Day One Has Begun

Yes, Edna's Care And Well-being Is Now My Responsibility

She's already had one walk today, the morning one, where we danced between the raindrops.  This was only possible since the raindrops were very widely-spaced, in a brief interval between downpours.  At present she is on her bed out in The Mansion's hallway, probably sulking because I only spent 5 minutes playing Chase, rather than the 25 minimum she expects as standard.  Sorry, Edna - Conrad is only human*.

     I suppose a picture is required? 

Brisk and firsky outside

Despondent thanks to Wicked Neglectful Humans

      On the plus side, being the only one at home means that the lounge is now Forward Operating Base Cadwallader, gradually acquiring a few piles of books, and a second laptop for playing DVDs and films, and perhaps the i-pod docking station; though I jib at leaving dirty plates around, as that would be uncouth.

Conrad: couth personified

     I was watching "Dark" before starting the blog but have had to pause it, since you need to concentrate 110% on this sinister Chthonian tale set in the lands of the Teutons.
     Motley!  Go slice me some lemons, and de-crystallise the honey.  Quickly now!

Back To Being All Pseudy And Arty

And other impressive words that end in a "Y".  For Lo!  We are going to look at another category in the BBC's list of Totally Bitchin' Books 100 novels that shaped our world.  What is it today, Vulnavia?  Ah, "Coming of Age", which seems to have been an excuse to trot out a load of Young Adult books.  Go on then -

Coming of Age

Emily of New Moon – L. M. Montgomery

Golden Child - Claire Adam

Oryx and Crake – Margaret Atwood

So Long, See You Tomorrow – William Maxwell

Swami and Friends – R. K. Narayan

The Country Girls - Edna O’Brien

The Harry Potter series - J. K. Rowling

The Outsiders – S. E. Hinton

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾ - Sue Townsend

The Twilight Saga – Stephenie Meyer

     Well now well now.  I have read "Oryx and Crake" and it didn't seem as much of a COA novel as a dystopian world winding down to extinction, with unlikeable protagonists and everyone a villain.  Don't worry, I got it cheap from a charity shop and returned it once finished.

Hmmm.

     I've read most of the "Harry Potter" novels but gave up on them when they became the size of house-bricks; clearly the editors were scared to cut the text - sorry, the Holy Money-Making Untouchable Text As Bestowed By J.K. - and help them move along at a reasonable pace.  The films condense things considerably.

     Oh, and yes, I have read the "Adrian Mole" stuff, which was very of it's time and would doubtless seem incredibly dated now.  From the Seventies, wasn't it?

A Mole by a Potter.

     Your Humble Scribe is not going anywhere near that "Twilight" swill, which is only included here because it made a lot of money and swoony tween girls happy.  And no, you don't get a picture.

     As for the other stuff - hmmmm.  I don't think so.  I'll choose stuff from the other categories in preference, ta very much.

     I have noticed of late that the Ruffian audience for BOOJUM! has rather trailed off - okay, okay, dropped to zero - and wondered if my gentle mockery has finally sent Tsar Putin off the deep end, forbidding any mention of BOOJUM! or Conrad, and threatening anyone who reads it with the gulags Ruffian prison system Ministry of Justice.  So, I wondered if I ought to put in an item that flatters our Slav brethren.

     No need to reach, as today's Crossword Answer provided an in -

"TOKAMAK"

That was the answer for "Fusion Chamber (7)".  

     Wait, what?  Your Humble Scribe knows what a tokamak is because he's read lots of science fiction stories that contain same; but to be the answer in an intermediate crossword?  Is this not expecting too much of people?

Tokamak schematic

     It happens that the tokamak was invented by the Sinisters in the Fifties, one of the inventors being Andrei Sakharov - father of the Sinister's H-bomb program - and was a reactor where magnetic fields contained a plasma, contorting it into a helix,.  For over a decade Western scientists variously scoffed and poo-poo'd the fact that the Sinisters had got a working fusion reactor, until some disbelieving boffins from Perfidious Albion were allowed to monitor it's performance, and - Surprise!  It was all true.

     The catch at present is that it currently takes more energy to run a tokamak than it generates, in a 2:3 ratio.  What the boffins - from both East and West - want is to get to at least a 1:1 ratio, and then they can work on "The Expanse"'s 500:1 ratio.

Baby steps

     "Will Man's Sun Ever Shine?" asked a newspaper headline back in the Eighties.  Yes, though it may be Darling Daughter who flies to the Moon on a lunar ferry rather than Your Humble Scribe.  And it may have been built in Magnitogorsk.

One day, Vulnavia, one day ...

Time-Travelling Teutons

Apropos of "Dark", I think, a book title from back in the Eighties popped into my mind last night, though I couldn't be sure I had it correct.

     "The Last Day Of Creation" by Wolfgang Jeschke.  Art?

I got the title right!

      It's about time-travel into the distant past, which goes spectacularly wrong, although I won't spoil any of the details for you, except to remark that I think it brings in alternate realities (and the Pope) and it's all to do with oil.

     Come to think of it, I've read another novel with a similar premise - "Hawksbill Station" by Robert Silverberg, where a dictatorial junta deals with political prisoners by sending them millions of years into the past, irretreivably.

Very possibly the edition I had

     

     Okay, it only remains to be said that the Improvised Toastie was a success, as I'm sure you were dying to know the outcome, so props to Sarah for the idea.

     Chin chin!

*  Or doing a splendid job of pretending