And NOT In A Good Way
For Lo! we are back on the BBC's broadcast of Lord Peter Wimsey and "The Unpleasantness At The Bellona Club" which, as you no doubt recall, is set in Thirties London, if not Twenties London (we like to cover all the bases) when men were men, women were gels and EVERYONE smoked, and smoked like industrial coking plants*. Art!
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| Ah. An industrial coking plant. Thanks for the clarification, Art |
Well, now we know. How grateful we are to Art for enlightening us! Have a bowl of ice-cream as a reward. Yes, made with coal.
ANYWAY I was blethering on yesterday about how smoking cigarettes was an utterly unremarkable phenomenon, without providing any evidence, so here we have some photos I took of Episode Three. Art!
Imbibing caffeine whilst inhaling nicotine - O the decadence of those times!
Incidentally, if that lady seems familiar it's because she's Phyllida Law, mother of Emma Thompson and a noted thespian in her own right. AND SHE'S SMOKING! WHICH IS BAD! VERY VERY BAD! Mind you, everyone is always downing alcohol, too. Conrad was impressed with how Ian Carmichael effortlessly rattled off what champagne to have with the starter and main course in a restaurant. Very much in character. He also manages to make wearing a monocle look easy, too, which must have taken a fair bit of practice. Art, do we have any pictures?
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| Monitoring monocularly |
One thing Conrad is enjoying about the serial are the British actors and actresses who abound, many of whom are consummate professionals of vast stage and television (not to mention film) experience, which includes Bunter, Lord Peter's manservant. Put all thoughts of Billy Bunter out of your mind, for this Bunter is a seasoned old warrior, batman to Major Wimsey back in the First Unpleasantness, and a man of many talents. He was played by Derek Newark - Art!
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| Well-spoken and dangerous |
Mervyn (for that is his first name) comes across as well-bred, deferential, sporting an impeccable Received English accent, and able to kill with his bare hands if needed. Derek Newark does him to a tee, being an actor who had a very menacing aspect. I think we might come back to Derek, he had an interesting acting curriculum vitae**.
Then there's Donald Pickering, playing Doctor Petherby, who was a penniless ex-Army doctor before entering private practice.
Here an aside. You get a definite sense that the First Unpleasantness is gone but very definitely NOT forgotten, as Lord Peter refers to ex-soldiers he knows, and Armistice Day commemorations play a central plot part. The War is a kind of distant yet nevertheless prominent back-cloth, which sounds horribly pseudy and let's change the subject - Art!
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| The Doctor. (NO! Not that one) |
But we have strayed far enough from the straight and an arrow.
Motley! Pick the club -
"Rome Wasn't Built In A Day"
Given that Rome has been around for about 3,000 years give or take a weekened or two, this is possibly the most asinine aphorism extant. Do you think they ever stopped construction in the city? No. The whole place is a positive palimpsest (no I'm not explaining, go look it up) of architecture.
Here we now jump from Rome to New York, that Rome of the modern world - work with me on this, I'm waxing poetic - and that iconic structure the Empire State Building. Art!
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| DON'T ask me to point it out |
Yes, this is a referral back to that 3D puzzle I bought weeks ago, and which is now being verrrrrrry slowly assembled. Art!
This is one of the horizontal sub-assemblies, where there is no picture to work from and all you have is a grey schematic showing the pieces - not always correctly! I have actually completed it, and another sub-sub assembly and we may only have 835 pieces left to assemble. It may take some time. If I succeed it will be an example of Conrad's persistence versus reality.
Ah Yes Reality. Reality, Meet - Frank Tinsley
Your Humble Scribe had never met Frank before today, until I came across an incredibly bizarre thumbnail picture on Youtube, about "The Most Insane Tank Concept EVER" on the ConeofArc Youtube channel. You know Conrad. If it has 'tank' in the title then you have an attentive audience of at least one. Art!
This - er - 'unique' vehicle goes under the moniker of a "Baby Assault Tank", and is the brainchild of Frank, because, frankly***, nobody else wanted anything to do with it. It may come as a surprise, but Frank had no background in the design or manufacture of armoured fighting vehicles, a deficit he proudly ignored. One can only marvel at his - ah - foresight and doggedness.
I really don't have time to go into every aspect of this 'tank' so we shall definitely come back to it. O yes indeed. Let us have an illustration that Frank created to provide a virtual proof-of-concept for his design. Art!
Because they sound silly?
Let's Have A Very Short Item
As you ought to know by now, Conrad is one of those people who derive a certain degree of amusement by reading the ingredients on cosmetic labels. These can sound like the villains from "Doctor Who" at times, whilst "Sodium Lauryl Sulphate" might be a Marvel superhero's girlfriend. Art!
Finally -
This is one of the rare occasions when BOOJUM! comments on sport. Unless you are down in an undersea isolation tank at the bottom of the Challenger Deep then you cannot fail to know that British - excuse me BRITISH - teenager Emma Radacanu has won the South Canadian Open. The instant Conrad saw that surname he recognised it as Romanian (which it is - her dad is Romanian).
Do you know, Britain First have been astonishingly quiet about tennis-trophy winning offspring of immigrants. Who would have thought it! Normally dirty curs like them kick up a racket -
At which point I think we'd better exit stage left.
Bless the lass!
Are we done? I think we are, bar doing the dishes. Tot siens!
* Conrad is a little unsure exactly what these are and what they do, although they do sound O so very smoky, don't they?
** What South Canadians mistakenly call a "resumé"
*** Do you see what I d - O you do.
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