Temper, Temper

This Is A Traditional Caution -
Here in the Allotment of Eden, lest one go potty with rage and pass the port to the left, cross against the lights or use a fish knife with one's main meal (turning green and swelling out of one's trousers is purely a South Canadian thing).
     Here an aside.  The blog has been popular over the weekend, yes indeed Venerable Bede!  We've seen traffic well into three figures, which is most unusual yet gratifying.  Thank you gentle readers!

ART!

     Aaaand back on track.  "Temper" also refers to musical quality, as in "The Well-Tempered Clavier" by the inestimable Johann Sebastian Bach, which just so happens to be one of the most important works in the history of classical music.  So there.

The man himself

     Conrad has to admit, with head hung low and a bucket of shame at his feet, that he doesn't own this work in any fashion, but Fopp! is but a stone's throw from his place of employment and this omission can be easily rectified -
     Which has nothing to do with what we are really on about in this Intro, as we move inexorably on to the subjects of painting and cooking.  <ahem>  "Gimme an 'A'" (that wasn't too South Canadian, was it?).  Thus we have "Tempera", which is here because it was a cryptic crossword answer.  Art?

Temperae (?)

     This is a variety of paint, based on egg yolk, of all things, which you might think of as temporary (not quite "temper" but getting there) but which is in fact incredibly robust and long-lasting and the artworks created with it will be around long after you're gone, matey.  It went out of fashion in the fifteenth century, so that crossword compiler was being a bit cheeky, to be honest.  Anyway, there you have it - Temper with an A = paint.
     <Ahem again, even more politely>  "Give me an 'U' " <subtext of "If you wouldn't mind, and thank you so much" because British>.
     And so we come to "Tempura" which - wonder of wonders! - is not present in my Collins Concise.  Don't worry, we still have the internet and Google.  Art?

As usually seen

     Tempura is actually the batter that those prawns were dipped in, prior to frying.  The trick with tempura is to keep the batter as cold as possible, either by mixing ice into it, or having your mixing bowl sit in another bowl full of ice.  This results in a nice crisp, fluffy batter upon frying.  So I'm told, I've never made it myself.  Feel free to try it yourself and let me know in the Comments how it went.
     Okay!  That's the Intro over.  Motley, shall we heat a pan of oil to Dangerously Hot and make chips?

Truth Time Strikes Again!
O but that BBC article has been a fruitful source of stuff, has it not?  You know the one - "Eight Unsolved British Mysteries", where so far, out of six, only one has been unsolved.  Let us crack on with number seven.  Art?

7. The Enfield Poltergeist
In 1977, Peggy Hodgson of Enfield, North London, reported that she and her two daughters were being terrorised by a ghost. There were claims of furniture moving on its own, disembodied voices and unseen forces causing the two girls to levitate. For 18 months, the ‘hauntings’ became a national story, covered extensively in newspapers. Even at the time there were many doubters, who suspected the two daughters of being behind the incidents. The doubts have continued ever since, but the incident so caught the public imagination that that it’s been the basis for a number of films and TV series. 

   Well well William Tell. 

That'll do.

      Guess what?  It was the two sisters mucking about and successfully pulling the wool over the eyes of two highly gullible Psychic Researchers; not that it took much pulling as both were desperate to believe.  Skeptical researchers out to disprove the "poltergeist" were banned from the house, probably because their Negative Mind Energy Wave Beams disrupted the space-time continuum.  Or something.  Another typhoon in a thimble, folks, and no - just because a television series got made does not make it true.

That'll do, too.

Joe A No-Show
I forget which particular website LIED and said that "Mega City One" would be appearing in 2019, since we now have only 15 days of the year left, and it's quite possible that we won't see it in 2020, either.
     Bah!
     So, Your Humble Scribe has to make do with a splendid substitute, namely "The Expanse", which is back for Season 4 and whose first episode I have seen (by devious means we won't go very far into).  Art?


     There's Alex, Amos, Naomi and Jim.  They make some subtle mileage from Naomi's having grown up in The Belt, where gravity is far less than on a planet such as they now stand on.  In fact this is the first proper planet she's ever stood on, and she stumbles once on terra firma - big sky, horizon, gravity all combine.
     This first episode is establishing the background on Ilus, or New Earth, depending on whom you wish to believe.  It gets complicated in the novel and probably will on television, too, although the scriptwriters do diverge significantly from the source at times.

One of the villains

     Nice to see them staying true to Hollywood and employing a British actor as Chief Bad Guy, though ...

Finally -
We only need a short Item here to make the Compositional Ton, so I thought I'd lead with a topic we shall be coming back to in future - "Struwelpeter", which is Teuton for "Shock-headed Peter", and if Art will put down his plate of coal for a second -

You think this is creepy?  Just wait!

     This was a children's book written way back in 1845, and which surely explains why generation after generation of Teutons were satisfied with nothing less than despotic military conquest, because the contents of this tome are, frankly, deeply unsettling.  It was supposedly written to point out the evil consequences of not being good little children.  For example -

Far scarier than the Child Catcher!

     And with that, we are done!