will inevitably go for them, regardless of size or numbers.
     "BUT WHAT'S THIS!" rages Conrad to himself (and Edna).  "A dog-ambler, who couldn't be moving slower unless he was going backwards.  Fortunately only the - WHAT!  ANOTHER DOG-AMBLER?!"  and they both meet up and have a good chinwag about the weather, the economy, Brexit, the weather, epistemology, did they mention the weather yet?  Conrad, of course, is simply seething with ire.  Don't these idlers have homes to go to?  Families to feed?  Jobs?
     "Get moving, you human snails on downers," seethes Your Humble Scribe.  "And take your domesticated wolves with you.  GO!"
     And they do indeed start to amble, with aching arthritic slowness, towards the THP exit.
     "At last!" mutters Conrad, before - of course you're ahead of me here - catching sight of another dog-walker.  Fortunately she makes off out of the park at a fair clip, probably propelled by the ferociously-staring scary man sitting on a bench further up the hill.

Conrad is ANGRY!  SO, SO ANGRY!

     At which point our four-footed scamp can be let off the lead for a good five minutes of tearing around, sniffing, wondering what that noise was*, more tearing around, carefully inspecting every piece of gravel to see how it smells, and then coming back to get restrained again.
     Then we walked home and I did the weekly shop.
     Okay, that's a slice of domesticity aimed at those in foreign climes where things are warm and sunny.  Motley, turn on the sun-lamp and make me a mojito!

Bitten By The Coincidence Hydra - AGAIN
Boy oh boy, Conrad's buttocks must be just about the sweetest meat that's fit to eat, because the Dog Buns Coincidence Hydra constantly has it's teeth in there.
     Okay, I am currently reading "Last Man Standing", about an Australian soldier's participation in the desert war in North Africa during the Second Unpleasantness.  As a member of the Ocker's 9th Division (they started with number 6, as numbers 1 to 5 had been in the First Unpleasantness), he ends up in Tobruk during the great siege.  Art?

Tobruk: an average day

     He mentions that the Ocker units were all numerically named - e.g. 2/48th Battalion (2 because 1 had been in the First Unpleasantness) - in contrast to the British, whose regiments all had names, like the Black Watch - and the Sherwood Yeomanry.
     WHAT?
     Conrad is currently annotating (for his own perverse enjoyment) the memoir of a tank troop commander called David Render, who served in - the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry.  They began the Second Unpleasantness as a horsed cavalry unit in Palestine, before converting to artillery and serving at the siege of Tobruk.
     What are the chances, eh?

"Aberdeen" of A Squadron SRY comes ashore on D-Day

Back To Culture
Not that we are ever far from it**.  Let us now promenade by the door-stop novels that the BBC thinks you ought to have read, which Your Humble Scribe is treating with a great deal of caution, and not a smidgeon of Frothing Nitric Ire.  Shall we continue?

5. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (976 pages)

     Conrad has been aware of this work for many decades, as it was serialised in a young person's magazine he used to get weekly way back when.  I can't say that it appeals overmuch, as I've still not read it, but given the cultural significance I may eventually get around to reading it.  Fingers are still crossed that Terry Gilliam gets his film version off the ground at some point in the very near future.  Art?

Yeah, like this!
Wait - what?

6. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1,079 pages)

     You know, the precis on the Beeb makes this one sound interesting.  A touch of sci-fi, a bit of experimental structure, and a quest for a mysterious film - ah!  I should have included it in last night's clutch of orders sent to Abebooks.  Perhaps next time.  

     Here an aside; the Beeb's precis says that the quest is for a film called "Infinite Jest" that has the ability to put viewers into a vegetative state, and since it seems to be a title taken from the Barf of Avon (" - a fellow of infinite jest") Conrad can only nod wisely in confirmation.

A hefty tome!

Finally -
I have mentioned that the Ruffians, of whatever political ilk, are dead set in their pursuit of the Biggest Of Everything, because that means you're the winner.
     Wellllllll sometimes.  Back in the dying days of the Sinister Union, they wanted an unspeakably gargantuan airplane that could transport very heavy loads from construction sites to the Sinister's aerospace base at Baikonur.  The answer was the An-125 Mriya, which, if Art will oblige us -

Behold the beast

     This thing is the biggest and heaviest aircraft ever constructed, able to carry a payload of 250 tons - that above is the Sinister's space-shuttle.  The idea was to have a fleet of 4, except the death of the Sinister Union put that in abeyance.  So there is only one <sad face> that will continue to hold the record of Biggest Ever Big Metal Bird -
     For the moment ...





*  Probably just the wind in the trees; we were not courageous enough to investigate.
**  Lies!  All lies! <the awful truth courtesy Mister Hand>