If You See What I Mean
O! how hilarious I am. Just not today. Let us get into this Intro without further ado. Conrad went for a diabetic eye-test on Thursday (hence today's title) which involves having stinging liquid drops THE PAIN THE PAIN put in one's eyes, after which you hang around whilst your pupils dilate. Then you go back and get insanely bright lights flashed in your eyes. O and the nurse keeps asking for your date of birth, because of course - obviously! - there are many elderly men out there with a white moustache who might try impersonating Conrad. Art!
Either Conrad or John Bolton. It's not clear which.
Actually it is; that's John Bolton, South Canadian politician and frankly Conrad is glad he's out of office, because he'd inevitably get mistaken for him on the 409 bus, and violence would ensue.
ANYWAY the practice nurse queried whether I was travelling home by bus and I said yes, because I was; I've got a weekly pass and intend to get value out of it. "Good," she explained, because the Tropicamide used for eye-drops is now classed as a controlled drug, and if the police happened to stop Conrad whilst driving they'd not fail to notice those enlarged pupils, and he could get charged with being a junkie drug fiend. As if!
Conrad inhaling food, not drugs
Pshaw! was my response, until I got home and did a bit of Google-fu.
DOG BUNS UND KREPLACH! Art!
The Ruffians, who are not known for being sensible in the first place (lethal selfies, anyone? or that dreadful Krakodil shizzle?) are injecting Tropicamide as a cheap way of getting high, which of course - obviously! - Conrad would never do, as he is a massive coward who is scared of needles. Not to mention it would be complete guesswork as to what the difference between an intoxicating dose and a lethal one is and you only need to make that error once in order to never make it again. Conrad happy to stick to caffeine and alcohol*!
Motley, have you seen that horse-syringe lying around The Mansion?
That's the one!
My Anchor Is Rancour
(They are pronounced the same) I use this title because, as you should surely know by now, it takes little more than waking up to put Conrad in a festering, apoplectic rage; there doesn't have to be an initial reason, I'll find one soon enough. For Lo! we are back on Codewords, one of my most productive and content-generating regulars, not least because the solutions come up so randomly.
"BORDEREAU": Confess! You've never heard this word before, have you? Neither had Your Humble Scribe, despite being extensively read. At first I wondered if it was an heraldic device, or a fabric pattern, or even a cake. Not so. Let us consult that touchstone of sanity, the Collins Concise <clears throat in attempt to seem more impressive>: crickets and tumbleweed.
Okay, teh Interwebz then <grumbles at having to slum it>: A bordereau is a memorandum or invoice prepared for a company by an underwriter, containing a list of reinsured risks
It's French for "Slip". Art!
O what the heck. A bordereau would be boring as ballfoot.
"AVERMENTS": What-ments? Once again, have you ever read this word in a book, a magazine or a paper? Of course - obviously! - not! And I bet you've never used it in conversation, either, because it would have gone out of use in the eighteenth century amid the Age Of Reason. Let us cautiously approach the Collins Concise: "A positive statement". A noun derived from "Avers". To which I am AVERSE**! Art?
A positive statement slip
"LOQUAT": What Quat? No - I seem to have a dim and distant recollection that the 3 Mustapha 3 mentioned this in a song, and it was a tree. Is it perhaps a kind of fruit? Far distant cousin of the mangosteen? Art!
Orange mangosteen
Ooops! No, that was a slip of the keyboard, those are definitely loquats, even if they do indeed resemble an orange mangosteen.
O! That was such a good guess I forgot to be angry! Hang on -
I AM VERY VERY CROSS!!
Talking Of Food -
Yes, back to the fascinating and horrifying adulterations that villainous Victorian victual vendors used to resort to in the pursuit of profit over human life. Here's the next heavy metal poison they resorted to: Art!
Yellow colouration courtesy Lead Chromate
It's perfectly fine to use LC to paint a bus, as one does not see small children nor grown adults trying to like said pigment off the sides. However, it is entirely unacceptable to have it worked into mustard; lead, as we have already learned, is a HIGHLY TOXIC HEAVY METAL***. It was mixed in, for your information, to give it a bright yellow colour.
The same was done with snuff - and that is bordering on bad taste (do you see what I - O you do) so we end this item here.
"Tormentor" Begins To Live Down To It's Name
Luma has just gone to hopefully answer a knock on his front door, hoping that his missing ward Jennifer has turned up. Nope.
No. The two
callers were uniformed police constables, a man and woman, both looking
professionally detached and emotionless.
‘Mister McMahon?’ confirmed the male officer. ‘I wonder if you would mind helping us with a
few questions.’
‘Would I mind?’ asked Louis, belligerently. ‘Yes I would.
You ought to be out looking for Jen.’
‘Other people are doing that, sir,’ said the female
constable. ‘We’re here because you were
the last person to see Miss Hargreaves.’
Louis fumed momentarily on the doorstep, whisky
coursing around his brain. Oh, why not
let them in.
‘Come inside then,’ he told them, with bad grace. ‘In here.’
He told them the usual arrangement, that Jen would
arrive at six promptly, depart at seven after he rang Angela to warn of her
daughter’s imminent arrival, whilst he watched her walk to the top of the
road. From the corner where she vanished
from sight to her back door was fifty yards if she went down the alleyway,
seventy five yards if she went round on to the main road to the front door.
‘Why wouldn’t she use the back alley?’ asked the male
officer, his female counterpart keeping a close eye on Louis.
‘It’s dark, and muddy when it’s been raining. People let their dogs run up and down it and
drunken chavs hang about there.’
‘Do you live alone, Mister McMahon?’ asked the male
constable.
‘Yes,’ said Louis, his tone daring them to ask
more. The officer glanced at the pair of
framed photos that sat on top of the mantlepiece, and decided not to press the
point.
‘Did anyone see Miss Hargreaves leave?’ asked the
female officer.
‘No – oh, maybe.
The nosey old bat opposite keeps close tabs on me.’
‘We’ve got a description of
Jennifer’s clothing from Mrs Hargreaves.
Any other identifying feature you can think of?’
‘Her bag. It was bright dayglo yellow.’
* Not nicotine. It's disgusting.
** Ha! Take that, language!
*** The Persian Pustule screams and bans BOOJUM! at this point
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