I'm So Uber -

About This Here Tuber -
One of the consequences of being stuck indoors for most of the day is that one is cast upon one's own devices and resources.  Hence a couple of days ago I dug out that book on cooking with potatoes and made a Spanish Tortilla, which was quite a success for a first try.  Yesterday I made Potato And Mushroom Cakes, from a recipe out of that very same book, and if Art can put down his bowl of coal -

     These things are pretty hefty.  If I were to do them again I'd make them smaller and thinner, maybe 8 instead of 4, because that way they'd fit into the pan better.  I only managed two of them because as I said, pretty hefty.  Not bland or tasteless, either, thanks to the mushrooms.
     As I said, cast on one's own devices; so I had a bit of a rummage in the cupboard and rediscovered a box of Buckwheat Groats that has been lurking in there for probably a year.  Art?

Thus

     These are not to be confused with straightforward buckwheat, which I have both mentioned and cooked with before.  Art?

Purchased because cheap

     So, I have gotten the bits ready, including some spring onions that I rescued from the bin - don't worry, I ran them under a cold tap - and spinach as I don't have any fresh parsley, and we shall see what it ends up like*.  If you are lucky there may even be a photograph.
     Before you wrinkle your nose and exclaim in wary anxiety, buckwheat is a staple in the Slavic lands east of the Teutons, eaten in large amounts by Poles and Ruffians alike.
     Motley!  CAREFUL!  Those eggs are not for juggling - I extracted their contents and replaced them with injected TNT**.

I warned you.

An Inverse Of The Worse
This will bear some explanation, because not all of you out there are familiar with the BBC's premier dramatic-reconstruction series "Doctor Who", a certainly not the earlier iteration from the Seventies.  There was a particularly villainous Time Lord known as "The Master", aptly described by Doctor John Smith as a "meddling jackanapes", who would periodically show up on Planet Earth to either torment The Doctor or carry out some nefarious scheme of his own.  Art?

     He was always up to some malicious malarkey, the bounder.
     Okay, we shall now abruptly return to the present day, and comedian Omid Djalili, whom you may be familiar with thanks to some adverts he did for an insurance company, as well as having a small role in "The Mummy" (the good iteration with Brendan Fraser).  Art?

     I shall leave you to come to your own conclusions, but it's obvious that Omid is about to be entirely taken over by the Master's evil alien DNA.

Now For The "Cathedral of Canals"
For we are back onto the topic of ship lifts, although in this case "boat lift" is more apt as the vessels in question are comparatively small.
     Okay, cast your mind back to the mid to late nineteenth century, when rivers and canals were a way of moving large amounts of goods swiftly and safely.  Let us focus at the tantalisingly narrow gap between the River Weaver and the Trent-to-Mersey Canal in Cheshire; a narrow gap but some 50 feet difference in height between the two.
     Et voila!  Art?

     Here you get three shots of the Anderton Boat Lift, which links the River Weaver and the Trent-Mersey Canal, without having to use locks or inclined planes or other such time-consuming shizzle.  If Art will do the honours -

     This shows the view as one enters from upstream.  The two caissons visible here can deal with boats of up to 140 tons mass, although anything of this size is highly unlikely, as most traffic is leisure in nature, commercial canal traffic having died off in the Seventies.  Art?

     Here we are looking upstream, and you can see the somewhat restriced access at this end thanks to that bridge, which will not have been there in 1875, when the boat lift was constructed.  At lower port edge are the pulleys that were used to lift and drop the caissons, and we do have a better view of them - Art!

So many pulleys!

     In fact these are not used now.  Originally, when constructed, the caissons were lifted and dropped on hydraulic rams, which operated on a reciprocal principal: as one caisson went up, the other went down.
     Eventually, thanks to erosion and corrosion, the rams were replaced with electric motors and the pulleys you see, which could lift or drop independently, until 1983, when corrosion of structural elements caused the boat lift to cease operations.  It was renovated in 2002 and went back to hydraulic operation.
     

     There you have a barge on the bottom.
     The Anderton Boat Lift is one of only two in the whole UK, so you can bet your bottom escudo that we'll be coming back to the other one***!

Living Dangerously
Conrad has never eaten "Ackees", though, being an inquisitive chap, he might well keep an eye out for them on the shelves at Morrisons when he does the weekly shop.  The reason I mention them at all is because Jason, who is doing his mortal best to be and remain vegan, posted a picture of "Sauteed garlic, onion, peppers, ginger, coriander with scrambled ackee on toast," on his Facebook page.  Art, can you -

Something like this.

     The thing about Akees, which I did not know, is that the unripe fruit is extremely dangerous thanks to the poisons it contains.  You can only safely eat them once the fruit has "Yawned", which if Art can put down his nuclear fuel rod -
                               
                                      DANGEROUS!                            Safe.
                                                                                    (If a bit reminiscent of those 
                                                                                    Martians from "WOTW")
     The guilty party is a toxin called Hypoglycin, which breaks down within the body into a cocktail of chemical killers, causing disastrously low blood sugar levels, leading to convulsions and death.
     You have been warned!

George Pal, where are you when we need you?

     Righto, time to go emote and groat!

*  It will, I assure you, be eaten regardless what it ends up like.
**  Like I said, cast upon one's own devices.
***  And, because I'm a rotter, I'm not telling you where it is.  Tee Hee!